Florida Judge Rules Section 230 Bars Defamation Claim Against the Wikimedia Foundation (wikimedia.org) 72
The Wikimedia Foundation wins Florida defamation case; intermediary protections effectively protect Wikipedia article. From a story: On September 15th, in a victory for the Wikimedia movement and for all user-driven projects online, a Florida judge dismissed claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress against the Wikimedia Foundation. The judge found that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes the Wikimedia Foundation from liability for third-party content republished on Wikipedia. In other words, Section 230 helps Wikimedia safely host the work of Wikipedia's contributors and enables the effective volunteer-led moderation of content on the projects.
The case began when plaintiff Nathaniel White sued [PDF] the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2021, claiming that the Foundation was liable for the publication of photos that incorrectly identified him as a New York serial killer of the same name. Because of its open nature, sometimes inaccurate information is uploaded to Wikipedia and its companion projects, but the many members of our volunteer community are very effective at identifying and removing these inaccuracies when they do occur. Notably, this lawsuit was filed months after Wikipedia editors proactively corrected the error at issue in September 2020. Wikimedia moved to dismiss the amended complaint in June, arguing that plaintiff's claims were barred by Section 230.
In its order [PDF] granting the Wikimedia Foundation's motion to dismiss, the court affirmed that "interactive computer service providers" such as the Foundation generally cannot be held liable for third-party content like Wikipedia articles and photographs. The ruling also pointed out that the plaintiff's amended complaint attempted to "hold Wikimedia liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional function." In other words, the plaintiff argued that the Foundation should be treated like a traditional offline publisher and held responsible as though it were vetting all posts made to the sites it hosts, despite the fact that it does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects. The court rejected this argument because it directly conflicts with Section 230, which clearly states that when third-party content is involved (as was the case here), the online host is not liable for it.
The case began when plaintiff Nathaniel White sued [PDF] the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2021, claiming that the Foundation was liable for the publication of photos that incorrectly identified him as a New York serial killer of the same name. Because of its open nature, sometimes inaccurate information is uploaded to Wikipedia and its companion projects, but the many members of our volunteer community are very effective at identifying and removing these inaccuracies when they do occur. Notably, this lawsuit was filed months after Wikipedia editors proactively corrected the error at issue in September 2020. Wikimedia moved to dismiss the amended complaint in June, arguing that plaintiff's claims were barred by Section 230.
In its order [PDF] granting the Wikimedia Foundation's motion to dismiss, the court affirmed that "interactive computer service providers" such as the Foundation generally cannot be held liable for third-party content like Wikipedia articles and photographs. The ruling also pointed out that the plaintiff's amended complaint attempted to "hold Wikimedia liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional function." In other words, the plaintiff argued that the Foundation should be treated like a traditional offline publisher and held responsible as though it were vetting all posts made to the sites it hosts, despite the fact that it does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects. The court rejected this argument because it directly conflicts with Section 230, which clearly states that when third-party content is involved (as was the case here), the online host is not liable for it.
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
It is important to note that Section 230â(TM)s broad protection of Wikimedia projects and other online services does not leave litigants like Mr. White without options. Instead, the law simply requires that litigants direct their complaints at the individuals who made the statements at issue, rather than the forums where the statements were made.
So they want him to subpoena the IP address and sue the contributor who posted his image.
Seems like a fair compromise.
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Or sue the serial killer for using his name without permission...
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What is the Sci-Fi Story of like race of aliens that are attornies or something and their only mission in life to sue stuff?
That sounds like one of the stories on /r/HFY.
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230 sucks - its horrid law. There is nothing just about giving publishes a free pass to be completely irresponsible and anti-social because they tacked 'on the internet' onto the end of the business plan. Its bullshit.
It appears that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms "publisher", "free pass", "completely irresponsible", "anti-social", and "bullshit", as well as having not read TFS.
The Times have editors who are employed by (and under the direct control of) the corporation, and who preview content before the content is published. The English-language Wikipedia alone has tens of thousands of volunteer editors, none of whom are under corporate control. More than a billion edits have been made to more than
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The ruling seems to be correct. My very plain reading of 230 makes it clear to me that Wiki should be shielded from liability in this case under that law. However its a stupid and very unfair law. Going after the guy who posted his image is fine in so much as that person is responsible too, but its Wiki that gave him the megaphone. Its Wiki's involvement that enabled the real harm. You could sue the Times for libel even for editorial page content and win because they have a system they control that decides
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Look I know mindlessly regurgitating ETF talking points and repeating FUD spread by Mark Zukerberg and Jack Dorsey is easier than doing a little actual research and thinking on the subject but your facts are wrong.
