Cease and desist sent to the Foundation, Brad cannot pretend Sec.230 on this one Options

[Daniel Brandt]

Raul654 has needlessly put the Foundation at risk through a malicious abuse of his Foundation powers. He should be desysopped.

February 24, 2007

DEMAND TO CEASE AND DESIST

Mr. Brad Patrick
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Fax: 727-258-0207

Dear Mr. Patrick:

Wikimedia Foundation maintains a "spam blacklist" at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist that has listed six domains owned and operated by Public Information Research, a 501c(3) entity, since June, 2006 without justification.

This letter is a cease and desist demand to remove these domains from the spam blacklist.

The six domains were placed on the list because they redirected links coming from en.wikipedia.org from April 2006 to June 2006. None of the six has redirected since June 2006. But they remain on the spam blacklist under false pretenses, namely that "These sites are redirecting requests from Wikimedia sites to a third-party site."

Numerous editors have pointed out that they no longer redirect, but an authorized agent of the Foundation, Mr. Mark A. Pellegrini, has unilaterally kept them on this list. Mr. Pellegrini is a meta administrator and bureaucrat.

Mr. Pellegrini knows full well that they no longer redirect, but is prejudiced against Public Information Research and myself. In response to a challenge about listing these domains, he even libeled me:

"Request denied. Firstly, it's not "accidental censorship" - we are quite intentionally excluding his sites from being linked in Wikipedia. He's made it his mission to "out" as many administrators as possible by posting their personal information (in some cases, personal information of young children). I see no reason why we should allow his idiocy to be linked from Wikipedia. And yes, there's always the possibility he'll do it again. Raul654 18:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)"

The libelous statement is contained in the false and malicious phrase, "personal information of young children."

It is clear that the spam blacklist is under the direct control of Wikimedia Foundation and its employees and agents. On the Talk page to this list, it is described as follows:

"The associated page is used by the Mediawiki SpamBlacklist extension, and lists strings of text that may not be used in URLs in any page in Wikimedia Foundation projects (as well as many external wikis)."

Our position is that substantial harm is being done to the reputation of Public Information Research by unjustifiably including these domains on the blacklist. Other non-Foundation websites are using this list as an indication of which sites need to be blocked, based on their estimation that the domains on this list are generating spam. None of our domains has ever carried a single advertisement. They are reputable sites, and cannot be accurately described as spam.

This situation has nothing to do with Section 230 of the CDA, and is actionable under the laws of the state of Florida.

We demand that these domains be removed from the list immediately.

Regards,
Daniel Brandt
President

[Daniel Brandt]

The bottom line is that Brad probably won't even see the fax plus letter. If he sees it, he probably won't read it. My impression is that he has not been given the authority to perform the normal functions of a general counsel. He's been hired to keep Jimbo happy. And Anthere (Florence Nibart-Devouard) isn't in a position to overrule Jimbo. I doubt that she's even in a position to know what the hell is going on.

So why do I bother? It's conceivable that someday I'll be asked, probably by a judge or a lawyer, if I ever tried to make it clear to the Foundation that I don't want my sites on the spam blacklist. Throwing up an anti-Raul web page is one thing, making snide remarks on Wikipediareview is another thing, and I've done both. But those don't count for much. I cannot claim to have exhausted my remedies until I make it clear in a formal, straightforward manner that I feel that listing six of my domains on the spam blacklist is unjustified, and also harmful to the reputation of Public Information Research.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, it's "for the record."

[dtobias]

I, personally, oppose the use of the "spam filter" for anything other than blatant spam (e.g., sites selling "herbal Viagra" that are getting spammed onto unrelated articles), so if it were up to me, I wouldn't have Brandt's sites in the filter list. I also don't like the draconianly-enforced ban on linking to Encyclopedia Dramatica anywhere in Wikipedia regardless of context (which has been enforced even on discussion pages). I'm not such a "Wikipedia cheerleader" that I agree with everything its admins, ArbCom, Jimbo, etc., ever do. I'd rather err more on the side of freedom over control-freakishness.

On the other hand, I fail to see how Brandt has the slightest basis for making a demand (rather than a polite request) that they take his sites off the list. It's purely a free-speech issue on the part of the Wikipedia editors, admins, etc., involved in maintaining that list; which sites they choose to designate as unsuitable for linking on Wikipedia is a matter of opinion, and can't be forced on them by an external authority. This is similar to a recently decided case where a lawsuit was dismissed against Google, Yahoo (and some others) by an individual (who filed pro se, without a lawyer) who claimed that their refusal to let him purchase ads on search-result pages for his rant-laden personal Web sites was a violation of his free speech; the court didn't take long to come to the conclusion that the search engine operators' freedom to choose what sorts of speech to allow on their sites trump the free speech of outsiders wishing to get their own sites linked. A relevant quote: "Section 230 provides Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft immunity for their editorial decisions regarding screening and deletion from their network."

Making demands on Wikipedia will only serve to anger Wikipedians some more and make it even less likely that anything he wants will ever be done.

Also, it is undisputed that Brandt did at one point redirect people who followed links from Wikipedia to his sites to a different site, so as a result, it is understandable that people regard links to his site as inherently unstable and vulnerable to ideologically-motivated redirection targeted particularly at Wikipedia; thus, he has no business complaining if Wikipedia takes action in retaliation for this.

This post has been edited by dtobias: