WIKIPEDIA, the free, user-generated online encyclopedia, faces a court battle to protect itself from liability for everything that users post on the site. The company behind the site will argue that it should be granted immunity under US law.
A li
terary agent is suing the Wikimedia Foundation over a comment on the site that she was "the dumbest" of a list of the 20 worst literary agents. Barbara Bauer said that the comment was defamatory.
A science fiction authors' organisation called Writers Beware created a list of the 20 literary agencies about which it received the most complaints. Bauer was included on that list; she claims that the added comments defamed her.
Wikimedia denies the comments ever appeared on it site, but argues that even if they did the group is protected under the US Constitution's guarantee of the right to free speech. Overall, Wikimedia argues it is protected from liability by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which protects a publisher from liability for things said by other people on its electronic services until it is made aware of the comments. At that point it must take action or risk becoming liable.
In its application for summary dismissal of the case, Wikimedia says that this section of the law applies directly to it.
Domain battlesThe domain name myspace.co.uk will not be transferred to MySpace Inc after a ruling in favour of the social networking giant was overturned on appeal. MySpace was told to take its fight to the courts if it disagreed with the decision.
Stockport's Total Web Solutions (TWS) registered the domain name in 1997, six years before MySpace was founded and nine years before it launched in the UK. MySpace Inc accused TWS of using the .co.uk domain to profit from its trademarked brand and won its case at the Nominet arbitration panel. TWS appealed, won and will now keep the name. But the appeal panel expressed "grave suspicion" about TWS's activity and told MySpace that it should take the matter to the courts if it wanted to pursue the case further.
The case centred on whether TWS changed the terms on which the website took advertising, connecting it to a Sedo advertising system that will have generated advertising relating to the domain name.
GTA fights CTAThe company behind Grand Theft Auto 4 has sued the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), accusing it of stifling its right to free speech. Take Two Interactive Software publishes the GTA games, designed by an Edinburgh-based team. Violent content has made it one of the most controversial series of games ever.
The suit says that the CTA withdrew GTA adverts from the side of buses and elsewhere without explanation. Take Two signed a $300,000 (£150,000) deal with the CTA for the display of the adverts and is said to be seeking at least that sum in monetary damages as well as a court order forcing the authority to run the adverts. US television news station Fox News had run stories asking why the authority had allowed the adverts to run when there had been a number of violent crimes in the Chicago area.
The GTA games centre on car crime, violence, driving, graffiti and gang warfare, with the player taking over the character of a low-level player in organised crime.
The full article contains 564 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
