Interesting.

[Graaf Statler]

Does anyone know about this legal Greek law case? Because it has interesting aspects. It's withdrawn, that is a pity because we never knows how it ended up. BUT, it makes clear a editor out of the EU can end up in front of a local court for his beaver on Wikipedia. The case was under the Greek judicial system, so the only thing there Legal Fees Assistance Program could do was to pay there lawyer. But, in Europe, I explained before is the role of a lawyer in a law case is very, very limited.
And of course it was only a Pyrrhic victory for all Wikimedians and not a real victory, because it makes very clear how dangers editing wikipedia can be, because you can be sued in your one country. Under your one legal system. And like I said before, how can they talk about a victory if a case is withdrawn?

[ericbarbour]

Thanks, I had missed that. Adding it to the book wiki. We have an article about it:

Katsanevas squabble

The Greek-language Wikipedia was little-noticed, until 2014, when a long-simmering dispute boiled over into a lawsuit. The plaintiff being Greek politician Theodoros Katsanevas, the defendant being the person who "defamed him" on el-WP, administrator Dimitris "Diu" Liourdis. It turned out that Katsanevas had known who Liourdis was in real life since 2009, as Liourdis had been mucking with the politician's article since then, and perhaps before. The edit history shows that several sockpuppets tried to remove a section in which Katsanevas' former father-in-law, late Greek prime minister Andreas Papandreou, said that Katsanevas was a "disgrace". And each time, Diu reverted the removal. Diu had originally placed the comment in the article on 20 June 2009. Katsanevas, and his dispute, were unknown outside el-WP; except on Italian Wikipedia, for unknown reasons.

At first, the suit was only covered in Greek media. [1][2][3][4][5]

Of course, Katsanevas' lawsuit infuriated Wikipedia insiders, with the "how dare he sue one of us" sort of anger. On 12 February, people from the WMF and English Wikipedia got involved. An absurd "We Are All Diu" page was started. Then on 14 February WMF legal advisor Michelle Paulson offered to help Liourdis with his legal expenses, using the WMF's recently-created "legal defense fund" for "editors". Which had gotten almost no use prior to the Diu squabble. El-WP also started a petition, which had 170 names at last count, some from Italian Wikipedia.

This led to coverage in English-language media. From the Ars Technical article:

"Dimitris Liourdis, a 23-year-old trainee lawyer from Athens, was sued for libel last year for writing about a Greek politician. Last week, the judge overseeing the case issued an order that he remove the article from the site. That got the attention of the Wikimedia Foundation, which has now made a public vow to support Liourdis throughout the litigation.
""[T]he statements were and still are supported by reputable secondary sources," wrote Wikimedia Foundation lawyer Michelle Paulson in a blog post published Friday. "The Greek Wikipedia community decided, through discussion, that they were appropriate for the article. Mr. Katsanevas has ignored these facts and is now using the legal system against those who do not share his financial means and influence." Loudris, who writes on Greek Wikipedia as "Diu," faces monetary and criminal penalties over the article he edited. The article mentions that Katsanevas was called a "family disgrace" in the will of his father-in-law, former Greek prime minster Andreas Papandreou. [...] The will's authenticity is disputed by Katsanevas, but the "disgrace" comment was widely reported in the Greek and international press, including the Italian newspaper Corriere de la Sella, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune. "We hope that Mr. Katsanevas will reconsider his pursuit of this unconscionable lawsuit, which we see an assault on our users, our projects, and freedom of speech," wrote Paulson. "Until then, we stand with Diu.""
"In an e-mail interview with Ars, Liourdis described the situation in the courtroom last week. The hearing lasted just a few minutes, he wrote, and only the lawyers were allowed to speak. "My lawyer tried to explain [to the] judge how Wikipedia works and that I couldn't effectively remove the text," he wrote. "Anybody who knows how Wikipedia works, knows that if he removes ... a text, which is verified by reliable sources, finally he will [be] banned from the project. We pointed that [out], but unfortunately she didn't understand." Liourdis followed the judge's instructions to delete the text, but sure enough, it was quickly replaced. At press time, a version of the Greek Wikipedia page on Katsanevas, translated via Google Translate, shows that the "disgrace" comment remains. [...] Liourdis said that he's standing his ground, with the help of Wikimedia's Legal Fees Assistance Program. "I'm very delighted with the reaction of Wikimedia," he wrote. [...]"
"Katsanevas is seeking €200,000 from Liourdis. The case proper is scheduled to be heard in 2016; a hearing on the preliminary injunction to remove the offending statements is scheduled for March 11, 2014. The order in place now is a "pre-preliminary injunction," according to Wikimedia's Paulson. In addition to Liourdis, Katsanevas also sued the Greek Free/Open Source Software Society. According to Paulson, the open software group is "a nonprofit organization in Greece that Mr. Katsanevas mistakenly believed to be the organization running Wikipedia." [...] Katsanevas served as a PASOK member of Greek Parliament from 1989 until 2004. Today, he is a college professor. In 2013, he founded a movement known as Drachma Five Star, which advocates for Greece moving away from the Euro and re-adopting the drachma as its currency. The Wikimedia Foundation declined to comment on the case beyond Paulson's blog post, but this case marks the first time Wikimedia has gone public with its legal-fee coverage for editors. Katsanevas didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Twitter."

And so, the Wikipedians started adding articles to other language Wikipedias about Katsanevas -- all of which (at first) focused on the Diu squabble and lawsuit, and said very little about Katsanevas himself. The creator of the English Wikipedia article, predictably, was that exceptional troll Andy Mabbett.

In April 2018 Wikimedia ran an item saying that the legal action had "come to an end", as Katsenevas withdrew his claims. Liorudis and the associated defendants had indeed received financial support from the Wikimedia "Legal Fees Assistance Program". "This result is a victory for all Wikimedians working in good faith to improve articles with reliable sources, and the Foundation will continue to support users who are targeted for their good faith editing and crucial support work on Wikipedia."

[AndrewForson]

The Legal Fees Assistance Program "may be available, at WMF’s sole discretion, to Wikimedia community members who donate time and effort to any Wikimedia site or project in a support role, that is, an administrator, arbitrator, email response, or project governance role specified in this document."

So, not common-or-garden contributors -- the people likely to actually get into this sort of trouble. Liourdis was eligible for funding because he was an administrator. If it were known that mere volunteers were never going to get this sort of help, it would provoke ructions, and might even be a serious discouragement to contributors. HTD!

[ericbarbour]

The Legal Fees Assistance Program "may be available, at WMF’s sole discretion, to Wikimedia community members who donate time and effort to any Wikimedia site or project in a support role, that is, an administrator, arbitrator, email response, or project governance role specified in this document."

So, not common-or-garden contributors -- the people likely to actually get into this sort of trouble. Liourdis was eligible for funding because he was an administrator. If it were known that mere volunteers were never going to get this sort of help, it would provoke ructions, and might even be a serious discouragement to contributors. HTD!

Correct, and I suspect that if more content writers knew about this nasty little business, they might not contribute anymore. BTW there was an Italian defamation case that was also settled recently. There was NO media coverage of the Greek case being settled, and only this about the Italian one:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180 ... cles.shtml

[Graaf Statler]

There are more tricky elements in this program.

*To receive assistance, a user in a support role must: Have acted in compliance with the WMF Terms of Use, applicable privacy policies, and applicable community and Foundation policies.

So, in the case of trolling or copyright violations you have to pay your one bill.


*This assistance will not include payment of fines or damages (including any award of attorney's fees), and WMF will have discretion over whether the program pays for a particular lawyer.

So, If you are convicted it's your one business. And I don't think they pay your lawyer because in this case you have broken the terms of use. It's the perfect Catch-22. The program is nothing, it's a empty shell.

[AndrewForson]

This all makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of what the WMF gets out of it. Firstly, they can say that they have a scheme in place to protect volunteers, which keeps the masses happy (untill they need it, of course); secondly, they can minimise the amount of money they actually pay out under the scheme by these terms and conditions; thirdly, for the people who have spotted that it's a perquisite for the inner circle, it provides a further incentive to climb the greasy pole and get their snouts into the trough. In essence, it's yet another scheme for doling out smallish portions of the donors money to keep the cult members happy and getting favourable publicity.

[Graaf Statler]

Yep. The legal protection of WMF in particular in the EU (About other legal systems I don't know) is like I said before a empty shel. If you end up in court you are complete on your one, and the worst of all in the wiki history. Everything is stored there, you can't denier your roll. And the American Terms of Use, most times translated, don't protect you to end up in front of a European court as you can see.

Wikipedia is a legal present of the devil, a egal flambeau. There is not any, any legal protection against the erratic European courts because of that Code Napoleon. Like Crowsnest and I explained before you have to know your way trough those systems, which are different in every European country. And even Dutch lawyers often don't know that way I have noticed, so how can American lawyers and volunteers help you if they don't know the wiki system and local legal regulation from deep inside? Simple, they can't. Because the role of a European lawyer is extreme limited in our the common people legal system, he can only summarise your story and highlight the importante points, that is all.