Go back and look at both the Prodigy and Compuserve decisions before CDA-230. Slashdot more likely falls on the Compuserve end of things - it would be perfect fine. Wikipedia on the other hand is probably in prodigy territory because they have 'editors' that are associated with the organization ev
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Wikipedia has not set itself up as a source of truth, though some people prefer to spin it that way, to make Wikipedia a more inviting target.
Wikipedia is actually a pastiche of communal expertise, where expertise are the sources suitable for citation by Wikipedia standards. The single most important criteria for a suitable source is that the source is not self-published by an individual with no editorial supervision by competent editorial staff with skin in the game. The second most important criteria is t
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Wikipedia is not a megaphone, and has innumerable processes in place to remove content that crosses the line, and eventually also contributors who continue to cross the line.
I've seen no end of complaints directed against Wikipedia by butt-hurt former contributors who never fully grasped that Wikipedia is not a megaphone. When the complaint goes the other direction, it's al
Section 230 is the First Amendment of the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, this is exactly why Section 230 exists. Sites such as Wikipedia, Slashdot etc, could simply not exist without it. It would destroy innovation, choice and small business on the web. Section 230 is the Bill of Rights on the internet and simply codifies what should be obvious to begin with: only someone who writes something is liable for it. Going after something like Wikipedia for what someone put there is like going after your local supermarket because of what a shopper said there. These are public places where people talk and the electronic equivalent of a shopping mall, a store, or a bar.
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How exactly do you think Facebook and Twitter act as a "publisher?". Exactly what behavior is it that you think doesnt fall under it?
I keep reading people complainign about it, then when pressed , either don't answer, presumably because they dont know and just heard it somewhere, or worse cite things that 230 was infact designed to protect.
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...can't have it both ways
Yes they can.
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So, I wonder if that would apply to Twitter falsely claiming misinformation over the woman who died from the vaccine?
https://www.clarkcountytoday.c... [clarkcountytoday.com]
Essentially, their commentary was actually defamatory against a true statement of what caused her death.
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That's a fundamental misreading of 230 as a well the complete opposite of why 230 exists.
No Section 230 Does Not Require Platforms to Be Neutral [eff.org]
Indeed, one of the reasons why Congress first passed Section 230 was to enable online platforms to engage in good-faith community moderation without fear of taking on undue liability for their users’ posts. In two important early cases over Internet speech, courts allowed civil defamation claims against Prodigy but not against Compuserve; since Prodigy deleted some messages for “offensiveness” and “bad taste,” a court reasoned, it could be treated as a publisher and held liable for its users’ posts. Former Rep. Chris Cox recalls reading about the Prodigy opinion on an airplane and thinking that it was “surpassingly stupid.” That revelation led to Cox and then Rep. Ron Wyden introducing the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, which would later become Section 230.
Do you really think that a blog should be considered a "publisher" of comments posted by 3rd parties because the owner removes a few bot-generated spam posts?
Do you think that old-school forums are "publishers" because they have moderators who enforce that posts stay on-topic?
How do you think the Internet has worked up until this point? If what you think were actua
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47 US Code Section 230 (c)(2): Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;
So what you're doing above, claiming "If they claim 230 then they can't fi
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Perhaps this is what is being labeled as troll:
is reminding us that conservatives are legally illiterate
Exactly what makes you think the person you are replying to is conservative? Also, why do you believe that being bigoted against conservatives is ok? You are acting like the KKK yourself when you act like a bigot by attributing the actions of an individual to a group, it is frankly no different than the claim that all black people like watermelon, and equally ignorant. There are conservative lawyers, who presumably would know more about the law than you, but
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OK, thank you for confirming, you are a bigot. You are just as bad as the KKK you like to talk about so much. You are blinded by your hate, and have lost all perspective.
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No, just a realist who can't stand inbred sisterfucking KKK rejects from society like you, especially when you try that DARVO [uoregon.edu] "you're just as bad as blah blah blah" routine. But that pedophile abuser tactic is fully expected from conservatives, who support child molesting priests and wife-beaters.
Now do me a favor and go fuck yourself, I don't give a shit about some sisterfucking KKK retard calling me a "bigot." I bet you were one of the white-supremacist afterbirths posting the KKK's "yay Columbus" memes
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Like me? What in your twisted mind makes you think I am even conservative?
Not inbred, not KKK, not a reject. But you, you are someone who generalizes about groups you know little about, you are generalizing about 34% of the US voting population, that they are all these horrible strawmen you made up in your mind. You are exactly like members of the KKK, as ignorance drives them as it drives you.
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Yeah I've got this a few times. Its kind of bullshit behavior.
Frankly I'm getting a bit over this place. Its supposed to be a "News for nerds" but the readerships favorite past time is shitting on science articles, denying climate change, banging on about the evils of vaccine and mask pushes and other anti-science nonsense. And then they have the gall to claim to be the smart ones in the room because libertarianism.
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Take a guess at how that works out (Score:3)
Seriously, I've been saying this for ever. Section 230 needs to be changed so that the platforms can either A) choose to let all content through (less ones that are truly illegal, and in those cases the authorities should be notified) in exchange for full immunity from lawsuits for other people's content.
Spam is not illegal. Neither are swastikas. Neither are the crazy ramblings of assholes. However, the all make everyone hate being on a forum. For example, I was reading tool reviews in a woodworking forum and some fucking nutjob was making crazy claims that he needs to buy all his tools this year before "Biden and Pelosi comes for his power drills." What do you do about comments like that? They're offtopic, completely false, make legit users HATE using the forum. I looked at the guy's profile, think
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It's one thing to be off-topic and another to state an unwanted opinion on a relevant topic. If someone is posting off-topic comments, they should be given warnings, according to the site's policies. I'd hope that the site has a policy that after 2-3 warnings, the account will be banned and closed. I believe the site should leave the comments in place and note that the user has been banned/left/deleted. diyaudio.com does just that. This way people can still see the comments, but spammers will be taken
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Kids are either mature enough and educated enough to ignore that garbage as well as you and I can or they don't belong online outside of carefully walled moderated gardens like say Nintendo and Leap frog provide.
Its that simple. pre-adolecent children don't belong on the internet without strict supervision and more than they belong playing in the street or near water without a someone older and responsible for their safety present. Adolescents probably don't belong on the internet either without at least so
Sounds like a guy who doesn't have kids (Score:2)
Kids are either mature enough and educated enough to ignore that garbage as well as you and I can or they don't belong online outside of carefully walled moderated gardens like say Nintendo and Leap frog provide.
Its that simple. pre-adolecent children don't belong on the internet without strict supervision and more than they belong playing in the street or near water without a someone older and responsible for their safety present. Adolescents probably don't belong on the internet either without at least some occasional check ins with grown ups.
Kewl theory. Try reproducing. Let me know how it goes. I've got a real job. I've got a life and I've got less than saintly and angelic kids. Oh and you and I ...yup, we never did anything without our parent's permission.
My kids PROBABLY realize that assholes calling their Mexican friends rapists or ranting about the Jews are probably not to be taken seriously, but I just don't want to expose them to it. I don't want to view them myself.
It's like my local supermarket. Walking around with feces
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Everyone gets to curate the user content any way they want. You are focused on "scary corporations" without realizing the burden your scheme would force on everyone. I should not be forced to let trolls spam my personal forum to absolute unusability, pay to keep their content online or face legal consequences. It's absolutely absurd. Trolls can fuck off and make their own web page. That shit ain't at all difficult. You can easily get online for half the cost of a Netflix subscription. But no, can't expect t
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Seriously, you've been wrong forever.
What you want is to destroy comment sections.
Your proposal would shut down Slashdot.
The clue that your proposal was ridiculous and unworkable should have been that your parenthesized exception is as long as your first rule.
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You are proposing to abolish 230. The scenario you propose is what existed before section 230, and it is specifically what section 230 is meant to replace.
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Going back to the grocery store example above then, do you think a grocery store should be sued for what their customers say in the store just because they occasionally kick someone out for saying something the owner (or a worker) finds especially offensive?
Facebook and Twitter aren't "filter[ing] legal free speech", they are enforcing their terms of service. You could argue that they are only selectively enforcing these terms but they aren't filtering free speech since there is no guarantee of free speech
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How exactly do you think Facebook and Twitter act as a "publisher?".
The way Facebooks curate posts, and decide what people see. They can decide to bury 999 posts saying sg_oneill is a really nice person, and push that one post that says sg_oneill is a bit of a bastard to millions of users.
They might not be literally writing the content, but with the control they have over which posts do and do not get seen, they are effectively publishing it.
