I sent a fax to Wikipedia's lawyer Options

[Daniel Brandt]

From: Public Information Research
April 23, 2006

Bradford A. Patrick, Esq.
Fowler White Boggs Banker
501 E. Kennedy Blvd., Suite 1700
Tampa, FL 33602-5239
bpatrick at fowlerwhite.com
Tel:813-228-7411
Fax:813-229-8313

Dear Mr. Patrick:

I am writing to you because you are the attorney for Wikimedia Foundation. This letter should be interpreted as a formal notice made to the Foundation.

For six months, I have been defamed and/or had my privacy invaded by agents of the Foundation. This has occurred primarily, but not exclusively, on these pages:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Daniel_Brandt (current page plus four archive pages)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Daniel_Brandt (current page plus one archive page)

I do not distinguish between the content on the biography page, and the content on the "talk" pages. It is all published content. It is all available to mirrors and scrapers, and it is all crawled, cached, and well-ranked by major search engines. I know that internal Wikipedia policies make such a distinction, but I do not believe that this distinction will be recognized in a court of law.

Wikipedia's disclaimer is legally irrelevant, in my opinion. If you asked average Wikipedia readers whether Wikipedia considers itself an encyclopedia, as opposed to how many discovered the tiny disclaimer link at the bottom of the pages, and clicked on this link and read it,I suspect more than ninety-nine percent would lean toward describing Wikipedia as a factual "encyclopedia."

This activity against me has been carried out by agents of the Foundation. I consider anyone with extraordinary editing and blocking privileges, beginning with administrators, to be an agent of the Foundation. In cases where these agents do not identify themselves with their real names on their user pages, and their identity cannot be easily established through other means, I consider the Foundation to be responsible for their behavior.

The reason for my position is because according to the Wikipedia Privacy Policy, the Foundation condones and encourages anonymity. This policy specifically recommends the use of a user log-in for the purpose of concealing identity. Under these conditions, I believe that the Foundation itself becomes responsible for much of the content.

I am prepared to show that certain administrators, some of whom remain anonymous despite efforts to identify them, have contributed to a situation where much of the material related to me amounts to defamation and/or invasion of privacy. I further contend that there is evidence of unchecked hostility and maliciousness on the part of some editors and administrators. An overview of this pattern of behavior is available at www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html

If you provide me with the IP addresses of the administrators whom I have not yet identified on that page, as well as the IP addresses of those I have tentatively identified so that I can confirm their identities, then I will reconsider the question of whether the Foundation is liable for their actions.

I cannot answer my detractors as a Wikipedia user, because administrators have blocked me indefinitely. This was primarily due to their perception of a legal threat from me. This "no legal threats" policy is inappropriate in a civil society, one purpose of which is to provide civil remedies under the rule of law. It causes the Foundation's editors and administrators to feel that they are immune from accountability.

There are two grounds upon which Wikimedia Foundation may be liable. One is criminal, and the other is Section 230 of the CDA. The criminal statute is new as of January, and I do not claim that it is retroactive. However, there has been some harassment of me by certain anonymous administrators since January, and you might want to discourage such behavior. Conceivably, the Foundation could be held criminally liable if such harassment by anonymous administrators continues without any effort by the Foundation to curtail such behavior.

In terms of civil law under Section 230, I am prepared to argue that the Foundation is a content provider more than it is a service provider. This is because of its policy of granting extraordinary editing and blocking privileges to administrators, and protecting them from being identified as real persons. It seems to me that many courts would concur that the Wikipedia structure, by encouraging the development of content through the empowerment of anonymous agents, is best described as a "content provider."

My request to the Foundation is to delete these pages:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Daniel_Brandt (current page plus four archive pages)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Daniel_Brandt (current page plus one archive page)
all history records for the above

Alternatively, at the Foundation's discretion, they can be permanently locked down but not deleted, but only if they are moved to a directory where scraping and crawling of content by robots is specifically disallowed.

Sincerely,
/s/
Daniel Brandt
President

[Daniel Brandt]

I'm stunned. You would settle for that?

Sure I would. I'm a reasonable person. Any judge and jury can see this. And any real encyclopedia would have locked down and forbidden scrapers months ago -- assuming that they didn't immediately kill it after I first contacted them and requested a kill. We can put someone from Encyclopedia Britannica on the stand to explain how the real world of encyclopedias works when it comes to biographies of living persons. By the time it gets to trial, a jury will be unsympathetic to this overhyped Web 2.0 stuff. I prefer a comfortable chair and a World Book Encyclopedia any day, even if Britney Spears isn't mentioned in it.

