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Godwin's Lawlessness

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Hear ye, Hear ye!

[edit] Out with the Brad

When it was announced that the replacement for the sexy, cute and smart Wiki-legal counsel Brad Patrick would be Mike Godwin, we held our collective breath. Here was a law-aware fellow who was kind of known for being an out-there rabble rouser... perhaps, just perhaps, we might be looking at a new dawn on the Wikipedia.

Brad Patrick resigned in early 2007, finally vacating at the end of March. ^[1] He left a swirling vacuum of power and authority at Wikimedia (and, as if to celebrate his leaving, his article was deleted off of Wikipedia soon after). What would Wikipedia and Wikimedia do, what with the hounds closing in, the news agencies calling for random heads, and the left-open questions of the application of US law to Wikipedia?

And make no mistake, Wikipedia's got tons of legal questions circling around it, stuff that would make lawyers for Enron executives swallow quart-sized pill bottles of Alka-Seltzer. This stuff isn't going away... it's just getting worse. Patrick (who had basically written to Jimbo that he liked Wikipedia and wanted to help and then found himself "the lawyer" a few months later) had made a lot of claims, but didn't have opportunity to back them up all that much. Wikipedia's an ISP, he said, under the same protections. ^[2] Wikipedia's exempt from Rule 2257 requirements, he said; let the porn sites worry about having records of nude models! These were all interesting theories but things weren't really getting tested in a place with a guy with a gavel yet. But that day was coming. Who knew it'd be without Brad?

[edit] In Like Godwin

Hearing the vacated position was going to be filled by Mike Godwin was crazy, like finding out your parents were secretly spies. It didn't quite add up, it was unusual. Why would Godwin, co-founder of the EFF, defender of hackers everywhere (or, at least, a few cherry-picked press-popular cases) and first-generation-web-compliant law guy about town kick in with the Wikipedians?

Well, let's clarify. We know why he'd kick in with the idea of the Wikipedians; after all, this was a super-popular trendweb, a paradigm-shifting whatchamacallit, a super-elite open-source collabor-content megasite. Who the hell wouldn't sign up for that shit? That's great!

But like all real lawyers, one would think Godwin would actually kick the tires and do a little inspection. We figured, over here in our crack den, that he would spend a little time with the organization, really get to know how WalesWorld worked, and then run screaming. Or, since this is Godwin we're talking about, suddenly "find unexpected priorities coming up in personal matters that require immediate attention". You know, bow out after mouthing "GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE" and backing out the door.

But nope, not the case. Godwin's committed, and he's drinking the Flavor-Aid.

The dealmaker was an article in the August 20, 2007 edition of the New York Times. Entitled Defending Wikipedia’s Impolite Side by Noam Cohen, this little jaunt has some discussion with Godwin, a mention of the infamous "Godwin's Law", and some of his thoughts on Wikipedia. ^[3]

Let's quickly review them.

[edit] Opening Arguments, Please

“John [Seigenthaler]’s argument is that it was up there for months without editing,” Mr. Godwin says. “What that actually tells you is that not many people read it.”

Objection! This is a classic Jimbo Wales argument; the idea that leaving up libelous statements for months is tempered by the ease at which the libelous statements can be removed. The fact that anyone can pick up your trash does not give you the right to dump it anywhere you want. Additionally, the whole idea that the article was not widely read because it wasn't corrected is crazy; all it means is that nobody in a position to correct it had read it. That's an entirely different situation. One does not read an encyclopedia article expecting to have to triple fact-check every statement in it; and not everybody who reads Wikipedia is automatically responsible and required to do such fact-checking, lest the statement have no actual harm. For months, Seigenthaler's name was linked with Kennedy's assassination. ^[4] ^[5] It was mirrored and indexed. ^[6] The fact that he editorialized it outside of the WikiWomb is what lead to its later improvements, and by improvements we mean every "I'll show you" wiener on Wikipedia got a chance to work on a popular article. Fail. Next!

“Part of my job is to prevent restrictive rules from being put in place that prevent people from participating in massively democratic participatory media. And then let the new norms settle.”

Objection! Too late, Mr. Godwin! Wikipedia is so overloaded with rules, policies, laws and massive interpretation of Jimbo's pearls of wisdom that it's 90 percent knowing the game, 10 percent playing it. One of these official policies is that Wikipedia is not a democracy. ^[7] In fact, that's a basic rule, one of the biggies; everything works by "consensus", which mostly means "the admins run the show unless there's a real nutty uprising from the dweebs, then we table what we want until nobody's looking". WP:BLP, or "Biographies of Living People", which basically means "look out, living people might sue so be careful", has been applied to companies, to animals, and recently to dead people. Everything's totally fucked up, trust us, and if you were hoping to prevent restrictive rules from being put in place on Wikipedia, you're 6 years too late. Next!

But there is no Wikipedia rule against editing an article about yourself or your employer, and Mr. Godwin freely acknowledges editing his own article. “There has been some give and take about my biographical entry,” he said. “I removed factually incorrect information. Who could dispute that we were better off?”

Objection! Move to dismiss the case, your honor! This came entirely from Mars: there's no rule against editing your own article? Tell that to the dozens upon dozens of people who have had their work undone, been chastised, banned, or insulted for violating the WP:AUTO (No Autobiographies) rule, ^[8] one of the longest-running rules on Wikipedia! In fact, Jimbo himself was nagged and harassed for doing this very thing, giving multiple public apologies for doing so. ^[9] In the last couple of years, the WP:AUTO rule has been expanded to entries about subjects you created (books you wrote, movies you made) and companies you've contributed heavily to (owning the firm, being a top employee or high-ranking official). ^[10] The fact he would make such a startling, insane admission in a newspaper article calls into question his awareness of Wikipedia.

Good luck, Mr. Godwin, looks like you need to learn a few more laws before you're through.