Exactly what behavior is it that you think doesnt fall under it [section 230]?
And that's the problem - at the moment Facebook are covered by section 230. They are not liable for publisher-like behaviour many thin
Except they aren't + your nicknames are weak (Score:1)
Issue is some companies also abuse it claiming 230 protection as a platform but then act like a publisher example fakebook and shitter. Wiki claims "from wikipedia" as if they are the publisher of the that info which is where it makes question if they are platform or publisher.
Sorry, buddy. They set rules on their private platform and guess what, they enforced them on you...sorry, I know that sucks...go enjoy getting your identity stolen on Parler and Gab if you don't like it. By your logic, any club with a bouncer is now a theater if they don't let you do whatever you want, without repercussions. There are many more steps needed to become a "publisher" than simply setting rules about hate speech and active, easily disproven misinformation. They "publish" nothing. A publishe
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That's the point of the law. That's precisely what it is meant to permit.
Sites are supposed to be able to exercise editorial discretion in removing content that they don't want to host while allowing other content to be posted. And the law is very straightforward -- no matter what, a site is not a publisher of third party material.
Without it you would either have zero control by the site -- even for spam, porn, hate speech, and malware, which would make every site unusable -- or you would have the site no
Re: Section 230 is the First Amendment of the Inte (Score:3)
While I agree that section 230 is useful, your comparison to talk in a supermarket isn't accurate. Talk is ephemeral and easily forgotten.
A real comparison would be someone putting a defaming note on the supermarket bulliten board at the entrance and not leaving it there for several years even after knowing it to be untrue. I'll bet the plaintiff would have better luck in that lawsuit.
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I guess that is true, since according to current theories espoused by certain people, everyone is racist. Therefore it would follow that everyone who claims to care about the First is a racist, since everyone is.
Many people who aren't racists care about the First, if you don't, that shows only that you haven't been targeted by the censors yet.
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Folks, this is exactly why Section 230 exists. Sites such as Wikipedia, Slashdot etc, could simply not exist without it.
So what?
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utter nonsense - there are plenty of sites with forums and user content based internationally that don't have 230 protection. They even exist in places like Germany and the UK that have laws which are pretty significant infringements on what Americans have traditionally regarded as protected speech and at least as far the UK goes society that is every bit as litigious.
This entire line of argument is what people on Slashdot used to call FUD, its based on nothing but speculation, contrary to all recent eviden
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In some places, lack of section 230 causes problems too.
https://apnews.com/article/tec... [apnews.com]
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I don't see a problem with that decision at all. Facebook does let you delete comments on your posts. So if you consider facebook a 'platform' and not a 'publisher' its a perfectly reasonable action to say posters need to monitor and police the comments on what they post.
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You have gotten this backwards. Section 230 allows sites to censor content while still being exempt from litigation due to illegal content. It is designed consciously to incentivize and expand moderation and censorship.
Spam (Score:1, Troll)
Without Section 230 it will be illegal to take down or down-moderate off-topic posts on slashdot or any other website. Imagine what slashdot would become then, if it can even risk existing. At least the swastika guy, the "beating of a liberal" guy, and that dude who doesn't know how to use the modern internet would be happy.
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"Without Section 230 it will be illegal to take down or down-moderate off-topic posts on slashdot"
Not quite. Without section 230, it would be illegal to have those posts there in the first place. It would require sites like slashdot to actively moderate (ie "Post waiting for aproval") everything posted.
As has been pointed out before, the situation with trump, without 230 , facebook and twitter would likely have been forced to remove him pretty much day one due to his constant breaking of side rules. 230 let
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The issue is that without Section 230, every website that allows user comments will have to read and vet every single post by everyone and determine whether they can be sued because of it. How many forums have the resources and confidence to do that? Nobody would take on such a risk and expense. Repealing Section 230 would end discourse on the internet.
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The swastika art is down-moderated quickly, and thus not a nuisance. In other words, it is censored fairly quickly and that serves as a deterrence. After a section 230 repeal, nobody in their right mind would choose curation -- it is legally far too risky, not to mention the costs. The only viable option is "letting everything through" .. and there is no way to figure out what is legal or illegal. Have you tried running a niche website? The biggest problem is spam. People advertising crap, getting into argu
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Slashdot doesn't remove the content, it's available to be viewed by anyone, and you don't have to go looking. You just have to browse at -1. That's an interesting definition of "censor."
