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Daniel Brandt |
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#1
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Postmaster ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Regulars Posts: 2,473 Joined: Member No.: 77 ![]() |
slimvirgin AT gmail.com
cc: info AT wikimedia.org December 24, 2006 Dear Sarah: I am looking for a Florida-based attorney to negotiate with the Wikimedia Foundation to take down my biography. If this fails, I plan to file an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the Foundation. Considering the fact that all the Talk pages are also made available to the search engines, I may include a defamation-of-character complaint in the suit. My main interest in litigation is to establish in a Florida court that Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act does not provide immunity to the Foundation, due to the fact that the Foundation's entire structure is designed to moderate the content on Wikipedia. I will argue that because of this, the Foundation functions as a publisher rather than a service provider. Only service providers are immune under Section 230. I appreciate the fact that you supported my request to delete the article in October 2005, after we worked on it for a week and were unable to reach agreement. You warned me that you lacked the power to make the deletion stick, if some other administrators disagreed. This is exactly what happened. I also appreciate your support of Linuxbeak's effort in December 2005 to move the content into other relevant articles on Wikipedia, so that most of the content would still exist, but not be featured in one Wikipedia article under my name. This effort was one that Linuxbeak and I agreed to at the time, but which failed due to a lack of support. I deleted hivemind.html as Linuxbeak made his effort, but then restored it when his effort failed. As you can see, the hivemind.html page is much larger now and also has small photos of most of the perpetrators. The last meaningful AfD on my bio was concluded on April 9, 2006. Now I am asking you to initiate another AfD. This is something only a major administrator can do, because minor administrators will intervene on the grounds of "Speedy Keep." I believe that one last meaningful AfD for my biography is warranted before this issue escalates further, and I hope you agree with me. If the article gets deleted, I will take down the hivemind.html page on www.wikipedia-watch.org (but not the hive2.html page), and will also take down the findchat.html page, the 1,545 chat log files that are linked from there, and the chat search engine. Thank you, Daniel Brandt |
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JohnA |
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#2
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Looking over Winston Smith's shoulder ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Regulars Posts: 1,171 Joined: Member No.: 313 ![]() |
QUOTE As far as Section 230 goes, there is a good article that was just posted on Wikitruth. It's about Section 2257 record-keeping requirements for porn, but the situation with defamation and invasion-of-privacy and Section 230 is similar. In both cases, any evidence that Wikimedia Foundation is designed to, or in a position to, moderate content, and is aware of content that has legal implications, argues against the Foundation's presumption that it is a mere uninvolved service provider. Any competent lawyer would then look at the actions under WP:OFFICE and ask rhetorically: if the Foundation is merely an uninvolved service provider then why does an employee (Danny Wool) have God-like powers to delete content (and use them)? The evidence that the Foundation is actively involved in defending itself against possible legal action by actively editing the Encyclopedia demonstrates that it acknowledges its culpability to charges of libel or slander. I'm sure that the Foundation would be found liable for the content it publishes. I'm not sure that Daniel Brandt would benefit financially very much, largely because it would seem incongruous to a jury for a "privacy advocate" to devote so much energy to take away the privacy of Wikipedia's admins. Can I invest in your lawsuit too? If I pony of say X% of your legal fees can I collect X% of your winnings? Just joking, such arrangements are probably not legal. Actually, this is known as "champerty" - and the trend is actually away from localities prohibiting private financing of lawsuits, and towards allowing it, at least on a limited basis. Here's a semi-interesting article about it: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/Septemb...ok_sepoct04.msp The law is also much less strict when it comes to non-private financing. If you felt it was worth the risk, you could theoretically set up your own litigation finance company to handle specific kinds of cases, such as Section 230 cases, and it would all be perfectly legal in just about every US state, AFAIK. But as a business, you'd have some liability issues to deal with, needless to say. Champerty is totally illegal in the UK, and an MP (Jonathan Aitken) had a legal case against him dismissed because of champerty. Aitken eventually got caught telling lies when he sued The Guardian for libel and got jailed for perjery. |
guy |
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#3
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Postmaster General ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Inactive Posts: 4,294 Joined: From: London Member No.: 23 ![]() |
I'm not sure that Daniel Brandt would benefit financially very much, largely because it would seem incongruous to a jury for a "privacy advocate" to devote so much energy to take away the privacy of Wikipedia's admins. But Daniel Brandt will swear on oath that he is not and never has been a "privacy advocate", and that Wikipedia editors were malicious for insisting that he was. That must be part of his case. My 800th posting. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) |
JohnA |
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#4
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Looking over Winston Smith's shoulder ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Regulars Posts: 1,171 Joined: Member No.: 313 ![]() |
I'm not sure that Daniel Brandt would benefit financially very much, largely because it would seem incongruous to a jury for a "privacy advocate" to devote so much energy to take away the privacy of Wikipedia's admins. But Daniel Brandt will swear on oath that he is not and never has been a "privacy advocate", and that Wikipedia editors were malicious for insisting that he was. That must be part of his case. My 800th posting. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) Then I'd direct the judge to the fifth paragraph of this webpage: http://www.scroogle.org/donatesc.html |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: |