JoshuaZ looks at Section 230, and gives me an idea... Options

From WikiEN-l:

> "Had the Foundation formally notified a stalker that he or she was
> denied permission to access Wikipedia, the Foundation could then press
> charges for computer trespass against the stalker when he or she
> subsequently accessed the site. Such charges would give the
> authorities leverage to put the perp away; proving that case is far
> easier than proving the much harder stalking or harassment case --
> especially when the victim refuses to personally identify himself or
> herself to authorities."
>
> (The rest of the post is definitely worth reading. It can be found at
> http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/...a-al-qaeda.html
> It is, of course, in Ms. Martin's inimitable style; but she's not
> wrong on this.)

Well, I'm not generally a fan of Kelly but this makes an excellent point. My only concern is that having the Foundation get that involved could intertwine the Foundation with the individual projects more than we want. The Foundation is more important than any one editor and we must make sure that it is not liable. That said, this might work. Has anyone discussed it with Foundation higher ups.

The top of this quotation is someone quoting Kelly Martin. The last paragraph is from JoshuaZ commenting on Kelly's words.

At the same time that JoshuaZ is making this astute legal observation, he is also attempting to restore the redirect on Daniel_Brandt to reverse Doc's deletion of same. JoshuaZ is working at cross-purposes here. If that redirect gets restored I intend to try harder to isolate Wikipedia in the court of public opinion.

Why would I want to do this? Because if I try harder, Slim and others will interpret this as "stalking," and then maybe they will convince the Foundation to send me a cease and desist. Already Jimbo is on record as generally sympathetic with the "cyberstalking" point of view. At that point I'll have a piece of paper from the Foundation that pretty much signs away their presumed Section 230 immunity in my case, and I'll be ready to go to court.

Right now my feeling is that I don't have a case because:
1. my Wikipedia presence in the search engines has been greatly diminished since the redirect was deleted on December 1, and
2. the 2,600 history versions of Daniel_Brandt are difficult to find, thanks to Doc's more recent maneuver that nuked JoshuaZ's GFDL silliness.

If the redirect is restored, I believe that I have a case once again. Also, I sense that the statute of limitations is reset for defamation and invasion of privacy under Florida law. My next step will be to work harder to enlighten the public about the true nature of Wikipedia, and hope that someday the Foundation will see fit to send me a cease and desist. Then I'll sue them.

My instincts tell me that their presumed Section 230 immunity will be much weaker once I receive a cease and desist from the Foundation. The only boring part is that I'll have to create a bunch of socks and try to edit Wikipedia directly, so that I'm worthy of a C&D of this nature. Fortunately, I think there are enough mentions of me on various Talk pages that are sock-accessible, which means all I have to do is go in and delete them every place they're found. That's just to earn the C&D. The more effective part will be my escalating efforts to interest mainstream media in exposing the true nature of Wikipedia. As effective as that may be, it's not C&D-worthy, unless and until Mike Godwin loses his judgement.

I could sue JoshuaZ for stalking me on Wikipedia, I suppose, but that's useless. There are dozens of wikifascist stalkers ready and willing to take his place.

I filed an OTRS via email with a copy to Brion Vibber. My experience with OTRS is that they just throw stuff from me in the trash. And now they're in the middle of moving to sexy San Francisco, which gives them an excuse to "lose" anything I send to the office. Whoever reads my OTRS will probably be afraid to verify to me that it was received. Does anyone have an address where Mike Godwin would get a registered letter? I think Godwin hangs out in Washington, DC.

As that case in France showed, you have to make sure that they cannot deny that they received your communication. I don't know if the Foundation office is sneaky or just plain incompetent.

I intend to pursue the "software bug on Wikipedia redirects" issue. It's not a redirect by any definition used by webmasters. It's a 100 percent substitution, which means that all search-engine juice accumulated from the past history of the redirected page is instantly added to the target page — making the target page hyper-sensitive to the name of the person that used to have the bio, whenever that name is used as the search term on any search engine. This is a serious privacy issue, now that AfDs increasingly use the merge and "redirect" option on difficult cases.

From the perspective of the hapless BLP victim, it means that now he has to watch the target page after the redirect, because all the wikifascists will migrate to that page to insert their defamatory and/or privacy-invading edits. If the target page was buried in the search engine results in a search for that person's name, he wouldn't have to check it every day.

If the deletion of the redirect on my bio that Doc did survives the current DRV, I won't have a case to pursue. But it doesn't look good and I think Doc might lose this one.

Whoever reads my OTRS will probably be afraid to verify to me that it was received. Does anyone have an address where Mike Godwin would get a registered letter?

I don't have that, but according to Florida Division of Corporations the registered agent for the Foundation is:

CT CORPORATION SYSTEM
1200 S PINE ISLAND RD
PLANTATION FL 33324 US

Whoever reads my OTRS will probably be afraid to verify to me that it was received. Does anyone have an address where Mike Godwin would get a registered letter?