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I think that's too limiting. Almost no sites could afford to take the liability risk of the curation option. Instead we could try requiring the curation be more transparent, with the viewer having at least some control over what content they see. On slashdot I can browse at -1 right now if I like, and see all the ASCII art I want.
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And that stupid stupid choice is precisely what existed prior to section 230 and what prompted the creation of the law. The sensible option is that sites can choose what user content they do and don't want to post without being liable as a result.
Don't like it? Go to a different site, or start your own. It's not hard.
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I agree. 230 came in because internet providers had been relying on a common law principle of "innocent disemination". Essentially if the company didnt realise the illegal post was there they had a defense.
The problem was, that defense wasn't a strong one and really only worked on a narrow selection of circumstances. Which put open publishing sites in a pretty bad situation.
230 fixed that. Providers are still required to take down violating content, but only when its brought to their attention.
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That's not true.
You are perhaps thinking of the DMCA, which at 17 USC 512 has notice and takedown provisions related to copyright infringement.
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No it does not require them to be deleted. Slashdot could still claim to be platform or a common carrier. Before the CDA and its section 230 the Compuserve case already pretty much established that if you don't curate the content you are not responsible. The Prodigy case hit the other side of it, if you do curate the content you are responsible. That is a very very reasonable compromise.
The question is, if you build a system that lets the community 'curate/moderate' like slashdot but than just sit back and
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Prodigy had volunteer curators from the user community and is literally the case establishing liability for failure to do a perfect job of removing unlawful content. So it's not hard to answer your question, and it's certainly too big a risk to fuck about with.
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The point is though those volunteers were in an employee relationship with Prodigy, they were offically recognized individuals empowered by the company to effect company policy. Slashdot moderators are people that have not relationship to slashdot beyond having created an account and been randomly assigned some points.
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I see no reason why it would matter.
From Stratton Oakmont:
The choice of material to go into a newspaper and the decisions made as to the content of the paper constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment, and with this editorial control comes increased liability. ...
PRODIGY's conscious choice, to gain the benefits of editorial control, has opened it up to a greater liability than CompuServe and other computer networks that make no such choice. ...
The Court now turns to the second issue presented here, of whether Epstein was PRODIGY's agent for the purposes of the acts and omissions alleged in the complaint. Agency is a legal relationship which results from the manifestation of consent of one person to allow another to act on his or her behalf and subject to his or her control, and consent by the other to so act.
If a traditional newspaper publisher hired an editor to make decisions on their behalf, or if they allowed anyone to come in off of the street and make decisions on their behalf, the point is that editorial control and judgment has been exercised under the aegis of the newspaper. What does it matter how they handle their hiring decisions, or if they support crowdsourcing? While it would not be difficult to contest agency when users are merely postin
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Good News (Score:1)
Right to be forgiven? (Score:2)
Hello? Are we forgetting that the entire point of a prison sentence is that after that, it is FORGIVEN?
Because ANYONE should have the ability to leave his past behind, and become an upstanding citizen again. Even serial killers. (Example: Somebody with a neuro-chemical imbalance that self-corrected when he got older. Like, e.g. every schizophrenic person with the right kind of delusions.)
That is the entire problem with recording people: Somebody can still hate and terrorize you, *decades* after you've alrea
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Hello? Are we forgetting that the entire point of a prison sentence is that after that, it is FORGIVEN?
Umm actually no, the point of a prison sentence is to do some combination of the following: deter, rehabilitate, incapacitate. Forgiveness has exactly nothing to do with. In face the fact that many people will never forgive or trust you again is an important element of that deterrence.
Clearly a Misuse (Score:2)
Wikimedia does not fall under S230, full stop.
It is curated. They put "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" while removing all attributions. This case is cut and dry.
Wrong finding (Score:2)
Wiki[p|m]edia exercises editorial control over all content. It is not just a conduit for comments, except in the comments sections. Section 230 was designed to protect conduits for user content, not to protect editorial content.
The correct finding would have been to summarily dismiss the complaint, because the error was promptly corrected and admitted to.
Ianal, but so what? I can still know what the law is.
Sue whomever uploaded content (Score:2)
That might give pause to all of the inaccurate published content that lead us into the gate of hell in 2016-2020.
If the authors can't be defended by the publisher, as this is pretty much what this ruling says, then they'll definitely think twice before leading us on, and about publishing unsubstantiated claims.
If they are immune due to section 230 then they can't defend those that published the material, or they'll loose their 230 immunity. You can't be immune and be a publisher.