AndrewForson wrote:I pointed you to the Florida state website and gave you the reference number to look up the current registration of the Wikimedia Foundation Inc., whose latest filing can be found on that site, made on 11 January 2018, making it clear that this is indeed the WMF we know. I don't know what more you want, but I don't see that I'm under an obligation to do anything further to establish my point.
As usual, I don't know why you can't see the point being made. If they are incorporated in Flordia, which I did not dispute after you corrected me, why are they seeking the jurisdiction of California? I put you under the obligation of finding these facts out, as it seemed like fact hunting was your interest of the day. I may have even had a crazy idea that you might have remembered where this issue might have been discussed before.
AndrewForson wrote:As you pointed out originally, the underlying issue is the ready assumption of the total invulnerability of a US-based entity to legal action outside the jurisdiction. This is, I believe, not correct, and the enthusiastic way in which this myth is endorsed by self-styled critics is a sign that they have already drunk much -- perhaps too much -- of the kool-ade. A true critic would be looking for ways to attack a US-based entity, not perpetuating this myth. England is a friendly jurisdiction for libel cases, for example. A judgement against the WMF in an English court while unenforceable and therefore perhaps financially unattractive to the claimant would be a major propaganda disaster for them.
As Graaf points out, the WMF has servers in the Netherlands. Perhaps a successful case against the WMF in a Dutch court could result in a garnishee order against the payments between the WMF and their data centre operators, EvoSwitch. Presumably EvoSwitch would be highly unamused by such an outcome, maybe they would withdraw their cooperation. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer in England or the Netherlands. But such questions are questions of law outside the US, so simply chanting "Section 230" won't make them go away.
True critics would be discussing this.
I've been doing nothing more than making a point about Ming, in the thread about Ming. There are other threads the other issues can be mulled over, and you'll find I've always been an active participant in that, with the same opinions you attribute to a true critic. So I must be doing something right in your eyes.
If there is wider point to made here about what critics should and should not do, it is that Graaf, Bedson and Dykslyver need to stop wasting their time fighting with an ass like Ming on site like that, and instead use this board for sensible discussion of strategies and realities and the like. There are people here with practical experience with legal action against Wikipedia/ns.
There is nobody on that board who can help them, and nobody worth debating legal issues with. They are more likely to ban the sort of people who attempt legal action against the WMF, than give them a platform. At the insistence of asshats like Ming.