UK Judge Orders Wikipedia To Reveal User's Identity 260
BoxRec writes with this excerpt from The Daily Mail: "A mother trying to identify a blackmailer who posted 'sensitive' details about her child on Wikipedia has won the right to find out who edited her entry. In the first case of its kind, a High Court judge has ordered the online encyclopedia's parent company to disclose the IP address of one of its registered users."
Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing.
Because I don't want you to know who I am.
Re:Privacy doesn't exsit on the web (Score:5, Insightful)
*sigh* (Score:3, Informative)
If only I read followup headline that said 'wikipedia tell UK to blow it out their ass,' today would end as a good day. Then wikipedia gets removed from the UK and pissed-off protesters would show the government that they are sick of trading in protection for their freedoms. It would then be followed by a spectacular event of pink clouds precipitating candy and rainbows that we can use as space elevators. Finally, all UK politicians would simultaneously get a hearts attack, become resuscitated, then get ano
Re:Privacy doesn't exsit on the web (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, more to the point, why should privacy exist on wikipedia, especially when the page topic is another person.
Its not wikileaks after all.
How can reliability of information be achieved without accountability?
Yes, I fully understand the theory that crowd sourcing will eventually get it right, but when there is no crowd involved, and there are simply a couple of individuals talking trash there can be no expectation that the content will ever be believable.
Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
What if he/she used Tor?
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Then law enforcement will question whoever ran the TOR node, and will dig more ISP logs to find out more.
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it's unlikely that the ISPs have the detail and length of logs required to trace that. Just think of the mass of log files just 50 of their better bittorrent customers could generate in a month.
Re:Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
Then law enforcement will question whoever ran the TOR node
And what would that accomplish other than to waste their time?
Re:Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tor (Score:5, Informative)
Well IIRC Wikipedia had a policy not to let IPs of proxy servers and Tor IPs have editing abilities, but they cannot block all of them as not all of them are "known". I know because I tested it out one time and I was blocked from editing and had an error message that says Proxy/Tor IP addresses are blocked due to abuse. Now they may have lifted the block since then, but I think Wikipedia wants to know who is editing their articles so that a person cannot edit their own entry if they are notable enough to be listed and organizations cannot edit their own articles on their organization and many tried to get around that via proxy servers and Tor, and thus Wikipedia blocked those IPs from editing.
But I could be wrong, someone try it and see what happens.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Eh it was more the shear amount of generalised vandalism that was coming through TOR rather than conflict of interest issues.
Re:Tor (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually ALL of the TOR exit nodes are known. It is a known flaw of the TOR network.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot started not letting me post for a while because I ran a Tor node. It took a couple E-mails back and forth after I'd shut it down to be able to post on Slashdot again.
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Re:Tor (Score:4, Informative)
Tor exit nodes have a hostname that begins with tor-exit - and Wikipedia blocks on that. Most open proxies can feasibly be detected.
Re:Tor (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget TOR. What if he used a library, coffee shop, rest stop, or other access point?
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Then the individual is much less likely to be identified from the IP. What a pointless question.
Re:Tor (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if it's in the UK then there are probably 4 or 5 different CCTV tapes of everyone using that access point.
Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
So, someone anonymously leaks information about shady financial dealing by a businesswoman, and then sends a letter indicating that the press was notified of these dealings. Apparently no request for payoff has been made. Sounds like a whistle blower not a blackmailer.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
She also received anonymous threatening letters suggesting her accuser would reveal information to the press.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232901/Wikipedia-ordered-reveal-identity-editor-accused-blackmailing-mother-child.html#ixzz0Yfq9nBa3 [dailymail.co.uk]
Doesn't that depend on what was in the letters? If he's demanding something and threatening to reveal it if not, that's blackmail... especially if the supposed "information" is not true.
According to the article, we don't know what the information was or whether it was true or not (emphasis mine).
The amendments made to the woman's entry involved information about her professional expenses claims and details about her child which the judge did not reveal. She has also received two anonymous letters - although it was not possible to say if these were from the same person who altered the website.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232901/Wikipedia-ordered-reveal-identity-editor-accused-blackmailing-mother-child.html#ixzz0Yfqcw5Yk [dailymail.co.uk]
It does say it involved expense claims, but that isn't proven to be true or false either... so you're believing someone that has presumably sent threatening letters over the businesswoman. She denies the wrongdoing, by the way.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe so, but when all of the details are secret we just have to trust the judge who says that according to what he's seen the woman has probable cause to suspect blackmail. This is part of the reason why anonymous internet contributors like ourselves do not take the place of an actual judge in an actual courtroom, so it makes it seem sort of stupid to sit here and second-guess the judge.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's breathtakingly stupid. If it worked that way, it would mean that it would not be possible to take any confidential matter to court.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that argument is that how much you mind something being made public has little relation to it's importance.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so in a case where, for example, someone breaks into somebody's house and rapes their 8-year old daughter, you want to see the victim's name, the defendant's name, the family's name and address, the method the defendant used to enter the house, a description of the valuables that were stored in the hours, etc, all in the public record. You want to be able to look up a record online and see that an 8-year-old girl whose name and address are given was forced to undergo a series of described sexual acts, and then you want to see her address too, and a list of stuff her parents keep in the house.
There's a reason some things are confidential. When you're making your brilliant laws online, even though "think of the children" is a cliche, you need to consider the most vulnerable people.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure that'll show those damn blackmailers, "If you go to the Police, they'll force you to reveal to the public the information I'm blackmailing you over! Muhaha!"
Whistle blowers don't involve people's children. (Score:3, Insightful)
No excuse. None.
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Nonsense. When the whistleblower is exposing incest or certain types of child abuse, the whistleblower automatically reveals the names of children involved by revealing the abuser. And sometimes a whistleblower or anonymously protected exposition is necessary because the guilty person cannot or will not be pursued by law enforcement, as occurred with the Catholic priests finally convicted of child harassment in the strange cases that led to Cardinal Bernard Law being taken off the short list for the next Po
it's not whistleblowing, its blackmail (Score:5, Informative)
whistleblowing is when you go to the press and release info of a criminal nature. blackmailing is when you send letters to the target with a threat to release the info, whether of a criminal nature or just a private, sensitive nature
please report to the nearest droid maintenance facility and have your moral circuitry checked out, thanks
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Re:it's not whistleblowing, its blackmail (Score:5, Interesting)
Blackmail is a crime because if blackmail were not a crime people would be more likely to engage in self-help to rid themselves of the blackmailer. Such self-help could manifest itself in socially destructive ways.
Blackmail is just a variant of extortion, anyway. Surely nobody would doubt that protection rackets are rightfully criminal. Threatening to hurt somebody financially if money is not paid is only a matter of degree less awful than threatening to kick somebody's ass in exchange for money.
Blackmail also is a good way to extort people into doing very undesirable things (like espionage, embezzlement, corrupt political behavior, for example).
Extortion is one more example why free speech must be limited. Words can hurt!
Only a screwed-up unworkable society could ever have unrestrained free speech. One of the best measures of a free society is the care taken to draw equitable lines between unpermitted speech and free speech.
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Hey, leave the US out of this.
remedial intellectual charity: (Score:3, Insightful)
if i shout fire in a crowded theatre, and this leads to someone's death, than i am criminally culpable
yet according to you, this is protected free speech
no: there genuinely exists in this world, simply as a result of clear logical consequence, that some speech must be disallowed for the sake of justice in this world. the "fire" in a crowded theatre example is merely one of a million such scenarios where free speech is genuinely and intractably incompatible with the concept of justice
your problem is that you
Re:remedial intellectual charity: (Score:4, Interesting)
Forgive me because I'm not even an american citizen but it seems that this is an inflated example. If you shout "fire" in your own home, that is not a criminal act. If you shout it in the middle of the town square that is not a criminal act. If you shout it in a crowded theatre that is not a criminal act. (you could do it on stage, as part of the show). If you shout it in the middle of the audience it is not strictly a criminal act either - it could be that you are at a show with audience participation and two clowns are on stage with blunderbusses asking what to do. What would be criminal about such actions is that little thing "Incitement to Riot" and that is not related to the contents or location of your speech, but has everything to do with your intention to cause a riot.
In a similar vein, pushing an electrical switch is not a criminal act. Millions of people do it all the time, but perhaps pushing a switch that you know will cause a riot (eg, set off the fire alarm in a crowded theatre) is criminal because of that same reason "Incitement to Riot" and no restrictions need be placed on your button pushing abilities to prosecute you for it.
Of course, as a non-american I don't know if "Incitement to Riot" is actually a prosecutable offence. It is fairly obvious that it is no good reason to riot, and neither is it a good excuse. I don't know, in a theatre riot situation, if the person who pushes another to their death over the balcony in a blind panic is excused in favour of the person who started rioting, or the person who incited the riot. For a car analogy, if there was a situation where several cars were driving slowly or stopped but one ploughed into the back at high speed, causing a bump forward effect that damaged all the cars and the guy at the front was unlucky enough to get whiplash injuries, who is liable for them? The guy behind who had no control, the guy at the back who didn't put on his hazard warning lights or the guy who was driving too fast while not paying attention?
dude (Score:3, Insightful)
there are exceptions to every concept
such as to free speech by shouting fire in a theatre resulting in death WHEN THERE ISN'T A FIRE
now that i've tacked on the braindead fucking obvious qualifier, without which you think you are allowed to smugly weasel out of examining your free speech fundamentalism, i suggest you finally examine how you have failed in creating a logically coherent set of "principles"
yes, you are "principled"
pfft
assholes who consciously defy self-examination of their own failures usually
Re:it's not whistleblowing, its blackmail (Score:5, Insightful)
All the details are secret; we can not know whether or not there was indeed any blackmail involved, other than the words of a woman and a judge. I myself do not feel that blackmail is a crime, in any case. Immoral, perhaps, but certainly not something to go to court over.
Interesting. So, say you or your significant other happens to have a STD, say, herpes. And let's supposed that it was contracted in a manner that you don't want to made public. Certainly not to your children or in-laws. This is something that you and your significant other manage pretty well within the privacy of your life.
And say that, I, somehow, legally or not, get a copy of your medical records which include by your own account with luxury of details how the STD got acquired in the first place. And then I send you a photocopy of it with a letter telling you that if you don't wire $10K (or whatever amount you feel like for the sake of argument) I will make that letter document available to your in-laws, your co-workers, your church and your kids.
Blackmail. Now, not finding blackmail in general criminal, or thinking that is criminal only in extreme cases (like the hypothetical one presented here), that will either be immensely idiotic or disturbingly wrong on so many levels that it is horrible to contemplate.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a lot of people don't RTFA, but is it to much to ask that you at least read the Slashdot summary?
Streisand effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed - the edit was apparently made to the woman's entry, so come on - can anyone tell us what the article was? And we should be able to see the actual edit itself in the history, unless that gets tampered with...
To be honest I think my view on this depends on what we're talking about - is it blackmail about either false or private details? Or is it a whistleblower case?
On another note, it's sad how every story covering this (well, the Mail, the Telegraph) likes to bash Wikipedia with other example mistak
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an anyone tell us what the article was?
Her name has not been released and is being kept secret. You should read the article :)
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Doh. Accusation refuted and withdrawn.
Good point, but it does appear to be kept pretty secret, anyways. Not even any speculation from the DailyMail.
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And we should be able to see the actual edit itself in the history, unless that gets tampered with...
Which is very easy to do. MediaWiki (the wiki software Wikipedia runs) has a feature that allows privileged users to hide the contents of edits from a page's history.
Re:Streisand effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly a case of the consolidated media industry fighting off new technology startup that could shine a light on all their misdeeds
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Indeed - the edit was apparently made to the woman's entry, so come on - can anyone tell us what the article was? And we should be able to see the actual edit itself in the history, unless that gets tampered with...
To be honest I think my view on this depends on what we're talking about - is it blackmail about either false or private details? Or is it a whistleblower case?
On another note, it's sad how every story covering this (well, the Mail, the Telegraph) likes to bash Wikipedia with other example mistaken edits. But how much false information has been published by these same newspapers? At least with Wikipedia, it's often quickly reverted (and in most cases they wouldn't even know if it wasn't possible to go trawling through the history), yet newspapers often never retract their bullshit.
Wikimedia's legal team can - and do - revert entries and leave no history entry. They can (and do) also perma-delete some entries.
I'm shocked and amazed. (Score:5, Funny)
Not by the court's order, but that the Daily Mail actually published a decent, non-sensationalistic article.
Re:I'm shocked and amazed. (Score:5, Funny)
If you think that's weird, check out the comments - they're fairly sensible. I think they must have a problem with their server.
Jurisdiction? (Score:2)
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:4, Informative)
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The servers are in Florida.
But that doesn't exclude the possibility that the Wikipedia or its managers may have a significant legal presence and exposure elsewhere.
The Wikipedia database is stored on a server in the State of Florida in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal law.
Jurisdiction and legality of content [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. In this case. Why in this case? Because a JUDGE has decided that this is a case of blackmail. And while I know no judge is infallible, they are human after all and the evidence presented may be incomplete or incorrect, I do generally trust their qualities. And if a judge says it's a case of blackmail then I would consider it a case of blackmail until proven otherwise.
So even though that judge may be in the UK and WP in the USA it would be nice for them to comply with the request and reveal the IP address from which the edit was done. After that it's again up to law enforcement to figure out who actually did it. Whether the information is enough is another matter, at least WP did what they could and should do.
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:4, Insightful)
BLACKMAIL.
Repeat it with me, BLACKMAIL.
This isn't about "Oh! Johny said I was a lousy bint on Wikipedia!" it was about someone threatening someone and their child with public humiliation if they didn't give into whatever demands were made.If you can't say BLACKMAIL, then try EXTORTION, either way regardless of the medium being used, it's illegal.
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, WP should act ethically as it did in this instance [slashdot.org]. I don't know about your ethics but mine says that I should not knowingly assist blackmailers and kidnappers.
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Regardless of ethics they should not allow their platform to be used by people to intentionally spread (allegedly) false information or to allow information tainted by an obvious bias so it's in their best interest to allow investigation into its source.
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The order can't be enforced, as the Wiki Foundation is based in Florida. However, if you RTFA it says the Wiki Foundation has already caved in and agreed to reveal the IP address.
Which is great news for anyone in somewhere like China "anonymously" editing Wikipedia. Doing so could easily cost you your life if it's The Wiki Foundation's whim to expose you to your Government that day.
There's at least some possibility that th
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A whistle blower is someone who alerts the media or authorities to wrong doing, by coming forward with evidence of this wrong doing.
A blackmailer is someone who alerts a victim that they have evidence of either wrong doing or simply humiliating facts and will go to the media or authorities if steps aren't taken by the victim.
Our "Mr. X" updated a Wikipedia article with possibly true information concerning our woman's expense reports and her child. They then sent two letters which implied they had more infor
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That's why I love Wikileaks, at least so far. They actually protect their sources. And they do seem to show some discretion about what they publish, which helps prevent blackmail abuse. I was vastly amused when they published various manuals on operations at Guantanamo Bay.
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:5, Informative)
# In reply, lawyers for the Respondent made a number of preliminary observations. First they addressed the request made on behalf of the Applicants that the amendment be deleted. They stated that the Respondent is not the publisher or writer of the article relating to the mother, or of the amendment. They said they would refer the request for the deletion of the archived version of the amendment to "the community of volunteer editors, one or more of whom may attempt to address your concerns". They referred to the immunity they claim under section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act (1996) from most civil liability for content they did not originate or develop. They stated that the Respondent does not conduct operations within the jurisdiction of this court. Nevertheless, they stated that they were happy to forward the Applicants' request to their volunteer community.
