"Wikipedia, Thou art Villain!" says David Slater

[Mutineer]

Copy-pasted from Mr. Slater's Facebook account:

One of the better articles about the facts of monkey selfie. From Wikipedia to PETA.

People may be astonished when I say that Wikipedia are not interested in facts or expert sources of information. They will soon be beating their own chest again in an effort to destroy the facts of my story in order to justify their own crimes. This is my experience and my truth.

Wikipedia are the real villains here. Wikipedia are creating a post-fact world in favor of bigger (and financially motivated) agendas. They don;t care about monkeys or photographers wanting to save the animals. Science is suffering because facts often don't agree with policy. Wikipedia's mission is to create "alternative" facts. Heard this before? I will be exposing more on this in the future.

IFLScience is a great site for amazing stories about science and our world. If you want facts and theories written in a fun way, please take a look: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-the-man-who-is-being-sued-by-a-monkey/all/

Slater has a long and arduous legal path to get to Wikipedia for its theft of the monkey selfie. If he sues in Britain it'd be easier for him and he could possibly sue Jimbo Wales who has some money.

[Flip Flopped]

Copy-pasted from Mr. Slater's Facebook account:

One of the better articles about the facts of monkey selfie. From Wikipedia to PETA.

People may be astonished when I say that Wikipedia are not interested in facts or expert sources of information. They will soon be beating their own chest again in an effort to destroy the facts of my story in order to justify their own crimes. This is my experience and my truth.

Wikipedia are the real villains here. Wikipedia are creating a post-fact world in favor of bigger (and financially motivated) agendas. They don;t care about monkeys or photographers wanting to save the animals. Science is suffering because facts often don't agree with policy. Wikipedia's mission is to create "alternative" facts. Heard this before? I will be exposing more on this in the future.

IFLScience is a great site for amazing stories about science and our world. If you want facts and theories written in a fun way, please take a look: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-the-man-who-is-being-sued-by-a-monkey/all/

Slater has a long and arduous legal path to get to Wikipedia for its theft of the monkey selfie. If he sues in Britain it'd be easier for him and he could possibly sue Jimbo Wales who has some money.

This is the best critique of Wikipedia's new fact-checking fetish that I've seen. Great catch, Mutineer!

[Mutineer]

One of the more interesting things that happened at Wikipedia (and Commons etc.) when it decided to steal the monkey selfie was that you had the usual suspects deciding the question by consensus, except now the WMF was allowing them to decide a legal matter by consensus.

So you had these laymen doing Google searches for five minutes and coming back with the supposed all-knowing answer that "the monkey owns the selfie, but copyright can't vest in a non-human, therefore the image is public domain."

If the WMF were a responsible institution, that would've been an ideal moment for its legal team to step in and say "no, wait a minute, legal matters like this, we will handle." Instead they sat in their chairs in San Francisco, presuming that they'd be totally shielded from the appalling actions of "the community" which usually works.

[ericbarbour]

If he sues in Britain it'd be easier for him and he could possibly sue Jimbo Wales who has some money.

I seriously doubt Wales has enough cash to fight off a serious UK court case. However, he can always beg for help from his many digerati pals! Let's see if that is even still possible! In recent years he's done a great job of making enemies la la la!

As time wears on, his article gets longer. And so do the "Controversy" sections. Some of this was posted by WP insiders:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wal ... co-founder

I wonder if they will soon allow more information about the Rachel Marsden mess....in the past that was always muy verboten....

[Flip Flopped]

If he sues in Britain it'd be easier for him and he could possibly sue Jimbo Wales who has some money.

I seriously doubt Wales has enough cash to fight off a serious UK court case. However, he can always beg for help from his many digerati pals! Let's see if that is even still possible! In recent years he's done a great job of making enemies la la la!

As time wears on, his article gets longer. And so do the "Controversy" sections. Some of this was posted by WP insiders:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wal ... co-founder

I wonder if they will soon allow more information about the Rachel Marsden mess....in the past that was always muy verboten....

