Take a look at this edit that was published whoops, "service provided" on Wikipedia:



That vandalistic edit lasted for more than 20 hours on Wikipedia -- the encyclopedia where most vandalistic edits are quickly reverted.

We know what Fuzzy Zoeller did when his article went vandalized for a number of weeks. What do people think is the duration where a clearly libelous edit of a wealthy and celebrated person becomes realistically actionable in a court of law?

I know some of you are going to say "two seconds is too long", and I would morally agree with you. But, let's be serious about the "realistically actionable" criterion. I'm thinking that 20 hours is starting to approach an actionable limit. I think that 3 full days definitely would be.

I wonder how many other libelous edits are just lurking out there, but nobody's noticed them yet?

Greg

According to UK law, which would be much more sympathetic to the
person libelled than US law, I don't think the amount of time is the issue,
as long as they have an innocent dissemination defence.



Now, a relevant case in the UK would be Godfrey v Demon Internet Ltd
(case analysis) Basically, the the UK court ruled that Demon failed to
have a defence under b and c of the above law after they had been
asked by the subject to remove the defamatory material. The
defamatory material remained on Demon's servers for 10 days before
it was removed, so Godfrey sued for damages from that period of time.

A couple quotes:





Disclaimer: Not a lawyer in any country.

Duly noted, but please don't get caught up in the editor/publisher/distributor thing that Section 230 involves. Mind you, Fuzzy Zoeller isn't suing the Wikimedia Foundation. He's suing the IP address that actually generated the libelous edit -- a computer within the Miami office of Josef Silny & Associates.

Let's focus on whether a claim is actionable against the author, and whether the duration of its posting on a Top 10 website has effect on the action. Presumably, we'd be seeing a lot more lawsuits against IP addresses if there was a widely-held notion that even 2 seconds of electronic defamation constitutes libel.

Greg

Realistically, unless the poster could show that what they wrote was true (which is possible, but seems unlikely. Let's assume it's false for the sake of discussion) they'd be liable as soon as Wikipedia's servers were displayed the edited version. Of course, in many jurisdictions you'd only be able to sue for some realistic damages - if libel's been up there a short time, and it's unlikely to result in more than nominal damages (the legal concept, ie. you'd get roughly $1) unless its there long enough for lots of people to see. Libel timing to be worth actioning will depend on how well you're known - if I made a libellous biography of my landlord, it could probably sit for months without being actionable, because nobody would look at it. Conversely, libel on say, George W. Bush is probably actionable within minutes.

Top 10 website doesn't mean that every page is routinely viewed - a page that is published but unviewed is unlikely to generate worthwhile damages - if I wrote an incredibly nasty letter about you Greg, but then nailed it to a tree in the middle of a forest in northern Quebec, you couldn't sue for anything worthwhile, because no one would have read it.

In Zoeller's case, his wiki bio is the #1 ghit for his name - if you could get the number of google searchs in a day for his name, you could estimate how many people saw it and start thinking about daamges. Same goes for Capriati.

There's more too, you'd have to figure out how likely people are to believe wikipedia (surprisingly likely, so it probably does do more significant damage to one's reputation than they'd expect) and figure out some $$$s.

But the short of it is - it really depends on how popular your name is as a google search.

I am designing a special template just for you, Clutch.

Jonny

I think it becomes a matter of the care a reasonably prudent operator, aware of the ease of vandalism, would take to prevent defamation. The question becomes is it reasonable to allow anon edits and then rely on the voluntary efforts of other volunteers to detect and remove the vandalism? Having actual notice (a request to remove the defamation) would certainly mark the absolute outside limit how much time is reasonable to remove the vandalism, but what is reasonable might well be a much shorter period of time. Also failure to comply with a request for retraction can subject the defamer to a higher amount of damages. The level of care required would be much higher if the defamed person was determined not to be a public figure. This would not be determined based on WP's notability standards. Other factors determining liability might include who saw the defamation and what the impact was on reputation. It also seems possible that given the right circumstances the article might still be defamatory even after the offending statements are removed but persists buried in the edit history.

Given these factors 20 hours seems too long to me.

Of course this is not legal advice but is intended for discussion purposes only. Anyone further interested or affected by these issues should consult a local attorney.

I think you have to look deeper, though. 20 hours of vandalism would be an eternity on George W. Bush. 20 hours on a tennis star who's no longer playing competitively, for an article with less than 5 non-bot edits in a month? Harder to say.

Being pregnant isn't really a smear on someone's name, but doing dirty things with children is. I tend not to worry too much about vandalism though, as it is easily removed and the only reason it might remain for a while on some articles is if the article is comparatively unimportant. It lasted for 20 hours because she is no longer all that important, and because the article isn't checked often. The real damage caused by Wikipedia is done by established users who have an agenda in mind.