I don't have that, but according to Florida Division of Corporations the registered agent for the Foundation is:

CT CORPORATION SYSTEM
1200 S PINE ISLAND RD
PLANTATION FL 33324 US

You have to be kidding. That's almost as good as a P.O. box in the Cayman Islands. I had an attorney from Florida contact me several months ago. He was frustrated because he was trying to serve process on Wikimedia Foundation. He used one address he found, and that didn't work. I gave him another address for the Foundation that I found, and I don't know if that worked. I also gave him an address for Jimbo's residence, and pointed out that Jimbo was on the Board, but he's always traveling and it might be hard to find him, even if that residence address was still accurate.

I had to convince this attorney that as far as I know, there actually is a little office somewhere that's used by Cary Bass and Brion Vibber and (at the time) Carolyn Doran.

I think I'll ask Cade Metz (who interviewed me about SlimVirgin on November 28) for Godwin's telephone, and then call Godwin and ask him directly for 1) a fax number and 2) a street address where he personally is available to sign for registered mail.

About OTRS, I still haven't heard anything from them. How does that thing work? Since I've never seen it work, my impression is that at best, there's a list of emails, and volunteers get to cherry pick the ones they want to handle. The ones that don't get picked end up falling off the edge of the earth. Is that how it works?

CT CORPORATION SYSTEM
1200 S PINE ISLAND RD
PLANTATION FL 33324 US

You have to be kidding. That's almost as good as a P.O. box in the Cayman Islands...

More specifically, CT Corporation Systems is a contractor - they allow small firms and foundations to outsource their legal departments to a third-party registered agent, so that they don't have to maintain a permanent legal office.

http://ctadmin.ctadvantage.com/CTWebAdminA...ntServices.aspx

The fact that they're using them doesn't necessarily imply skullduggery, though - it may be this was a transitional step necessitated by their move to San Francisco, or just the fact that they're so spread-out in general (or specifically, with Mike Godwin being in the DC area). However, now that they're using them, it's very unlikely that they'll bring this stuff back in-house.

Any new non-profit or private company can hire a registered owner for 200-300 bucks. Not a big deal, nor a scam.


Mike Godwin's phone number (from is talk page) +1–202–236–3448 Email: mneumonic@well.com

Call him, email him, or he gave a speech at American University Center for Social Media last week. Maybe they knonw how to reach him. Center for Social Media | School of Communication | American University mailing: 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20016-8080
office: 3201 New Mexico Avenue NW, Suite 395 | Washington, DC 20016-8080
socialmedia@american.edu | phone (202) 885-3107 | fax (202) 885-1309

This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey:

Any new non-profit or private company can hire a registered owner for 200-300 bucks. Not a big deal, nor a scam.

Exactly - it's all strictly legal and above-board. That's the whole point!

If your registered agent is in, say, Delaware (quite common - I believe Wikia's is there), and you're in California or Florida or DC, that really just adds an extra layer of liability protection to your organization, because any legal decision against you is going to have to go through a lot of extra inter-state bureaucracy before it results in any kind of forfeiture of assets. And you have to assume that the registered agent will be located in whatever state provides the most friendly venue for a liability case.

Anyone who wants to sue the Foundation isn't just presented with vague replies from them saying they should "contact individual WP editors" who are supposed to be the ones who are actually liable. They're also presented with problems of venue and jurisdiction, which could conceivably change right in the middle of their case preparations. It's just another deterrent against lawsuits, really. So... what do people have to do when they're being libelled, or just want potentially damaging material deleted?

They have to find out who the actual editors are in real life, don't they?

In effect, the Wikimedia Foundation encourages the identification, or what they call "stalking" and "outing," of its own anonymous volunteers. What's more, it always has, and it always will, by necessity. It's inherent to the whole system.

If your registered agent is in, say, Delaware (quite common - I believe Wikia's is there), and you're in California or Florida or DC, that really just adds an extra layer of liability protection to your organization, because any legal decision against you is going to have to go through a lot of extra inter-state bureaucracy before it results in any kind of forfeiture of assets. And you have to assume that the registered agent will be located in whatever state provides the most friendly venue for a liability case.

So many companies are headquartered in Delaware for two main reasons -- friendly tax-accounting procedures and business-friendly legal system.

Indeed, in Delaware at the old Motiva plant, a technician (Jeffrey Davis) working on top of a dilapidated chemical storage tank was pretty much eaten alive by sulfuric acid when the tank ruptured, and the company only had to pay up about $16 million, chicken feed for a company that posted $24 billion in revenue in 2004. Damages of one-fifteen-hundredth of annual sales, for dissolving a man with acid. That's why companies headquarter in Delaware.

Greg

Damages of one-fifteen-hundredth of annual sales, for dissolving a man with acid. That's why companies headquarter in Delaware.

Indeed... The sad thing is, when Wikipedia finally does that to the entire Internet, they probably won't have to even cough up a dime.