Mayor of Florence Sues Wikipedia 196
ZioBit writes "Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici and one of the city assessors
are suing (Google translation) Wikipedia on the basis of a (possible) defamation regarding the handling of public parkings assignation to a private company, "Florence Parking". The apparent problem is that both of their wives are members of the board of directors of "Florence Parking", and Wikipedia is reporting it."
Re:Defense (Score:0, Interesting)
Just like Wikileaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I don't know the facts of this particular case. I'm just talking about a general trend.
Parking Corruption (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Parking Corruption (Score:3, Interesting)
Leonardo Domenici (born July 12, 1955) is an Italian politician. He has been the Mayor of Florence since June 13, 1999. Domenici was born in Florence, from where he graduated in moral philosophy Article [wikipedia.org]
Dude, there's an edit button (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be a bit simpler to click the edit button and change the perceived falsehoods in an encyclopedic manner?
I imagine one could even hire a geek to do it for quite a bit less than the price of hiring a lawyer, filing a lawsuit, then pursuing that suit.
Re:Defense (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So *who* are they actually suing? (Score:3, Interesting)
This was my thought too. While Italian law is certainly different and this may be a valid argument in Italian court, the hurdle here is twofold. First, prove that Wikipedia is itself at fault for the contents. Given the open source documentation license they use, I am not sure they could prove that. Second, they would need to get someone who is legally able to represent Wikipedia into Italian court.
For this to work, I believe they would need to convince a U.S. Federal court to extradite people to Italy, and given the merits of this case, I doubt that would happen.
Re:Defense (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because a stupid case established precedent, doesn't mean constitutional law, or statutory law doesn't trump it. Therefore, the only way to test these laws is to be brought to suit using them.
Re:Florence. where ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm happy that slashdot continues to have some sort of respect for the intellect of the reader. I'm pretty sure that everybody here made the mental connection to Italy, and if they didn't, they should be reading Geography 101 instead of slashdot. Espicially with the "Google Translate" link. And the original document in Italian.
Crafications such as 'London, England' are only necessary when it is likely that the reader could be confused. Hence there is no need to write 'Beijing, China', for example
The "dumbing down" of American media isn't really apparent until you compare similar publications from the US to their closest British counterparts. Compare Newsweek [newsweek.com] or Time Magazine [time.com] to The Economist [economist.com] or The New York Times [nytimes.com] to The Guardian [guardian.co.uk]. And this isn't just my opinion, it has been validated in studies of the matter.
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically, the tendency is that you're not supposed to sue Wikipedia; it's better to try solve the issue first through ordinary channels [wikipedia.org]. It's a procedure that's being used in a lot of subprojects too, due to practical reasons. I'm pretty sure they failed to follow this in this case...
However, it should be noted that some Wikimedia projects (Finnish Wikipedia, for example) do apply local laws in a very limited fashion. For example, as far as I know, Finnish Wikipedia it only applies to copyrights (the US Fair Use law isn't considered, but the basically equivalent law, the "right of quotation" in the Finnish copyright law, is used instead). I can almost imagine there would be similar rules in place in case of libel, but it's basically an user conduct issue and mostly handled through the above principle anyway. Besides all legal issues should be brought against Wikimedia Foundation anyway.
Re:Sue whom exactly. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about something like "Remove this vile calumny or we'll ..." :
1. Remove Wikipedia's DNS entry in Italy. (See recent Wikileaks problems.)
2. Publish (in Italy at least) routing information that redirects Wikipedia requests to a black hole. (See recent You Tube problems.)
I think the Mayor's goal may not include preventing random residents of (say) Nevada from reading about his (alleged) corruption (after all, what does he care about what someone in Vegas thinks?), but probably does include preventing people in Italy from doing the same.
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia's place? While Wikipedia as a bunch of servers may belong to the Wikimedia foundation, Wikipedia as content belongs to its readers and to its editors. The content provided by these people is what they agree (with whatever mechanisms) it is. No more, no less. The question is rather like those proposed by ./ readers who wonder if "Slashdot" is not being inconsistent when there are multiple, often contradictory, opinions offered - by slashdot users - on various topics (patents, copyright... ).
Re:Florence. where ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone know what's going on with Barbara Bauer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Defense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Added in about 20 mins time: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Defense (Score:2, Interesting)
The lie was used as a mean to attack the mayor, kind of guerrilla marketing (you should be familiar with all the false claims on Obama: it's about the same).
A guy in Florence, who tried to spread the false claim has already been sentenced for defamation.
The Slashdot post reports the Fact 1 as true. The guy who reported the story did not get it: incompetence or bad will ?
Re:Added in about 20 mins time: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think its spiteful behavior so much as the perceived value of a limited or (artificially) restricted commodity.
Anyone who wants can look at my back yard on Google Earth. Nothing there but weeds and a few cars up on cement blocks. But if I expend an inordinate amount of energy hiding it, then there must be something really interesting to see. At least that's the way most people's minds seem to work.