Wikipedia's defining of Vandalism and the Law's Options

[The Joy]

The Zoe and NIU incident just a few months ago got me to thinking about what Wikipedia considers vandalism and the legal definition.

Zoe argued that Dr. Pierce's contributions constituted as vandalism and ordered the university to halt his activities. NIU took a different take on Zoe's vandalism definition by arguing that a site that allows anyone to edit and place anything on it could not be, by legal definition, vandalizing a site. When NIU's lawyers saw "vandalism", they likely thought of illegal hacking as opposed to a site's condemnation of edits.

Wikipedia's response to vandalism is typically blocking and if persistant vandalism continues, filing an abuse report to the vandal's ISP. The ISP can decide whether to discontinue the user's service due to their violation of their terms of service or ignore Wikipedia's request. The law does not force the ISP to stop the Wiki vandal unless it has done something blatantly criminal such as posting child pornography on the Wiki.

Now, I've also looked at Conserveapedia's (the crazy site that blocks people for writing the Queen's english and using Common Era (CE) as opposed to AD) rules that state that vandalism can be reported to the police and criminal charges pressed against the vandal:

Minors under 16 years old use this site. Posting of obscenity here is punishable by up to 10 years in jail under 18 USC § 1470. Vandalism is punishable up to 10 years in jail per 18 USC § 1030. The IP addresses of vandals will be reported to authorities. That includes your employer and your local prosecutor.

I'm having a hard time seeing Wikipedia or any wiki going to court over editting or the police even getting involved. Will Jonny Cache be arrested for editting the Charles Peirce article? Would I be arrested for editting Conserveapedia's homosexuality article by providing evidence from moderate and liberal Christian groups that homosexuality may not be condemned by the Bible?

I would think judges and the police would have better things to do than deal with Wiki "vandals", even those that place the giant wangs on the main page.

Note: I personally don't believe in blatant vandalism such as adding giant wangs or purposely adding false information on the Wiki. But that's just me.

[gomi]

Will Jonny Cache be arrested for editting the Charles Peirce article?

Doubtful. USC 1030 concerns "Fraud and related activity in connection with computers". There are a number of things that trigger it, notably penetration of government computers and access to nation defense information or financial records (broadly defined). The only section that would really seem to bear on Wikis would be:

(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;

So the essence is "intent to defraud", along with "exceeds authorized access". Except for a vandal who bragged about it openly and loudly, intent is usually hard to prove. and on top of that it would be hard to say any access to Wikipedia (short of hacking an admin bit) would "exceed authorized access", and finally, they would have to show that the vandal had "obtained anything of value"! Not gonna happen.

(There is a related clause, mostly pertaining to medical records, but that includes loss to an individual in excess of $1000 in 1 year, and also includes physical harm, public safety, and extortion. For those interested, : here is the full text).

So, steer clear of outright vandalism that cannot be construed by any reasonable person as plausibly constructive, don't brag about your intent, don't extort anyone, and to be on the safe side, don't inject intentional errors into health-related articles, and the G-Men will stay away from your door.

[Son of a Yeti]

The only section that would really seem to bear on Wikis would be:

(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;

A protected computer? By editing only? What kind of protection "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" can claim?

And what actually is the value to be stolen? Collected postings of SlimVirgin?

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

No, the whole law is not applicable to Wikipedia.

[DoctorHver]

Vandal a page that explain or has somthing do do with Vandal policy you can get ban in a few minute.