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

[LamontStormstar]

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.

[gomi]

Another legal question. Do cease and decist or DMCAs require you to put your phone number or mailing address on them?

This is not a DMCA C&D, as it does not cover a copyright issue. A C&D does not require the address of the compainant, but normally there is a response address (e.g. a law firm).