QUOTE(One @ Sun 23rd March 2008, 8:32am)
I like your examples, but Wikipedia's in even worse shape. Even if they could argue that their lil' old disclaimer is the legal equivalent of click wrap--hell, even if they actually required users to press "ok" to see an article--damage is done to third parties who may have not even seen the site and their wishful disclaimer for everything.
True. I only addressed above WP's abdication of responsibility when it misinforms its readers, not third parties.
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Of course, Congress preemptively solved this problem with sec 230, but it doesn't change the ethics. Harming real live human beings for the sake of encouraging scads of uneven and poorly reviewed BLPs is wrong, no matter what the disclaimer or Congress says.
I don't believe that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act really shields Wikipedia from lawsuits, only than by deterring people from filing. That's not trivial. But anyone serious about making a case, if provided an impartial judge, should be able to show that this law was not intended to and does not protect anything like an encyclopedia, but only "interactive service providers" where the customer is not the reader, but the contributor, where a product is used and enjoyed, not published. The defense boils down to, we are not an encyclopedia - those were all lies (we crossed our fingers behind our backs!) We are a heck of a lot like Myspace, our policies to the contrary are wilful lies to our contributors. Heck, we're are an MPORPG! We have zero credibility with our readers - zip. Only a fool would take us seriously! See the disclaimer!
You don't to know anything about law to realize that this is a horrible way to start a case.