[Golbez]

I'll never understand this aversion you people have to the "no legal threats" policy is.

If someone came in to my place of business and threatened to sue me, I would order him out. He has the right to bring legal action, but he does not have the right to harass me in my own property about it, or to threaten me with a legal action that, as we've seen on Wikipedia, 99.99% of the time will never be brought. The "no legal threats" policy is common sense.

It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

[Lir]

If someone came in to my place of business and threatened to sue me, I would order him out.

Right, if on the other hand, if you ran an organization in which other people did the work for you; and then they decided you were scamming them, and you harassed them, and forced them out simply because they spoke up -- why, then, you would be attacking whistleblowers.

[Donny]

I'll never understand this aversion you people have to the "no legal threats" policy is.

Do you like fixing grammar mistakes in Wikipedia?

It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

Your assumption apparently is that there are only two kinds of people, 1. people who are interested in writing Wikipedia and 2. people who are just there to troll. In that context, it would make sense to ban people who make legal threats. However, the assumption is wrong. People may make legal threats on Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, not the least being defamation of character, and other reasons might also include copyright infringement.

Your ultra-simplistic and naive world view, in which everyone must sacrifice their time in the service of Wikipedia, is in contradiction with the laws of the real world outside Wikipedia. In your world view, John Siegenthaler should have corrected his own article rather than complain about it. You make the naive assumption that Wikipedia supercedes the normal laws and conventions of society. If Daniel Brandt's case does come to court, it certainly will serve as a wake-up to a lot of irrational Wikipedians.

[mackensen]

I'll never understand this aversion you people have to the "no legal threats" policy is.

Do you like fixing grammar mistakes in Wikipedia?

It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

Your assumption apparently is that there are only two kinds of people, 1. people who are interested in writing Wikipedia and 2. people who are just there to troll. In that context, it would make sense to ban people who make legal threats. However, the assumption is wrong. People may make legal threats on Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, not the least being defamation of character, and other reasons might also include copyright infringement.

Your ultra-simplistic and naive world view, in which everyone must sacrifice their time in the service of Wikipedia, is in contradiction with the laws of the real world outside Wikipedia. In your world view, John Siegenthaler should have corrected his own article rather than complain about it. You make the naive assumption that Wikipedia supercedes the normal laws and conventions of society. If Daniel Brandt's case does come to court, it certainly will serve as a wake-up to a lot of irrational Wikipedians.

Your reply managed to miss Golbez's point; whether this was on purpose or not I don't know. People are free to sue Wikipedia (obviously). They're free to threaten such action without taking it. What they are not free to do is to threaten such action on Wikipedia itself. You'll find that this is perfectly inline with those "normal laws and conventions of society" which you so nobly invoked. A private enterprise can refuse service to anyone. Privately-owned websites can set their own terms of service. Wikipedia doesn't allow on-site legal threats. Wikipedia Review doesn't allow personal attacks against other posters. Whether these policies are enforced or not is of course at the discretion of moderators, sysops, or whomever might have such authority.

Returning to your argument, John Siegenthaler had several options at his disposal. One was to edit his own article. This was obviously not a realistic choice. Another was to contact that body which has authority over Wikipedia: the Wikimedia Foundation. A third choice was to take the matter to the press. A fourth, as always, was to do nothing. Going on to Wikipedia itself to make legal threats really wasn't an option, for two reasons. One: it would have gotten him banned in fairly short order. Two: it wouldn't accomplish a thing. You can't file a lawsuit on Wikipedia anymore than you can in Somethingawful's forums or a Wikipedia Review thread. If you're going to sue then you do what Mr. Brandt did (sensibly) and send a fax to Wikimedia's attorneys. Anything short of that step looks like (and often is) posturing.

[Donny]

If you're going to sue then you do what Mr. Brandt did (sensibly) and send a fax to Wikimedia's attorneys. Anything short of that step looks like (and often is) posturing.

Yes, I'll bet the Wikimedia foundation is delighted at the thought of lots of people sending faxes to their attorneys. What was that fax number again? Perhaps we should cook up a fill-in-the-blanks fax for anyone who wants to gamble a few cents on shooting off a quick fax.

[Daniel Brandt]

This doesn't make any sense. It means the articles will remain on Wikipedia.

But if the bots cannot read the articles, they will eventually fade from the search engines, and hopefully from the mirrors and scrapers as well. Wikipedia is nothing without the bots. And I specified that everything has to be locked down -- no one can play with my article or any of the talk pages. It all fades into oblivion.

If someone came in to my place of business and threatened to sue me, I would order him out.

Here's what happened: SlimVirgin broke into my house and started a stub on me. I said, "Who are you and what are you doing?" She said, "I'm Wikipedia, and I'm going to write an article about you that will be number one on every search engine in the galaxy." I said, "I don't like this, I've barely heard of Wikipedia, I want you out of my house."

Then she invited all her mean Wikipedia friends into my house. They all started poking around, and said, "This needs a new paint job. That needs some new tile. The yard should be landscaped differently. Brandt needs a better haircut because he's ugly."

I said, "Leave me alone or I'll call my lawyer."

They said, "That's an NLT violation." You've just lost your house. We've changed the locks. Now get out."

[Daniel Brandt]

But you can't be sure that the scrapers won't scrape the pages, or can you? They'll still be copying the whole thing.

A huge problem -- but a problem for Wikipedia more than for me. It would be far easier for Wikipedia to delete the pages -- no argument there. But the whole situation of scrapers and mirrors is a crucial issue in my mind, and I'd like to have some legal standing to address this situation at some point in the future. I have nothing to lose if Wikipedia wants to choose this alternative, and everything to gain. The issue of scrapers and mirrors is bigger than both of us. I'd be tickled if I was in a position to have an impact on this issue.

[mackensen]

This doesn't make any sense. It means the articles will remain on Wikipedia.

But if the bots cannot read the articles, they will eventually fade from the search engines, and hopefully from the mirrors and scrapers as well. Wikipedia is nothing without the bots. And I specified that everything has to be locked down -- no one can play with my article or any of the talk pages. It all fades into oblivion.

If someone came in to my place of business and threatened to sue me, I would order him out.

Here's what happened: SlimVirgin broke into my house and started a stub on me. I said, "Who are you and what are you doing?" She said, "I'm Wikipedia, and I'm going to write an article about you that will be number one on every search engine in the galaxy." I said, "I don't like this, I've barely heard of Wikipedia, I want you out of my house."

Then she invited all her mean Wikipedia friends into my house. They all started poking around, and said, "This needs a new paint job. That needs some new tile. The yard should be landscaped differently. Brandt needs a better haircut because he's ugly."

I said, "Leave me alone or I'll sue you."

They said, "That's an NLT violation." You've just lost your house. We've changed the locks. Now get out."

That's not quite an accurate analogy. For one thing, this analogy implies that the only public web presence you have is the Wikipedia article. Given that you existed on the Web long before Wikipedia existed (and long before there was an article on you), this is obviously not the case.

In fact, you had your own public presence in the form of Google Watch and your crusade against Google's Page Rank system. This remains a famous spat and is still discussed in some circles. I can't help but feel that this is a continuation of your war against Google regarding the proper ranking of Namebase. The existence of the Wikipedia article--indeed, the existence of any web site discussing you which you do not control--counters the public view that you have crafted for yourself. Put more simply, everytime someone says something about you or your actions on the Internet, someone has sprayed graffiti on your house.

[Daniel Brandt]

... everytime someone says something about you or your actions on the Internet, someone has sprayed graffiti on your house.

1. How many of them claim to be encyclopedias?

2. How many of them shoot to the top of the search engines? (Well, a couple of professional Google spammers do, because they control hundreds of domains and tens of thousands of cross-links. Now you know why I hate PageRank.)

Are you thinking technical protection against bots as in <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> or are you thinking legally copyrighted against reproduction?

Minimally, you must have a noindex,nofollow OR put it into a directory that has a disallow in robots.txt. That solves the problem with Google, Yahoo, MSN, and most other major bots. Scrapers are another problem entirely. That's why it's going to be a problem if Wikipedia chooses this alternative, because scrapers don't give a hoot about metas or robots.txt. If Wikipedia chooses this option, it won't be a copyright issue, but rather something that is specified in some sort of formal settlement. If they don't find a way to keep out scrapers, the settlement is breached.

[Golbez]

For some reason, quotes broke in this post. So this will be a little awkward to read.

Me: If someone came in to my place of business and threatened to sue me, I would order him out.

Lir: Right, if on the other hand, if you ran an organization in which other people did the work for you; and then they decided you were scamming them, and you harassed them, and forced them out simply because they spoke up -- why, then, you would be attacking whistleblowers.

I don't think "whistleblowers" (without declaring validity of your comparison) walk in to the office and make a legal threat. They go to the district attorney.

Me: It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

Donny: Your assumption apparently is that there are only two kinds of people, 1. people who are interested in writing Wikipedia and 2. people who are just there to troll.