[CrowsNest]

So, If you are convicted it's your one business. And I don't think they pay your lawyer because in this case you have broken the terms of use. It's the perfect Catch-22. The program is nothing, it's a empty shell.

This is very relevant to the monkey selfie case. Losing the case would immediately invalidate the WMF's contract to provide assitance. And if they decided to then just gift it at their discretion, they would effectively be admitting they paid to defend someone who had broken their own ToU, and they might not want to do that, as it would show their own legal team were too stupid to see that defeat coming, and the movement in general is too greedy for other people's legally proven rightful intellectual property to give a shit.

[Abd]

Italian Court Rules The Wikimedia Foundation Is Just A Hosting Provider For Wikipedia's Volunteer-Written Articles

The article is, ah, over-optimistic. This is what the article has from the Court:

In a ruling that provides strong protection for Wikipedia's community governance model, the Court once again recognized that the Wikimedia Foundation is a hosting provider, and that the volunteer editors and contributors create and control content on the Wikimedia projects. The Court also made clear that a general warning letter, without additional detail about the online location, unlawfulness, or the harmful nature of the content as recognized by a court, does not impose a removal obligation on a hosting provider like the Wikimedia Foundation.
... the Court took notice of Wikipedia's unique model of community-based content creation, and the mechanisms by which someone can suggest edits or additions to project content. It found that Wikipedia has a clear community procedure for content modification, which Mr. Previti should have used to address his concerns. He could have reached out to the volunteer editors, provided reliable sources, and suggested amendments to the article, instead of sending a general warning letter to the Foundation.

I agree with the ruling of the court, at least in part. It is not correct, however, that "Wikipedia has a clear community procedure for content modification." It has a sloppy, ad hoc, unreliable method for that. There is a fundamental problem which the court did not address, it appears. Suppose that there is a biased community, with anonymous members, prone to defamation of those it dislikes. This community elects members of the Board of Trustees for its "encyclopedia project," as a Foundation. If someone comes in who is seen as "not one of us" by the community -- on Wikipedia they call it "not here to build an encyclopedia" -- , if they object to the article, their edits are reverted and they are ignored or blocked. With copyright violation, the community polices that, but the Foundation, if it rejects a takedown order, can become liable for copyright violation. What about libel?

Suppose the wiki was Rightpedia, and the target of the article is Oliver D. Smith. If Rightpedia refuses to take down libel, does the owner of Rightpedia become liable? If not, then "mobs," ad hoc groups of faceless users, may harass and defame with targets having no effective recourse.

With the monkey selfie, the WMF decided to rule the copyright invalid, on an argument that has never been tested in court. It is often misstated, as claiming that the monkey holds the copyright, or can't hold copyright, but most who have argued about this miss that precedent is clear in copyright law: if one who arranges a photograph makes a significant contribution, they may be a co-owner (and under some conditions possibly a sole owner), and a co-owner may enforce copyright as if a sole owner.

In the Italian case, there appear to be technical details that led to the Court's conclusion. Had a demand been clearly stated and specific, as the Court wrote that it was not, would it then have been binding, assuming that the article was factually defamatory?

In the case I am considering, the content and community process is not at issue, as such. There are some users who may have personally defamed me, but the case with the Foundation is over WMF support for the defamation by issuing a public global ban, even though they don't state the reason.

There seems to be some background assumption that a "community" cannot commit libel, that it is immune. At what number of members does this immunity arise? Wikipedia has no due process, the Court was mistaken. There are suggested guidelines and even policies are not fixed, they are routinely disregarded. Absolutely, the WMF, with the "community" in routine control of content, is protected from a priori libel claims. But after there has been a specific, actionable complaint?

The goal of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia, the "sum of all human knowledge." Noble goal, but is libel "knowledge"? Is it important that there be a truly neutral process for vetting content? It is not difficult for skilled editors to create neutral content, even in the presence of their own opinions, if neutrality is the goal. But often it is not the goal, rather presenting a slant on the available information, cherry-picking sources and even misrepresenting them, to promote a point of view -- which may be a majority point of view, sometimes -- is common.

Wikipedia process is incredibly inefficient, but it's a Chinese water-torture, one drop at a time. So it seems like full-on, inclusive consensus process, what it would take to find genuine consensus (degree of consensus in a broad population being the best measure of consensus) is too much work. Not "wiki," or "quick." And, of course, arguing with all those "POV-pushers," usually meaning "people we disagree with," would be a waste of time.

