QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sun 23rd March 2008, 8:50am)
QUOTE
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.
A few years ago, I would have agreed. There was a glimmer of hope in the
Rosenthal case in California (where the surviving claim concerned a man was defamed as a supposed stalker in, and they tried to sue the party who reposted the email without bothering to check whether the stalker claim was bullshit.) California Court of Appeals thought that such a claim could proceed, but the California Supreme Court decided they would follow the majority of the Federal Courts, ruling that it was barred. Section 230 usually gets you out at the summary judgment phase.
Yeah, most academics think it's repugnant, and at least a little counterintuitive in the Communications
Decency Act, but the plain language of the statue it pretty clear. Did you not generate the information? Are you running an interactive service? You win--no matter what you call yourself.
Write your congressman, because the courts have made up their mind. I'm not holding my breath, anyway.