# The amendment was removed promptly following the request made on behalf of the Applicants.
# In their letter of 19 November lawyers for the Respondent next addressed the Applicants' request for the IP information. They stated that it is the policy of the Respondent that such data be released in response to a valid sub poena or equivalent compulsory legal process. They added:
"Without waiving our insistence that no court in the United Kingdom has proper jurisdiction over us as a foreign entity, we nevertheless are willing to comply with a properly issued court order narrowly limited to the material you ask for in your letter".
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html [bailii.org]
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Wikipedia is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is based in the U.S, so I believe that they are bound by U.S law.
and the US probably has a mutual legal assistance treaty with the UK, including whatever local legal framework is necessary to give such treaties effect. Which means if wikipedia refused to comply then a letter can be sent over to a DA or somebody responsible for this stuff in the US with a copy of the court order and that would be obligated by the treaty to go to a US court and request a subpoena which the court would be obligated to enforce pursuant to the treaty. if wiki then refused to comply it would
Somebody had to add it (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Caught? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do people get tripped up on this stuff? If you are going to post something you KNOW you shouldn't post, use a proxy from a country like China or Russia. Then China gets the blame, and you stay hidden. Com'on. This isn't that hard.
Sadly, stuff you shouldn't post can include stuff you should post, but powerful people don't want you to post.
Re:Caught? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Caught? (Score:4, Funny)
Heh, something tells me that Chinese proxies wouldn't work well for editing Wikipedia. :(
Sure they would. Just depends on the edit that you are making ;) I always use Chinese proxies when I edit this [wikipedia.org] article to reflect the truth that the events mentioned therein are nothing more than Western propaganda ;)
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If she's smart she'll ask for every IP/timestamp he ever edited under.
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Mental harm != non gratis (Score:2, Interesting)
mental harm is your own problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think slave holders were not offended by being called murderers and inhuman? Do you think Catholics were not deeply disturbed by Protestants calling the Catholic hierarchy illegitimate and corrupt? The right to offend is an essential part of free speech rights.
In a democracy, you have a right to be protected form libel and criminal blackmail. You don't have a right to be protected from "mental harm" resulting from speech you find disturbing.
Re:mental harm is your own problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the terms are:
Emotional Abuse
Psychological Abuse
Harassment
Sure someone has the right to insult, offend, or just plain state an opinion on someone else or a group, but if it leads to emotional abuse, psychological abuse, or harassment then a civil court can take the case. For the abuse, not the words that caused the abuse.
In this case there was a child involved and had his/her real information posted to Wikipedia, which might have lead to the child suffering abuse in some form. Usually most judges consider when someone posts someone else's real personal information on a web site without their consent that it is harassment. Usually real name, address, phone number, SSN, etc, which can lead someone else to steal their identity then the poster of that information is usually found guilty of harassment, especially if other people use the info to harass the person it was posted about.
Even if there is a freedom of speech and right to insult and opinions, there can still be abuse in some form and a civil case, but it has to be proven that abuse happened and the person or their children suffered for it.
This could be blackmail, it could be harassment, it could be abuse, or it could be a whistleblower if it was true. It could also be all of the above. Sometimes blackmailers use true info to blackmail someone like embarrassing photos, or expense accounts that wrote off non-business expenses, sexual orientation, or something else. But the question is, even if the information was true, is it still blackmail? That is for a court to decide.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it IS because it causes social harm. You already have a right to be offended, you do not have the right to demand someone else pay for YOUR sensitivities (thank you Larry Flynt [wikipedia.org]).
slashhordes: (Score:3, Insightful)
blackmail is blackmail is blackmail
whatever you think of your rights online, criminal activity renders some of your rights null and void
of course you have rights in a free society: as long as you also abide by your responsibilities. this is true of actual, flawed societies that are not entirely free, and also true of any hypothetical societies you can imagine that function perfectly: when you break your responsibilities you have in a free society, you have abdicated your rights. do you honestly think there is any way around that fact? a society of individuals who do not abide by their responsibilities is by direct consequence a society with few rights as well
the government is a side issue: most of your rights are violated in this world by your fellow citizens, not the government. of course the government also violates your rights. in a society trying to improve itself, this is revealed, discussed, and punished. just like individuals who violate your rights deserve to be punished. sorry, they don't deserve to be punished, they MUST be punished to show there is genuine consequences for abdication of responsibility in this world. without such enforcement, there's no reason to respect anyone's rights, whether by government, or a fellow citizen
to most of you, the previous paragraph is eye-glazingly obvious
however, i feel the need to say it, because underneath this story we will see a lot of howling of the government violating people's rights. when the fact is, if you blackmail someone, you HAVE to have your rights violated, for the sake of a functioning free society, actual or theoretical
we see a lot of complaints on these forums and in general about rights. what we don't see much discussion is one about responsibilities. please do your small part and keep that in mind: for every right you claim, you are also taking on an implied responsibility you must keep if you wish to maintain the rights you cherish
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I wonder if wikipedia should just publish the IP address of edits by default in the revision history. That way it would be clearer to people who need privacy that they should take steps to hide their identity.
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And what if it isn't blackmail? We have one person asserting something and demanding information. We don't have a DA filing charges and issuing a warrant. We have what may be the beginings of a civil suit, but nothing criminal that I see. In fact, the order is to identify the person so that the woman offended can "identify" that person, and not because of any court action against the unidentified person.
As far as the court is concerned, there is no search for the
Re:slashhordes: (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably "some woman" would be charged with falsifying evidence. You and I do not have the ability to accurately judge the claim for ouselves because we are operating in an information vacum. You are ignoring the fact a judge has read the letter and we haven't. Their job is to judge the claims of "some woman", hence the name judge.
If there was any blackmail, there is not any current legal action regarding it.
Well duh, who are the going to charge, 'anonomous of no fixed IP'?
Re:slashhordes: (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have a DA filing charges and issuing a warrant.
No, because this is the British High Court of Justice, which deal with important and high profile cases. The judge is a senior one with many years of experience, and he issues a court order instead of a warrant. She requested the editor's IP from wikipedia; wikipedia refused, but said "Without waiving our insistence that no court in the United Kingdom has proper jurisdiction over us as a foreign entity, we nevertheless are willing to comply with a properly issued court order narrowly limited to the material you ask for in your letter".
So she's gone to the High Court to get the information, on the basis that the user who posted the article has a case to answer for, and the Judge agreed. If he didn't think there was a case to answer for, he wouldn't have issued the order. Whether that ends up being a civil case or a criminal case handled by the CPS likely depends upon who that IP belongs to. She believes it will belong to someone to she already has a dispute with, and if so (presuming she gets another court order for the ISP to hand over subscriber details for that IP) then there's quite possibly enough evidence there for the CPS to become interested, and the judge does think there's enough evidence for a blackmail prosecution.
But on the larger point - are you saying that a civil case appellant should never be able to gain user information from a 3rd party on the basis that that user has a case to answer for? Because that's an awfully restrictive setup, where only criminal proceedings can gather information from 3rd parties.
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Well said, the way some people go on about rights and free speech on slashdot, you'd think everyone had some God-given right to act entirely without thought of the consequences, or fear of any comeback on their actions.
IP address released - oh my (Score:3, Insightful)
So they have the ip address. Big whoop. It doesn't reveal WHO posted, just the modem that was used.
Could have been a wifi user out at the street corner, a virus.. someone broke into the home and posted.. An IP in a vacuum isn't evidence.. its a suggestion..
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However, if the IP address goes back to an already suspected person, who has special interest in the situation, it will be hard for THEM to argue it was some random spammer controlling their computer with a zombie bot.
