Victory for Site Owners: Wikimedia wins landmark defamation lawsuit in France

[mandy]

A French court has ruled that Wikipedia could not be held responsible for content posted by its users in a landmark ruling for the Internet giant, officials said Friday.

Three plaintiffs were each seeking 69,000 euros ($100,000) in damages for invasion of their privacy after their homosexuality was revealed on the website, which is written and edited by thousands of anonymous contributors.

But a judge rejected their demands in a ruling reached on Monday, arguing that "the Wikimedia Foundation's responsibility ... has not been clearly established," a decision welcomed by the foundation...

full article: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnew...e_id=98500

The US has a similar law (U.S.C. §§ 230) - although people still attempt to intimidate site owners into giving up their legal rights by threatening site owners with legal action for content posted by users (our policy is to forward copies of these intimidation attempts  -which usually arrive in the form of badly written C&Ds - to places like Chilling Effects).