I said nothing of the sort. This is a strawman of the highest order. I have never come across someone making a legal threat who was a valuable member of the community, though.

Daniel Brandt: Here's what happened: SlimVirgin broke into my house

It's so rare when an analogy falls so flat, so soon.

Daniel Brandt: 1. How many of them claim to be encyclopedias?

2. How many of them shoot to the top of the search engines? (Well, a couple of professional Google spammers do, because they control hundreds of domains and tens of thousands of cross-links. Now you know why I hate PageRank.)

So basically, you have a problem with Wikipedia's market power. The actions are the same if they weren't an encyclopedia, or 12,437 on Alexa - your issue is solely with Wikipedia's size and popularity. Not with their actions.

Which implies that, done by a lesser party, the actions would not be criminal, or at least, you wouldn't care enough to raise a stink. But I don't think being rich makes something a crime.

[Donny]

Me: It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

Donny: Your assumption apparently is that there are only two kinds of people, 1. people who are interested in writing Wikipedia and 2. people who are just there to troll.

I said nothing of the sort.

I didn't say that you did; I said that seems to be (notice the word "apparently") the underlying assumption you are making. The assumption that you seem to be making is that Wikipedia is a world unto itself, which is not subject to legal regulation, and that there are only two types of people "Wikipedians" and others whose opinions you do not value.

I have never come across someone making a legal threat who was a valuable member of the community, though.

It's unlikely that someone who was being persistently defamed by Wikipedia would be a so-called "valuable member of the community" in other words an admin or an admin suck-up, for the following reason: If I were to write an article about someone like, say, Antaeus Feldspar, the article would just get removed. I haven't tried it, but perhaps I will, someday. I know the article won't even make it to "Votes for deletion", it will simply be speedily deleted. Similarly, if Daniel Brandt had been a "valuable member of the Wikipedia community", in other words a Wikipedia insider with admins on his side, an article about him would have been removed, and the people harassing him, like Jokestress, would have been banned from Wikipedia forthwith. That is the reality of Wikipedia.

In my case I was blocked from editing Wikipedia for so-called "harassment" of Antaeus Feldspar, after having been what I personally consider to have been a "valuable member of the Wikipedia community", at least in terms of the edits I did there. Check my editing record for yourself, if you wish. "Valuable members" like Feldspar don't need to make legal threats since they are free to vandalise and can simply get people blocked who oppose them. People who are stupid enough to try to contribute to the encyclopedia, in other words those non-valuable members who don't waste their time in sycophantic "requests for adminship" discussions, but spend their time actually editing articles, are not so lucky.

[Golbez]

Me: It also gets rid of anyone who actually has no interest in writing the pedia, and are just there to troll.

Donny: Your assumption apparently is that there are only two kinds of people, 1. people who are interested in writing Wikipedia and 2. people who are just there to troll.

I said nothing of the sort.

I didn't say that you did; I said that seems to be (notice the word "apparently") the underlying assumption you are making. The assumption that you seem to be making is that Wikipedia is a world unto itself, which is not subject to legal regulation, and that there are only two types of people "Wikipedians" and others whose opinions you do not value.

That statement is wrong, that is not the assumption I seem to be making.

Similarly, if Daniel Brandt had been a "valuable member of the Wikipedia community", in other words a Wikipedia insider with admins on his side,

Being a valuable member of the community, i.e. not an unvaluable member, does not require knowing a single admin. It simply means making good edits, and not vandalizing, or bitching about userboxes. However, I can understand my words were a poor choice; saying "community" implies engaging in the community, I should have said pedia. It's possible to be a quiet, happy, good editor and never touch the community aspect.

Check my editing record for yourself, if you wish.

I'm assuming User:Donny isn't you, since he has fewer than 50 edits. And you don't have a link in your profile, so I can't.

[Avillia]

So...You're going to Wikipedia, saying that if they do not either...

A. Provide you with the personal information to continue directed harassment (I use it both in the legal sense and the general sense [ie legal action is harassment]) and to violate the privacy (As there is precident you will, as all can see at Hivemind) at administrators whom you claim harassed you by barring them from a service they oversaw and making personal comments, when obtaining their information would (almost assured) be useless in making a legal case, as any harassment you claim would either fall under some form of protected free speech or some freedom they are allowed as a buisness to refuse, revoke, or limit service?

or

B. Remove all content they have about you, some or all of which may be protected by law, and all of which they are justified in including between your actions with the government, draftery, Google, and Wikipedia itself, including this legal action...

