Ray Saintonge said:
If Mr. Wollmann thinks that he has a case let him
go ahead with it, and
show us that he means more than simply to intimidate. We can easily
promise that when we receive the court documents in the case we will
reconsider our position in the matter. This may or may not result in a
removal of what he finds offensive from the site. Meanwhile it will
have been very costly for him to mount his case with no prospects of
recovering those costs.
Well, Wikipedia probably wouldn't be vulnerable, but where individuals are
involved he could get a default judgement in a plaintiff-friendly UK court
for a no-show defendant in the US, with costs awarded (which is very
common in UK cases), and then use that as leverage in the US. This
technique has been tried against Usenet posters and worked well. Since
Wikipedia content is produced by individuals who are often identifiable it
would probably work as well on Wikipedia.
He may have to demonstrate standing to sue in UK courts, but that could be
as simple as selling books through Amazon.co.uk--which Wollmann does, as
it happens.
By the same token, why hasn't Wikipedia been sued by the Church of
Scientology for revealing its top secret information, which church
members can only access after a certain degree of financial support of
the church? Couldn't they sue Wikipedia for lost income?