Do you believe everything someone tells you? (Score:2)
Excuse me for asking the question nobody seems to be asking: How do we actually know she's being blackmailed?
1) Person says something about you don't like
2)Claim they're blackmailing you
3)Judge orders person's identity revealed
4)Lawsuit
5)Profit! (And jail time for the accused Blackmailer)
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Good article on this at the Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/03/wikipedia_blackmail_case_disclosure/ [theregister.co.uk]
According to The Register article, Wikipedia WILL release the IP address when presented with an order by the court.
There appears to be some kind of business dispute behind all of this: "One of G's companies is in dispute with a person whom she believes is also behind a smear campaign against her. An anonymous letter she received appeared to be a threat to claim that her expenses claims amounted
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You missed 2.5) Judge looks at the post and all the other evidence offered by the plaintiff and decides if there is sufficient likelihood that the plaintiff would prevail to justify ordering the identity to be revealed.
What about judges in other countries? (Score:2)
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be legal oversight. The problem is which is the authority?
When are we going to have the first incident of someone paying off a third world judge to obtain private information?
Where is the Switzerland of the internet?
WARNING - DAILY FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
This news article was taken from the Daily Mail, a far-right tabloid newspaper which contains more foaming-at-the-mouth madness than a month of Fox News. This story was in all probability sandwiched between an article about how the eeevil not-quite-as-right-wing government are spending *your* taxes on a Christian Vegan Lesbian Holistic Nicaraguan Islamic Learning-impaired Whale-Yoga Ashram, and how the Fish-People really run the BBC which is why they showed eeeevil Nick Griffin and not an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.
Believe pretty much any article you read on Wikipedia before you believe the Daily Mail.
Re:WARNING - DAILY FAIL (Score:4, Funny)
God knows why they're using a distorted aspect-ratio video screen cap for Mr Cable thou down the bottom.....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the comments said something to the effect of "I smell a scam, I just can't put my finger on it".
I think it's simple enough:
1) vandalize your own Wikipidia page ...
2) scream "blackmail"
3) blame someone with deep pockets or that you have a grudge against
4)
5) profit!!
Re:WARNING - DAILY FAIL (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it does. The BNP have been trying to clean up their image lately; they try not to say anything explicitly racist, at least not in public. They're just concerned about uncontrolled immigration, you know? Oh, and Islam isn't a race so hating Muslims isn't racism. They sound uncannily like a Daily Mail opinion column.
Mind you, you can't call the Mail inconsistent on this; they've been concerned about uncontrolled immigration for decades. Like in 1938, when they were quite outraged about all the stateless Jews from Germany pouring in from every port.
Crossing Borders (Score:2)
Does this court feel that the individual who committed the offense lives within their jurisdiction? Or does this court feel that it has the right to extend its grasp into other nations?
This treaty nonsense is an offense to liberties of free men around the world.
Re: (Score:2)
What would happen should Wikipedia hand over false information?
Why would they want to do this? It is not in their interest to protect people who use the encyclopedia as a blackmail tool. That is not part of their objectives.
If this was someone trying to suppress a legitimate entry (hyperthetical example: a certain B. Streisand forcing the removal of the Streisand Effect [wikipedia.org] page) then they might feel the need to be less than helpful.
And what of the person who owned the false IP address that was handed out. They might (and should) start suing Wikipedia for falsely accusing
Re:Wikipedia complies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps their image might be tarnished and people given the impression that they enjoy protecting blackmailers?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
well yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
someday, assuming a more nuanced social skillset, you might have a child
in which case, the irrational desire to protect that child from the various dangerous scenarios of adult life will be felt in your own mind. and it is an irrational desire. much like the irrational desire to feed. or the irrational desire to fornicate. in other words: not so rational from a point of view of principles and concepts, but very rational from the point of view of the preservation of and continuation of life: take care of you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever someone is sending threatening letter with or without a child involved it is blackmail. And everybody does have the right to display the writer of such letter. So this has nothing to do with 'think of the children'.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That would be pseudonymous not anonymous.