Wikipedia Hoax Author Confesses

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."

Turnabout

[AndroidCat]

Here's his wiki entry [wikipedia.org].

Re:Uhm

[Doomstalk]

Get a dictionary and look up the word "slander".

Re:Cybersleuth, indeed

[Quinn_Inuit]

As a comment noted in the previous story on this hoax, the guy would've been less trace-able if he'd posted as ILURVCONSPIRACIES or something instead of being anonymous and allowing a visible IP.

Re:Uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, since its written and not spoken the word would be 'libel'

Re:Uhm

[Leiterfluid]

Actually, it might be considered libelous

The irony is delicious

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got to love a post where someone says to look up "slander", and they never actually looked up "slander".

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

[GamingFox]

Communications Decency Act of 1996 [cdt.org], in section 230 part C paragraph 1:

"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 is not illegal to post libel information on the internet.

Re:Uhm

[Leiterfluid]

Wrong again.
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:What tool did he use?

[fatboy]

I bet he did what I just did.

[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.

but we'll probably never know...

[bcrowell]

Now we know who wrote it. However, we'll probably never know whether anybody ever read it before Seigenthaler noticed it. If you look at the "what links here" [wikipedia.org] page for the Seigenthaler article, it looks like 100% of the list is articles that are now linked to it because of the controversy. During the time between the perpetration of the hoax and Seigenthaler publicizing of it, it's quite possible that the article wasn't linked to from anywhere in WP, and nobody had ever read it besides Seigenthaler. After all, he's a pretty obscure person in the greater scheme of things. If Seigenthaler had wanted to sue for libel, it would have been tough, because there's no evidence anyone ever read it. If I go in the closet and whisper to myself, "Seigenthaler shot Kennedy," it doesn't exactly qualify as slander. If the hoaxer had wanted people to read the hoax, he could have linked to it from the Kennedy article, for example. But then guess what? -- people would have corrected the hoax.

Re:Uhm

[westlake]

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

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.

I am Mr. Cyber-Sleuth

[Everyman]

There is a chronology of how it was traced at the bottom of this page [wikipedia-watch.org].

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:Uhm

[Angostura]

To answer all of your questions, those would be "libel".

Re:Well...

[doubledoh]

The difference between Wikipedia and say, The New York Times is that the writers of the New York Times are PAID to write accurately. If they fail to perform their duties (write "truth" that can be confirmed), then they will be fired and possibly shunned from the journalism industry. Thusly, there is a motivation to write as much truth as possible to avoid negative financial consequences or a coerced career change. There are no such consequences on Wikipedia which is why its writers are more nonchalant and sometimes intentionally innacurate.

So, a "reliable" publisher is one that controls its writers to a degree with positive or negative consequences.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true. That's why Wikipedia has strict policies on Verifiability [wikipedia.org] and No original research [wikipedia.org].

Re:stop making fun of wikipedia.

[Gregory Rider]

Wikipedia routinely blocks open proxies, and recently they've began blocking anyone using Tor [wikipedia.org] onion routing. Evil doers can, however, edit Wikipedia with impunity from the largest proxy in the world, America Online [aol.com]; Wikipedia admins are not allowed to block [wikipedia.org] an AOL IP address any longer than 15 minutes, to prevent "collateral damage".