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

[Somey]

...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... (snip)

Dan, you're actually starting to make some sense here. I agree - he has no legal basis for making such a demand (which is really just pro forma anyway, looks like - covering all the bases and that sort of thing). And I, for one, probably wouldn't blame them for listing those sites - at least if I weren't personally involved and all that rubbish. He might have a case for libel against Raul654, but that's not quite the same thing.

As for angering Wikipedians some more, etc., you're in a better position to judge that than I am... Do you feel that if Brandt were to make a few gestures to, shall we say, "de-escalate hostilities" in the near term, it might help get the article deleted once and for all? Would you, for one, vote to delete it? And if this is the case, what would he have to do, in your opinion? How far would he have to go? I'm asking sincerely. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mellow.gif)

Another legal question. Do cease and decist or DMCAs require you to put your phone number or mailing address on them? I notice Dan didn't put his personal info on it.

You'd either have to put your own contact info on there or your lawyer's, and I'd have to assume he faxed it on some letterhead, which I believe is a pro forma standard thing to do. What he posted here was obviously not a bitmap image of the actual document... Besides, that's not the sort of thing one would post on a public website anyway, if trying to protect one's own privacy in the first place.

[dtobias]

As for angering Wikipedians some more, etc., you're in a better position to judge that than I am... Do you feel that if Brandt were to make a few gestures to, shall we say, "de-escalate hostilities" in the near term, it might help get the article deleted once and for all? Would you, for one, vote to delete it? And if this is the case, what would he have to do, in your opinion? How far would he have to go? I'm asking sincerely. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mellow.gif)

There may be some cases in which "reverse psychology" would work on Wikipedians... there's a tendency among many editors to favor the opposite of whatever is being demanded in a really strident, obnoxious, and pushy way, in cases of marginal notability that could go in either direction. That is, if somebody is arguing to keep the article about themselves (or their blog, webcomic, or garage band), editors want to delete it, and if they're demanding it be deleted they want to keep it; the more annoying the manner of argument the stronger this effect would be. If editors were truly objective, this would carry no weight, but they're human and don't like to be pushed around. Thus, if, theoretically, Brandt had actually wanted his article kept and given maximum publicity and traffic, then he'd be playing a near-perfect game so far with his actual actions. As somebody who actually wants it deleted, however, he's doing a really poor job. If he'd been arguing from the start to keep the article, carrying on in the style of somebody who'd just gotten a friend to create a vanity article about them and is really offended that anybody would dare to say they're non-notable, then perhaps it would have been deleted long ago. Unfortunately, it's way too late for him to change his strategy in this manner; it's necessary to present a consistent face, both within Wikipedia and anywhere else editors might notice you (outside forums, blogs, news media, etc.), or else they'll realize you're gaming the system and discount you altogether.

Since that strategy is out for Brandt already, the next best thing could be to "de-escalate" as you noted. This wouldn't, however, guarantee deletion. When things calm down and people no longer have axes to grind on the issue, they might eventually make rational, objective decisions about the fate of the article that are not clouded by emotion as the issue has been so far; however, I'm still not sure the objectively correct decision is not to continue to keep the article. Brandt has, in fact, been covered repeatedly by the media, and the harder he fought Wikipedia the more such coverage he got, so it's rather difficult to successfully argue non-notability. On the other hand, there has been a growing tendency lately to delete articles on subjects of minor notability that attract storms of controversy, as "more trouble than they're worth", so maybe that'll finally lead to the article's deletion (in which case, both "forward" and "reverse" psychology would end up working, if deletion is your end, since anything that causes a big fuss would ultimately lead in that direction; ironically, "de-escalation" could work against that).

So far, I've favored keeping the article, and am not really motivated to change; it would just be a bad precedent to give anybody such "veto power". Already, more-notable people such as comic book artist John Byrne have made similar demands regarding their own articles.

[Jonny Cache]

There may be some cases in which "reverse psychology" would work on Wikipedians ...

Please try to understand, it is not our job to cater to the psychology — arbnormal, reverse, or otherwise — of Wikipedians. It does fall within the purview of this Review to point at some of its more serious or more ridiculous deviations from normality, but that does not mean that we have any intention of trying to work within its nut's'hell. Some of the participants in this forum do appear at times to hold out hopes for curing the condition, but I think that it's fair to say that more and more Reviewers will content themselves with alerting the public to the dangers of a potentially viral Wikipandemic, and also with helping to maintain the quarantine.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: