[Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project

Thu Oct 14 02:22:09 UTC 2004

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Being judgement proof is not an option, what will happen is that they will
>seize the servers and domain names and hold them hostage til we raise the
>money to pay.
>  
>
What I'm trying to illustrate is that in a civil action for damages, by 
the time a substantial judgment is issued, Wikimedia as a legal entity 
would be effectively dead anyway. Thanks to the copyleft licensing, the 
content would already have moved to the fork that would undoubtedly 
start, and many of the contributors would follow. There wouldn't be much 
of anyone left to demand the ransom from, and in any case after a 
judgment you can seize assets but you can't generally require people to 
raise new funds. And given the choice, who will the public at large 
donate money to: the fork that is carrying on Wikimedia's work, or the 
original Wikimedia that has to turn over anything it receives to the 
plaintiff?

The actual seizure and "hostage-holding" hypothesized here would come at 
the very end of the litigation process. It would be like picking up the 
pieces of a corpse, while the phoenix springs up again in another 
location. A painful experience to be sure, and one to be avoided if 
possible. But given that this result probably does not benefit either 
the plaintiff or the plaintiff's lawyer, it would take quite a 
combination of incompetence, malice, and irrationality, both on our part 
and theirs, to bring this nightmare scenario to pass. Publish a 
retraction if it turns out the plaintiff is right, and let them know 
that pursuing damages will not be lucrative.

I think seizure of property in the context of a criminal investigation 
would be a bigger concern, since this can happen prior to judgment and 
with little or no warning. In other words, the Indymedia situation. For 
that problem, the answer has less to do with financial resources and 
corporation shell games, and lies more with careful fact-checking and 
pre-publication review.

--Michael Snow