Isn't Marsden also kind of out there?

[Flip Flopped]

One of the more interesting things that happened at Wikipedia (and Commons etc.) when it decided to steal the monkey selfie was that you had the usual suspects deciding the question by consensus, except now the WMF was allowing them to decide a legal matter by consensus.

So you had these laymen doing Google searches for five minutes and coming back with the supposed all-knowing answer that "the monkey owns the selfie, but copyright can't vest in a non-human, therefore the image is public domain."

If the WMF were a responsible institution, that would've been an ideal moment for its legal team to step in and say "no, wait a minute, legal matters like this, we will handle." Instead they sat in their chairs in San Francisco, presuming that they'd be totally shielded from the appalling actions of "the community" which usually works.

So WMF Legal decided to make Slater take it up with pseudonymous Commons users rather than getting proactively involved. Had they gotten involved would that have put their safe harbor in jeopardy?

[Qwerty]

There is a long tradition of animals and inanimate objects as defendants in law. Thus for example, even in classical Athens they had a specific court, the Prytaneion, where non-humans could be prosecuted, often for homicide. Such cases were quite common in ancient Greece and continued up through the middle ages even into modern times. However, animals as plaintiffs has no tradition, as far as I know. So maybe Slater can prosecute the monkey for damages, and stand a better chance of resolving the case than hanging about for the monkey's proxies to prosecute him.

If interested, I strongly suggest you look at this article in Jstor - it's free and easy to download:

THE PROSECUTION OF LIFELESS THINGS AND ANIMALS IN GREEK LAW PART 2
W.W.Hyde 1917
Jstor:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/289426?seq ... b_contents
Or try this for a PDF version:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/289426 ... 1a7e6f1cc4

The author considers the phenomenon of animals in court a relic of primitive animism. I think he's right. I also think Wikipedia functions in the same animistic spirit, where meanings are perceived to drift out of the ether in a naturally coherent order.

[moneypenny]

So WMF Legal decided to make Slater take it up with pseudonymous Commons users rather than getting proactively involved. Had they gotten involved would that have put their safe harbor in jeopardy?

Slater should sue Wikimedia Commons users 'Odder' and 'Crisco1492' in Germany who removed the inherent copyright notice from the photo which they pirated from some news website (WTOP.COM if I remember rightly). He'll win millions in Euro, I guarantee it. WMF hates German courts.

Update: New info reaching me over my teletype machine .. 'Crisco1492' pirated the selfie from WTOP.COM whereas 'Odder' pirated it from the Daily Mail.

[moneypenny]

One of the more interesting things that happened at Wikipedia (and Commons etc.) when it decided to steal the monkey selfie was that you had the usual suspects deciding the question by consensus, except now the WMF was allowing them to decide a legal matter by consensus.

So you had these laymen doing Google searches for five minutes and coming back with the supposed all-knowing answer that "the monkey owns the selfie, but copyright can't vest in a non-human, therefore the image is public domain."

If the WMF were a responsible institution, that would've been an ideal moment for its legal team to step in and say "no, wait a minute, legal matters like this, we will handle." Instead they sat in their chairs in San Francisco, presuming that they'd be totally shielded from the appalling actions of "the community" which usually works.

So WMF Legal decided to make Slater take it up with pseudonymous Commons users rather than getting proactively involved. Had they gotten involved would that have put their safe harbor in jeopardy?

The commons pirates Odder and Crisco1492 are not pseudonymous now, their identities are known, and they can be sued.

[Mutineer]

So WMF Legal decided to make Slater take it up with pseudonymous Commons users rather than getting proactively involved. Had they gotten involved would that have put their safe harbor in jeopardy?

You're talking about provisions in The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). That's really a matter for lawyers. We could have a discussion here where we attempt to intelligently reason some of that, but there's also a risk of us looking like some armchair attorney apes opining on what we don't quite understand.

But here's a PDF of the Act if anyone feels like starting at square 1: https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf.