Wikipedia Hoax Author Confesses 377
cmholm writes "As reported in The Seattle Times, Nashville resident Brian Chase has publically admitted that he edited a Wikipedia entry for John Seigenthaler, making appear that Mr. Seigenthaler was involved in the assassination of JFK. Mr. Chase fessed up after a cyber-sleuth tracked down the business from which he had posted to Wikipedia."
Since when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is very useful and I use it myself for papers and research projects but it shouldn't be considered solid due to it's changable nature (articles get updated all the time, people can post wrong information etc).
By all means use wikipedia as an information resource, but also make sure that you another source that validates the information.
Re:Since when... (Score:3, Insightful)
In a way its true though, since we all know this site is especially fanatic about those above topics, so any speech written against them *is* flamebait when you take audience into account. However this doesnt say much for fair and ubiased communication on slashdot, does it?
I dont have karma to burn, so Im a coward ;) Think of it as
By saying that, you too are being hypocritical (Score:3, Insightful)
And THEN you have the asshole moderators. That the GP got modded up is
Re:Since when... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)
So, a "reliable" publisher is one that controls its writers to a degree with positive or negative consequences.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Turnabout (Score:5, Informative)
stop making fun of wikipedia. (Score:2)
Re: stop making fun of wikipedia. (Score:2)
How else would he have known that the original article was a hoax?
Re:stop making fun of wikipedia. (Score:2)
Histipedia!
It's like wikipedia, but for history.
Obviously, if there is something wrong with history we can fix it!
Re:stop making fun of wikipedia. (Score:2)
This guy was tracked down because he posted from a machine at his job, and the IP was easily located. If it had been from a home machine it would have needed a court order to get the ISP to turn him in. And if he'd used a proxy, he would have been safe (though I think Wikipedia blocks a lot of proxies from editing.)
Cybersleuth, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cybersleuth, indeed (Score:5, Informative)
What makes you think he was trying to hide? (Score:5, Insightful)
He did it as a joke. He thought it was inconsequential. He wasn't trying to construct some elaborate consipiracy to implicate the other guy for the assassination. He was basically doing the equivalent of changing the screensaver on computers at Best Buy to say "SpideyCT is cool". It is funny to be able to do something so simple, and because it reaches such a large audience, looks like you did something special.
So yeah, he could have covered his tracks better, but I bet it never occurred to him to try. Why would it? In fact, if he had tried to cover it up more, it would have looked like he was trying to cover it up, suggesting that he thought he was doing something he could get in trouble for.
..and get a NYTimes reporter to Call his Employer (Score:2)
Re:Cybersleuth, indeed (Score:2, Offtopic)
1. Name 5 kernel developers not including tree maintainers
2. Name 3 people who test GCC
3. Who wrote Nautilus?
4. Who wrote XMMS?
etc...
My point is he did a cool hack. Congrats. Stop playing him up like this all time champ for the OSS world. I'd say the people writing the tools [e.g. GCC] he used to compile it are also important.
Lot more work goes into making GCC capable for professional work than hacking decss together [keep in mind most incarnation
Re:Cybersleuth, indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
So? News flash, buddy:
Not everyone who gets attention deserves it.
Not everyone who deserves attention wants it.
You're acting as if recognition and attention were the main reasons people hack on F/OSS software. It isn't, and never has been. If it's attention you want, you're better off candidating for some reality-TV show.
Lot more work goes into making GCC capable for professional work than hacking decss together [keep in mind most incarnations of decss tools were CRAP for the longest while at first].
Thing is, most don't really care for broad recognition. That's not why they're doing it. I don't see what your problem is? Jealousy?
(FWIW, I've got ~45k LOC in libgcj at last count, and as far as I'm concerned, DVD-Jon can have all the spotlight he wants.)
Re:Cybersleuth, indeed (Score:2)
That aside, there are way more important projects that don't get press like they should.
Notable quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed.
The problem is that many people believe that actions - including speech - shouldn't have consequences.
Re:Notable quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Notable quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom of speech, by necessity, includes freedom after speech. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity.
In this particular situation, the speech involved counts as a stupid joke, or possibly a subtle political jab. If, instead, the relevant Wiki article had included concrete evidence that Bush and Blair lied to the world for the purpose of controlling the world Mango market, or a leaked internal memo showing the Diebold CEO deliberately made defective machines that gave extra votes to Libertarians - Would we still consider it an "abuse" of free speech, or exactly the reason we need free speech?
Yes, with free speech comes a certain degree of responsibility... On the part of the AUDIENCE. Charlatans and outright liers will always exist, and would even if we didn't have a 1st amendment in the US. Anyone who accepts a single Wiki entry as "proof" of ANYTHING deserves the ridicule they get when more skeptical readers point out the real facts.
Re:Notable quote (Score:2)
That's clever, but fallacious.
With free speech comes responsibility on the part of the speaker as well.
All rights have associated responsibility - which includes things like accountability - that lies with the exerciser of the right, and it is the refusal to acknowledge this from which problems arise.
Re:Notable quote (Score:3, Insightful)
You're attempting to shift responsibility of speech to the audience, not the speaker. That's blatantly wrong. No one has a right to say exactly what they want, when they want, and how they want 100% of the time without consequence . If I yell "Bomb" in an airport, can I tell the federal agents that have my neck in a knot that I was just trying to get to the front of the line?
We have a duty to understand the effects of the speech we make. While I agree that anyone who reads a Wik
Re:Notable quote (Score:2, Insightful)
Not blatantly. Only in cases of fraud is there any reason to limit speech.
No one has a right to say exactly what they want, when they want, and how they want 100% of the time without consequence.
Yes, just 99% of the time, for most people.
If I yell "Bomb" in an airport, can I tell the federal agents that have my neck in a knot that I was just trying to get to the front of the line?
You bring up an int
Re:Notable quote (Score:3, Interesting)
So if an anti-abortion groups publishes the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and time they normally arrive home after work of doctors performing abortions - that isn't fraud, it's just information. It should be protected speech, right? Google for the court's opinion. It doesn't match yours.
Federal agents aren't required, any more than cops, to respond to you yelling "Bomb".
Somewhat wrong. If you shout it in the middle of the woods and there
Re:Notable quote (Score:3, Insightful)
The same goes in speech. You are responsible for
Re:Notable quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Strong Position (Score:2, Insightful)
You have a very strong position here and I wanted to let you know that I found your statements on freedom of speech very compelling. The responsibility for freedom of speech is indeed on the part of the audience, and not the orator. Each human being is a liar once; nobody is perfect. Our mission is not to be perfect; it's to handle and understand why we are NOT perfect. When we can achieve that level of understanding, we can become truly evolved and perhaps then we could be within reach of the lofty uto
If you apply that argument to other rights ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom of speech, by necessity, includes freedom after speech. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity.
Let's see what happens with that claim if applied to other rights:
"Freedom of religion, by necessity, includes freedom after sacrificing a captured non-believer. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"Freedom of the press, by necessity, includes freedom after deliberatiely publishing libelous stories that destroy a victim's livelyhood, family, and personal relations. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"The right to keep and bear arms, by necessity, includes freedom after fatally shooting unamred victims in the back. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"Freedom of association, by necessity, includes freedom after creating a criminal gang and leading in an ongoing pattern of criminal activity, including murders, robberies, and extortion. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
And so on.
Sorry, the only true part of your claim is that: "In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
Freedom of speech says the government can't make a law blocking you from speeking. It does not mean it can't make it a crime to deliberately or negligently cause harm others using false claims (that you KNOW to be false) as the instrument.
If, instead, the relevant Wiki article had included concrete evidence that Bush and Blair lied to the world for the purpose of controlling the world Mango market, or a leaked internal memo showing the Diebold CEO deliberately made defective machines that gave extra votes to Libertarians - Would we still consider it an "abuse" of free speech, or exactly the reason we need free speech?
IANAL, but as I understand it:
- Truth is an absolute defense against claims of libel.
- The standard to prove libel is higher for "public persons", such as celebrities (who voluntarily chose to make their living from their noteriety) or politicians, than for ordinary citizens. (In particular (if I have this right), negligence is no longer an issue and the plantif must show malace and/or deliberate falsehood.)
- The standards are essentially insurmountable when discussing elected officials or political issues. (Thus pundits, and political opponents, can take cheap shots, repeat outrageous and provable lies for years, or accuse their opponents of their own (but not their opponents) sins, in complete immunity. The effectively only need to answer to the "court of public opinion", not to a court of law.)
