[Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

Tue Jul 4 17:50:22 UTC 2006

Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Under US Law, Wikimedia is the "publisher" because they create
>>"collections" of works of the
>>Wikipedia site and "publish" them to the world as XML dumps. Whether
>>electronic or in book form, they
>>are publishing. This being said, given the nebulous and undefined  
>>state
>>of internet IP law,
>>whether they are a publisher or not, there's no legal precedence to
>>determine liability, so at present
>>they are operating in an area of experimental law on the frontiers of
>>human knowledge.
>>
>>Jeff
>>    
>>
>
>Not exactly and now that you are a "publisher" too, let us discuss  
>the problem. Someone comes on your wiki and enters the information,  
>"John Doe murdered his wife, Jane". You don't notice it and after 6  
>months or so John Doe files a libel action. You might want to claim  
>that the anonymous ip who entered that information was the publisher,  
>not you. There is a variant where that edit was contained in an XML  
>dump that you did not notice. Meanwhile Wikipedia has deleted it  
>completely, even from the history of the article. This is all pretty  
>theoretical until there is significant distribution of a serious  
>libel, but I throw it out to think about. Now suppose you did notice  
>the information and rather than deleting it you just corrected the  
>grammar and spelling. Are you the publisher  now? And who is "you"?
>
>Fred
>  
>

I would be responsible for any copyright, trademark, or trade secret 
violations -- libel
too if I were mirroring the content. Section 230 would shield me to some 
extent, but these
laws are changing very soon based on what's going on in Congress.

How would I respond to a libel suit? Most people just want the libel 
removed, they are not interested
in drawn out litigation. They also have to serve proper notice, and I 
would remove libel immediately
if I received such notice. They could just file without serving notice, 
but as you are aware, the CDA
shields you if you have not received notice.

If someone wants to sue me in the end, bring it on. They will have to 
show malicious intent, and recklessness,
which is hard to do if I never received proper notice.

Jeff

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