A Look At How Much VMware Left On The Table

Diebold, Disney, Many Others Caught Editing Wikipedia Entries In Their Favor

from the no-socker-there dept

Tue, Aug 14th 2007 3:18pm — Mike Masnick

This will probably come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but a new Wikipedia scanner service is matching the IP address of Wikipedia edits to the organizations the IPs are associated with -- and it's turning up some interesting matches. For example, there's the person coming from a Diebold IP who deleted paragraphs and paragraphs of Wikipedia content that highlighted Diebold's ongoing security problems. Then there's the Disney employee who tried to pull a link to Cory Doctorow's speech on why DRM is bad for business from the DRM entry. Wired is actually keeping a running tally of some of the most interesting edits. Now, before people use this as more evidence as to Wikipedia's trust problems, it doesn't look like those edits did much damage, as they were quickly changed back to the more appropriate entries by those watching out for vandalism.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: wikipedia
Companies: diebold, disney, wikipedia

12 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

CoJeff, 14 Aug 2007 @ 3:39pm

I love this quote, "DRM: "In general, consumers knowingly enter into the arrangement where they are granted limited use of the content." "

I certainly didn't. If the content I have doesn't comply with the Fair Use Act then no dmca will stop me. I would argure that most people don't have a clue what DRM is. I think it was wired that stated that most people don't even understand the technology in their ps3 or 360 how would you expect them to understand DRM.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CoJeff, 14 Aug 2007 @ 3:44pm

Yeah right
"Consumers of hardware and media voluntarily and knowingly agree to the grant of limited use of the content exhibited using thier physical media."

Why would anyone be happy that their shinny new mp3 player won't play cause the tune was bought from some other download stote. Also where did we voluntarily have our technology locked down? Where on the CD or mp3 player does it have this license agreement?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
GoblinJuice, 14 Aug 2007 @ 3:46pm

BUSTED! w00t!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
KillDRM (profile), 14 Aug 2007 @ 3:53pm

Sue them to death
Someone should make a law prohibiting companies like this from making those dishonest edits. Then we can sue them for millions of dollars when they do and get back for all that DRM they've shoved down our throats. Fair use, my shoe!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Paquito, 14 Aug 2007 @ 3:55pm

You said Diebolds?
You said Diebolds? That company who's in charge of making the voting machines in the US... Wow! That's tough!

Frightened regards from Spain :-S

Paquito.
http://paquito4ever.blogspot.com
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fight the Good Fight, 14 Aug 2007 @ 4:08pm

Self Evident
Those are great feedback items helping to change the perspective that some music listeners want to steal from the musicians and labels.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Aug 2007 @ 4:47pm

No socker there?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
John Duncan Yoyo, 14 Aug 2007 @ 4:57pm

Re: Self Evident
Yeah the only people who should be stealing from the musicians and other artists are the recording labels.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Aug 2007 @ 6:35pm

well
...uh...duh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Paul T.S. Lee, 15 Aug 2007 @ 4:53am

so how well do IP addresses match up to companies
Has any of the Wikipedia "offenders" attempted to deny that these edits came from inside their network? If so, they will have put themselves into an interesting "Catch-22" vis-a-vis the so called "evidence" used by the RIAA/MPAA for file sharing. That is to say, if they admit that the IP is theirs, then the implication is that it is being done from the corporate network, suggesting corporate approval or even mandate. If they claim that one can't just match up an IP address to a specific company or person, then all their IP based "evidence" goes out the window as well. If they claim that their IP addresses were being spoofed, then the same argument can be used by an accused "pirate".

Of course, if they took the hit and admit that the IP addresses are theirs, then we're back to (almost) the present situation. But any spinning they try to do along the lines of "unknown persons inside the network" or "non-approved activity" can still be applied by defendants of those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA/MPAA.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sanguine Dream, 15 Aug 2007 @ 5:48am

Re: so how well do IP addresses match up to compan
I was thinking the same thing.

I'm guessing that the defense they would use is something to the effect of claiming that while they are not responsible for all the activity on their network they would claim that an alleged pirate would be responsible due to numbers. They would argue that since their network is being used by hundreds of people at once they should not be expected to monitor it properly (which would relate to their desires to hold ISPs accountable for infringing material, end Fair Use, and rewrite the DMCA to their liking) whereas an individual should be expected to properly monitor their own network. Of course this argument would wrapped in some crazy legalese.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Aug 2007 @ 9:58am

The "make a law" suggestion is probably not a good idea. Publicly exposing those who are doing this is a better plan. Bad press is often more effective than laws and laws are usually tailored for (often many) special interests who cuddle up to lawmakers.

As far as the whole DRM tangent goes, have you ever noticed that all the big companies who are screaming that music downloads are hurting artists say almost nothing about the far more common practice of burning a copy of a CD? Maybe it's because the big companies don't make money from downloads, but they do sell CD-RW drives and blank CD media, so they make money on burned CDs. Their contracted artists don't, though.
[ link to this | view in thread ]