Yes, with free speech comes a certain degree of responsibility... On the part of the AUDIENCE. Charlatans and outright liers will always exist, and would even if we didn't have a 1st amendment in the US. Anyone who accepts a single Wiki entry as "proof" of ANYTHING deserves the ridicule they get when more skeptical readers point out the real facts.
The same can be said of the news media, commercial encyclopedias, printed books, scholarly journals, and every human being whose opinions and stories you pay attention to. Different institutions and different individuals deserve different levels of trust. Even the SAME individual or institution deserves different levels of trust on different subjects (or even at different times in their lifetime or history).
If you have a medical question, do you trust your doctor, your lawyer, the head of your IT department, or your auto mechanic when their opinions diverge? If you have a question regarding risk-benefit ratio of gun ownership, do you trust articles in a medical or a criminology journal when THEY diverge? And so on.
But that in no way absoves the author or speaker of THEIR responsibility - especially when they deliberatly construct and publish falsehoods that harm some particular victim.
Re:If you apply that argument to other rights ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ironically, your examples do more to support my point than refute it. In every example you make, you provide outcomes that break other laws. And yes, to do so with impunity would require complete anonymity. But let's consider them individually:
"Freedom of religion, by necessity, includes freedom after sacrificing a captured non-believer." - I have the right to believe anything I want. That right doesn't extend to breaking (most) othe
Re:Notable quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is not and never will be an authoritative source on anything. It's the very nature of the beast that makes all information found there suspect. Anyone who uses wikipedia as an authoritative source is a fool.
Anonymity is not necessary, and only leads people to act irresponsibly.
The Supreme Court doesn't agree with you, and I'd guess that more people would find them a better source on the value of anonymity than some guy posting on slashdot.
Max
Re:Notable quote (Score:2)
Re:Notable quote (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Free of consequences from the state.
With rights come responsibilities. They are intrinsically linked and inseparable. The problems come when people believe there is, or should be, no relationship between them.
Public Enemy #1 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Public Enemy #1 (Score:2)
The conspiracy grows... (Score:5, Funny)
In a shocking discovery, it appears that the Wikipedia entry came from the sixth floor of the Dallas book repository.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:5, Interesting)
The plan was that each author, editor, and reader signs off for or against part or the whole of an article. The fallout should be that some articles get nearly universal positive sign offs, some get nearly universal against votes, and some are recorded as controversial. With GPG keys, we can also start ranking authors and editors -- are they generally agreed with, are they controversial, are they trolls. This is a codification of the skepticism that proponents of Wikipedia claim that any internet user should employ.
Something else I thought would be good would be to have branching articles. For instance, the entry for Hitler would have the main entry, which is the most agreed upon, a white-supremacist/neo-nazi version which stirs a lot of controversy, and maybe a David Icke version, which, while against Hitler, involves space reptiles and is therefore also controversial. Using the ranking and reputation system, a casual user can see how agreeable or controversial an article is.
Re:Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:3, Insightful)
So much so about the crediblity of wikipedia...
On second thoughts, wouldn't wikipedia do well with a moderation system ?
Re:Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:5, Funny)
You mean, similar to the one used by Slashdot? /sarcasm
Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:2)
Slashdot seems to do reasonably well without GPG keys.
Re:Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:2)
and anarchy is reasonbly well organized ... for sufficiently low values of organized.
Re:Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
1. It's harder to steal someone's GPG identity.
2. You're not putting all your eggs in one basket like you do with logins. If wikipedia had a catastrophic server failure, they might lose all the authentication data. Goodbye wikipedia community. With GPG keys, there isn't such a large risk.
Here's a feature you may be overlooking: GPG keys are *universal* username/password credentials. Any bulliten board system could use GPG signed messages. That would do away with everybody re-inventing this authentication system and site security.
I would argue that GPG authentication is actually simpler than a username/password over HTTP security system. If that's the case, how can you call it overengineering, especially if any other bulliten board can drop their lousy HTTP authentication mechanism and use this one? That reduces complexity for site admins all over the world.
Re:Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:2)
My feeling is that if major banks, credit card providers, and brokerages get away with simple login/pass systems for account access with potentially billions of dollars at stake, then a login/pass system is good enough for an online collaborative encyclopedia. Yes, financial institutions have fucked up, but to my kn
Re:Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:2)
This is good enough for financial institutions because they have other authentication mechanisms for fraud detection. Just for example, they have hueristics to examine whether this transaction makes sense given the history of the customer. And for non-personal accounts, they don't allow username/password web access for making t
Re:Isn't that over engineering the problem (Score:2)
I agree completely, but if you're proposing this system to an audience unfamiliar with GPG (as most people are, even perhaps on Slashdot, to say nothing of Wikipedia) it might help to start with something more easily digestible, just so the rest of us can wrap our heads around what you're talking about.
There's just so many ideas out there that it doesn't take much to dismiss someone with a goo
Why use digital signatures? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm dense, but I fail to see how cryptographic digital sigures would do anything other than add technical complexity with no corresponding benefit. How exactly are GPG signatures better than user accounts with decent passwords? Is there really a history of Wikipedia accounts being compromised by password guessing? Is there any reason to think that password guessing would become a problem if some sort of article approval process were implemented?
I just don't see it.
Re:Why use digital signatures? (Score:2)
Boils down to this:
. GPG authentication is *simpler* than the 1000 different crappy authentication-over-HTTP-sessions schemes going around.
. Wikipedia isn't responsible for maintaining the authentication credentials for the entire community. It's good not to have all your eggs in one basket.
. In the long run, GPG could replace any crappy authentication system in any bulliten board system anywhere. It would *simplify* the web
Re:Why use digital signatures? (Score:2)
Re:Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:2)
Re:Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:2)
Re:Digital signatures with GPG keys (Score:2)
No. Remember, my original suggestion says 'whole' or 'part'. It doesn't say how small a part is.
You could easily design a system that check whether a non-dictionary string becomes a *very similiar* dictionary word, consider that a spellcheck, and not change the ranking of the article.
Fake News is on the rise (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, because I was a reporter, then later an editor. With tightening margins, reporters get paid less and less (try $20 for a story), and staff is shrunk in the dead-tree press. It's hard to keep the passion up when Ramen is for dinner, again. Sometimes, though, the made up news is more interesting or entertaining than the 'real' news.
Alaska's wildfires might be helping melt glaciers and sea ice [suvalleynews.com]
Re:Fake News is on the rise (Score:2)
Re:Fake News is on the rise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fake News is on the rise (Score:2)
Re: Fake News is on the rise (Score:2)
As the Iraqi editor said, "If I had known it was from the US Army, I would have charged a lot more to publish it."
Only in the weekly world (Score:2)
It used to be that one could tell the fake news, such as Weekly World News, National Enquirer, etc.
Most of the tabloids, such as The National Enquirer, have switched to a celebrity gossip format. Weekly World News, on the other hand, still gives general interest news that is false in this world but true in the Weekly World.
Re:Fake News is on the rise (Score:2)
Were things that much better in the old days, or did we just not know?
I'm reminded of the War of the Worlds [wikipedia.org] radio show:
Re:Fake News is on the rise (Score:2, Interesting)
What tool did he use? (Score:5, Interesting)
ARIN Whois only goes as far as Bellsouth for the IP address in question (65.81.97.208), as does pretty much every utility, geographic and otherwise, that I could find in a rudimentary search.
So, what tool did he use to actually narrow it down to a specific business?
Re:What tool did he use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What tool did he use? (Score:2)
Re:What tool did he use? (Score:5, Informative)
[fatboy@localhost fatboy]$ host 65.81.97.208
208.97.81.65.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer adsl-065-081-097-208.sip.bna.bellsouth.net.
Bellsouth, like many ISPs, use airport city codes in the RR to show the nearest city. bna is Nashville International Airport.
Go to the IP address in a browser. It returns the simple message "Welcome to Rush Delivery [65.81.97.208].
Search google for "Rush Delivery" nashville [google.com], and there you have it.
No big deal.
Re:What tool did he use? (Score:2)
Tipp: register to post anonymously (Score:5, Insightful)
If Mr. Chase had spent the 30 seconds or required to create a Wikipedia account (valid email address not required!) he would have stopped the "cyber-sleuth" (hah) in his tracks. Wikipedia seems to laboring under the apprehension that IP addresses are somehow anonymous, whereas they provide far more information to third parties than an account name does (unless the poster is savvy enough to use a reasonably anonymous proxy not blocked by Wikipedia).
How to use Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
In this respect Wikipedia is actually far more effient than any search engine, because ALL links will point to pages with information on the subject - filtering between 'good' and 'bad' webpages is quite straight forward. This approach will also give you a layer of redundancy which is required when doing good research on any topic.
Anonymity? (Score:3, Interesting)
But outside of that ideal in the real world we can hardly agree on what even constitutes human rights internationally. So there does seem to be a need for some forms of anonymity like when something is leaked because it's in the public interest. Although, for libel and slander accountability would seem to be better overall. Pragmatically, something that satisfies both could be logged access that requires a warrant to associate id with identity.
Unfortunate (Score:4, Insightful)
My main dissapointment here, however, is that this will decrease the trust of the value of the information on Wikipedia. I have a few friends (these are geeks as well mind you) who don't trust Wikipedia because essentially, 'anyone can write there'. They beleive that there is not enough valid information there; Too much opinion. Of course my response is that even published encyclopedias can include bad information based on opinion. By giving a published encyclopedia no room for doubt we are opening ourselves up to beleif in error, just as we are by not using critical thought processes when reading a Wikipedia entry.
So back to my dissapointment. Stunts like this while both funny & stupid are also devaluing the otherwise fairly valuable content of Wikipedia.
-ME®
True BUT a "real" encyplopedia has a building (Score:4, Interesting)
A new version takes years to come out and will have a lot of peer review and can be reviewed just once by the rest of the world and then either accepted or rejected. You do not have to keep a constant watch to check if some crackpot is not scribbling new entries in your encyclopedia and if they are you send your kid to bed without diner.
Then again all the safety measures also tend to enforce a certain accepted thinking approach with no room for the more wild theories and ideas. I wonder if a wikipedia article in centuries past on the arrangeent of the heavenly bodies would have been a problem.
After all I seem to conclude that the holocaust is real but how do I know? Only because that is what I have been told. Just like people were once told that the sun circled the earth. For both of wich I got no absolute proof. I don't even have proof WW2 really happened. Oh sure yeah there is a very big war cemetry were I grew up but who says they are real graves?
That is the problem with the "true" version of an event not directly experienced by you. You got to take somebody's word for it and somehow I am not that willing to take the word of someone unwilling to show his/hers full credentials. Wikipedia is usefull but only for totally non-discussable things like say looking up what that the name NASA is an acronym (forgot the word a while ago).
Speling police! (Score:2)
Assassination
n.
The act of assassinating; a killing by treacherous violence.
Assasination
n.
The act of writing a Wikipedia article with the purpose to insert the author into the topic falsely.
See, he's fine.
TOR / I2P (Score:2, Interesting)
1) use TOR,
2) use I2P,
3) use an open/free Wifi area (without camera mind you), or
4) in the works of Lawerence Lessig (if any of you went to law school): "use a pay phone." (and yes this is possible if you have some old school gear and the patience to wait on the modem)
While allowing accountability (IP request w/o subpoenas) would catch the ma
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
but we'll probably never know... (Score:3, Informative)
I am Mr. Cyber-Sleuth (Score:5, Informative)
I am no genius. There was one chance in 10,000 that there would be a server on that IP address, and that it would be up when I tried it on impulse (it timed out during nightime hours during all of last week).
Mr. Seigenthaler is very gracious in complimenting me, but I am no genius. Anyone who knows the difference between an IP address and a hot-dog with mustard could have done the same thing. That includes dozens, or maybe hundreds, of Wikipedians. But they didn't bother now, did they?
It was a pleasure to work with Mr. Seigenthaler on this trace. He is an amazing, accomplished person, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. Before his Wikipedia story came out, I wasn't aware of him.
He's the genius, although it is true that I know more about Internet infrastructure than he does. But I know nothing that would impress all the clever Slashdotters reading this, I'm sure.
Re:I am Mr. Cyber-Sleuth (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly - if you didn't have an axe to grind with Google, and then Wikipedia... would you have even bothered to do this?
Re:I am Mr. Cyber-Sleuth (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, interesting fellow... more nuggets here [google-watch-watch.org] and here [counterpunch.org] and here [outer-court.com]...
The google-watch-watch one has a good quote from a Salon article:
This also adds a little interesting twist to his disdain for wikipedia...
Re:I am Mr. Cyber-Sleuth (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that what Mr. Chase did is defendable. It's not. However, all things considered, it wasn't that big of a deal; you found Mr. Chase out, caused him to have enough inner conflict to apologize to Mr. Seigenthaler in person (not to mention resign from his job), and scored a point for your anti-defamation campaign. So far, so good.
But wait! I thought you were a champion of privacy!
I'm noticing a rather disturbing trend here. On your wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html page, you list several people (myself included; I'm sure you'll add another juicy tidbit to my section) which you want to get personal information (such as home addresses, age, schools, information about offspring, etc.) about. You also list several quotes which, if taken out of context, seem to be rather hostile towards you. However, those comments are in fact blatantly out of context. Additionally, when you yourself were an editor on Wikipedia, your contribution page (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contribution
I think you're the most dedicated hypocritical crackpot that the Internet has ever seen. I don't see your above post as "modest"; in fact, I find it quite disgusting. It's just *dripping* with brownnose comments ("It was a pleasure to work with Mr. Seigenthaler on this trace. He is an amazing, accomplished person, and I have a huge amount of respect for him." "He's the genius." "...all the clever Slashdotters...").
Guess what, Daniel! The world doesn't revolve around you, and your self-righteous crusade against Wikipedia is misguided at best.
Re:Uhm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uhm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Uhm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Uhm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a recording of a slander slander or libel?
Is a public reading of a libel libel or slander?
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Informative)
The irony is delicious (Score:5, Informative)
You crack me up, dude.
Slander
1 : the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation
2 : a false and defamatory oral statement about a person -- compare libel
-slan£der£ous \-d(-)rs\ adjective
-slan£der£ous£ly adverb
-slan£der£ous£ness noun
(from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)
Perhaps you meant libel?
Again from Merriams...
Main Entry: 1li£bel
Pronunciation: l-bl
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, written declaration, from Middle French, from Latin libellus, diminutive of liber book
Date: 14th century
Libel
1 a : a written statement in which a plaintiff in certain courts sets forth the cause of action or the relief sought b archaic : a handbill especially attacking or defaming someone
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression b(1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2) : defamation of a person by written or representational means (3) : the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures (4) : the act, tort, or crime of publishing such a libel
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Informative)
"TREATMENT OF PUBLISHER OR SPEAKER. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. "
Basically the act said the authors or the ISP (Wikipedia or Wikipedia's ISP) are not liable for any libel information which may be posted since they are not actual publishers or speakers in per se.
So to answer your question, it
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Informative)
It says that Wikipedia can't be held liable for the libel provided by one of the submitters. It does not provide protection for the person who authored the article.
Also, if you read the act itself, it's designed to control obscenity and pr0nography, libel is never mentioned in the act.
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't "any information" an unusual way to spell "obscenity and pornography"?
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Informative)
The CDA provides an ISP a limited "common carrier" defense against state and federal criminal prosecution for harassment, distribution of pornography to minors, etc. It does not protect the original publisher of the libel.
Re:Big deal? (Score:2)
But the thing this time was a bit different as the page in question was not linked from anywhere else, thus it was not spotted and fixed by anyone else until the stink arose.
Good and Bad for wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Try it (Score:3, Interesting)
All from my car while waiting at the local MacDonalds drive-thru.
How exactly is anyone going to hold me accountable for what I say online?
We've recently issued free personal printing presses and the potential for efficient, unlimited redistribution to the popu
Re:Try it (Score:2)
Thank you for proving my point. If there's abuse from the DSL, it's the providers responsibility to shut it off or take action. If you sent 10 million pieces of spam through the DSL IP, and the provider disconnected them for violation of their AUP, it's sorta a little bit of incentive not to run an open wireless access point, isn't it?
If I worke
Re:Try it (Score:2)
I think there are too many WAPs out there already. If you want to do something anonymously, and you don't care about the fate of the customer whose free wap you're using, you can go ahead and do it.
As we move towards community wireless mesh networks, traceability will become even harder. There'll be an incentive to run an open access point, because everyone in the community depends on others to do the same thing.
Re:Try it (Score:2)
Re:Try it (Score:2)
There are some other ridiculous felonious crimes we have in the US such as allowing certain forbidden plants and fungi to grow in your backyard.
That doesn't make them morally wrong.
Last I checked you can change your mac address whenever you like. And if there is no possible way to track down the perpetrator of such a felony then there's really no way to punish the person who
Re:Umm wha? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia not credible... (Score:2)
Re:There are two "asses" in "assassin" (Score:2)
Re:Wkipedia: The Information Fascists (Score:3, Insightful)
That's called bias, and Wikipedia, at least in some areas, reflects certain biases rather badly.
However, as someone else pointed out, it shouldn't be anyone's final source of truth, but rather a starting point. It