And to liven the deal your claim, you say that you will attempt to pursue them for their administrators harassing you under Title 47 Section 230 if they do not comply, as you believe that they qualify as a content provider rather than a service provider (one thing about which you are correct).

Then, to pad yourself with a bit of persuasion, you also cite No Legal Threats (which they can legally do) as bad faith for a judge (which it may or may not be), and saying that a DISCLAIMER IS NOT VALID BECAUSE NO ONE READS IT.

Boy oh boy, is this gonna be a hell of a ride!

[Wiki-Waki2]

I was browsing and discovered something about Slim Virgin wikipedia that proves she is a HUGE hyppocrite on privacy stuff. When somebody created a wikipedia article about another admin who is one of her friends she deleted it.

Go to this link and you can see it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...tory.7Cwatch.29

A kook editor named Johan Ayers was mad at an admin friend of Slim Virgin who is this Will McWhinney person in real life. The discussion shows that the admin who was the article's subject wanted it deleted for privacy reasons. Slim responded by deleting it and blocking it from being recreated even after Tony Sidaway undid her blocking. Now contrast that with the way Slim treated Daniel Brandt when he wanted his article deleted. She's a HYPPOCRITE!

When a regular person's privacy is invaded on Wikipedia Slim Virgin aides and abets it.

When one of her administrator friends gets his privacy invaded on Wikipedia Slim Virgin steps in to help!

[blissyu2]

With all due respect to Wiki-Waki2, I think that post should go in to another thread. Perhaps we can split it?

Anyway, on this topic, this is my opinion of it:

I agree with Daniel Brandt that taking the pages off of public space is good enough. So what if Wikimedia can see it, or even the administrators - the issue is the average Joe Bloe member of the public and whether or not they can see it. If Wikipedia takes it out of the public eye, then its as good as deleted. I know that you don't necessarily need to take it off the internet outright. Furthermore, the scraping is not really an issue either, since the issue is whether people will readily believe the lies. If the main page is gone, but there are scrapes or copies of the page, then sensible people will twig that the page was probably a lie, and not believe it. Thus defamation is no longer an issue.

Legal threats are a part of every law-abiding society. The legal process works in stages as follows:

1) Request for the person to cease the offending behaviour.
2) Once they refuse, find out if there is legally anything that you can do.
3) Advise them that they are breaking the law.
4) If they still refuse, advise them of the penalties that this may impose.
5) If they still refuse, contact a lawyer, to get them to contact the person, either by phone, in person, with a letter or e-mail.
6) If they still refuse, get the lawyer to send them a writ.
7) Offer them the opportunity to settle out of court.
8) Go to court.
9) During the court proceedings, still offer to settle out of court.
10) Find them guilty, and see them pay up, and forced to do what you wish.

Throughout the legal proceedings, legal threats play a very important role. Where money is an issue, or where anonymity and internationalism are issues, then legal threats become even more important. Thus legal threats over the internet are much more important than legal threats in person, because it is much more difficult to take actual legal action. And the legal threats over the internet need to be in public, so that others who are in a position to assist you can see that you have made them aware of the illegality of their action and hence can assist you with the endeavour.

If you remove legal threats from society, then you are forcing people to pay big sums of money for justice. If you remove legal threats from the internet, you are encouraging criminals, and leaving no room for justice.

[NSLE]

What is online "harassment", then? Having a factual, sourced article on a person is most certainly not harassment. There isn't any law broken here, but please enlighten the non-American.

[blissyu2]

What is online "harassment", then? Having a factual, sourced article on a person is most certainly not harassment. There isn't any law broken here, but please enlighten the non-American.

You're right. Having a factual, sourced article is not harassment. I don't think that Daniel Brandt is claiming to be harassed. However, it is certainly debatable whether the article is either factual or adequately sourced. They can't even get the "accountability activist" bit right.

Harassment is not the issue in that case.

[Donny]

What is online "harassment", then? Having a factual, sourced article on a person is most certainly not harassment.

Quite simply that is wrong. I'm pretty sure it would be possible to make a factual, sourced article about almost anyone which would count as harassment. If I were to post factual, sourced photographs of NSLE on the toilet or in the nude, I think that would count as harassment. To illustrate, let's take the case of the lovely Mr Antaeus Feldspar. He's had edits merely mentioning his real name removed from the edit history of Wikipedia, and I was permanently blocked from editing, for "harassing" him, when all I did was post info which anyone who cares to search Google could easily find - in other words, the factual, sourced information I posted (that his real name is ...) was considered harassment by Wikipedia. How the actions of editors like Jokestress towards Daniel Brandt could be seen as anything other than deliberate harassment is a mystery to me.