Battleangel

I find it appalling. Now there is even a Class Action that aims to abuse the US legal system to shut them down. Above the law? Have these people ever been on the Net? This is the strength of the Net and it is something we are not ready to part with just because some sourpuss is intimidated by new technology.

Wikipedia Class Action - There is a problem with the operation and functionality of Wikipedia. The basic problem is that none of the Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., nor any of the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible and therefore accountable for the content.

They believe themselves to be above the law. Our intention and the purpose of this website is multi-fold. Specifically, we seek to achieve the following:

• Expose the inherent faults and flaws of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia
• Force Wikimedia Foundation Inc., through legal action, to change its current practices that permit anyone to post content to their website, without formal attribution and without recourse back to Wikimedia Foundation and or the author of the content
• Recover substantial monetary damages, on behalf of those who have suffered as a direct result of Wikimedia’s flaw business model
• Establish a precedent that will ensure similar websites are held responsible for their content

Lets face it, this is a very limited problem. That in fact doesn’t hurt anyone (unless the “libel” is true of course). I sense a conspiracy by those that would like to keep information locked up and detest the free and open system that Wikipedia stands for. So they point to a few bad apples and practical jokes like the Seigenthaler story. And of course they show how dedicated they are to the truth by aiming for “substantial monetary damages.” The idea that sites should be stringently responsible for their content seems like a sure path towards censorship to me. It’s trendy to lambast Wikipedia, but the libel they are accused of letting slip due to their “business model” (really?!) is no different from the libel that is being staged via sites like the one above. Better a few offended people (that can after all request a change) than breaking the entire system and starting down a slippery slope. Same argument as with the “child porn” filters. There may be endemic problems but they are not sufficient to warrant a blunt force approach that will ruin a system that is working great for the vast majority. And a system that holds great potential and ideological appeal. I can’t help but feel that there are darker forces at play here.
As for Seigenthaler, the victim of perhaps the most well-known prank, he stated that the matter was closed as far as he was concerned. But then again, it takes a champion of free speech to do that. And he did admit he felt awkward even pursuing the defacer in question, because of his dedication to the principle of free speech.