(Wikipedians in general have little clue about genuine consensus process. It is not about "arguments." It's about communication and seeking common ground and building from there. And it can have rules, particularly civility enforcement, but not the black or white draconians Wikipedian response to some angry comment, rather process that would be designed to regulate behavior and encourage the "assumption of good faith," instead of whacking someone for not making the assumption, which itself involves assumptions of bad faith. Wikipedia has long been a mess, a "difficult community" as one functionary told me ... but the difficulties arise from the structure, or lack of structure and coherent leadership. Lord of the Flies is one of the ways that an ad hoc community can go, if protections are not built in.)

The Foundation is responsible for overseeing the community, by default, because it enables the community and we are responsible for what we enable, and so it represents the community in responsibility for overall community behavior. I see exempting the WMF from liability for its own actions -- and inactions upon notification --, on a pure service provider basis, as unconscionable, risking the creation of an unregulated monster, free to malign and defame, serving uncontrolled agendas. The WMF, by hosting, allows relative anonymization of users, making it more difficult to hold users accountable.

It is already done through OTRS, with copyright. There is little difference in principle with libel.

The claim that filters would be necessary was bogus. (But filters are already used for some kinds of content, and the global blacklist has been abused for content control). Rather, an article would not simply be removed once. If a subject is notable, the WMF might require some kind of arbitration -- real arbitration, not the phony "which side is right" arbitration of the Arbitration Committee), and might, while the article is being worked on, blank it or replace it with a notice, full protected, and with strict enforcement.

[sashi]

From the techdirt article:

[The Italian Court] found that Wikipedia has a clear community procedure for content modification...

The question I have is: "Are ban/block notices part of the content that Wikipedia disseminates?"

In my opinion they are, insofar as they constitute content that can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection.

With regard to the clear community procedure concerning appealing a ban, this is what acting ArbCom member Callanecc wrote concerning my appeal to a topic ban from Jill Stein (a BLP page that was controlled by her political opponents throughout the 2016 election):

Appeal to the Arbitration Committee has been declined. The user may only now appeal to ArbCom.

source

I'm not sure what to make of that clear procedure. To this day, it puzzles me insofar as ArbCom and the Arbitration Committee designate the same entity.

Granted there is nothing objectionable or defamatory about this statement. I just think it is a clear example of the muddiness of wiki-process. Also relevant is the claim that the content of a block log notice cannot be modified at all in current wiki-process.

---------------

It's true that "Neutrality" did engage in some mild defamation during that case, claiming that I was advocating for including Venezuelan propaganda without linking to the actual discussion (which had nothing whatsoever to do with Venezuelan propaganda). Such assertions play well at AE, because if you challenge them you exceed your word count. Rereading that particularly skillful twisting of truth still causes me distress... because I see now how cleverly the seeds planted by "Neutrality" in this case would be magnified later when the anonymous "Cirt" started calling me a "Russian propaganda user" and began prosecuting me with his "Sagecandor" account.

The WMF did not intervene, even when I alerted them later to the clear defamation in a newly-promoted (anonymous) admin's choice to characterize my factual exposition of Sagecandor's one-man-account astroturfing campaign as "harassment and intimidation". Nor did they do so when I provided them with clear linguistic and behavioral evidence that Sagecandor was Cirt. (The only result of this latter effort was that Cirt was quietly informed that their Sagecandor gaming was up, that their cover had been blown. In fairness, it is more likely that co-recipients ArbCom or "Goldenring" tipped Cirt off rather than that the WMF did...)

I've never had any intention of taking the WMF to court over this, because it is difficult (though not impossible) to argue that falsely accusing a pseudonym of digital crimes is damaging to a real world person, as this would involve showing damage to personal branding and showing significant distress. The anonymous "Cirt" & "Goldenring" (& "Neutrality" now that I look back on it) did the actual defaming... the WMF only provided them the platform to do it. (cf. duty of care, negligence)

The WMF is the author of global ban notices, but the difficulty of proving damage and distress remains and is augmented by the fact that the WMF is much more careful, i.e. they do not provide any reasons (libelous or otherwise) for banning pseudonymous accounts.

I've tried to follow your story Abd, and the invasion of this forum to spread libel about you and others suggests to me that you were totally misrepresented & railroaded via private correspondence as you suggest. I do struggle to see how you will succeed in showing damages. I wish you the best of luck in your efforts to argue that the distress caused is sufficient to constitute damage in a legal sense.