Wikimedia's Transparency Report: Guys, We're A Wiki, Don't Demand We Take Stuff Down

from the good-for-them dept

Wikimedia, like many other internet platform these days releases a transparency report that discusses various efforts to takedown content or identify users. We're now all quite used to what such transparency reports look like. However, Wikimedia's latest is worth reading as a reminder that Wikipedia is a different sort of beast. Not surprisingly, it gets a lot fewer demands, but it also abides by very few of those demands. My favorite is the fact that people demand Wikimedia edit or remove content. It's a wiki. Anyone can edit it. But if your edits suck, you're going to be in trouble. And yet, Wikimedia still receives hundreds of demands. And doesn't comply with any of them. Including ones from governments. Instead, Wikimedia explains to them just how Wikipedia works.

From July to December of 2017, we received 343 requests to alter or remove project content, seven of which came from government entities. Once again, we granted zero of these requests. The Wikimedia projects thrive when the volunteer community is empowered to curate and vet content. When we receive requests to remove or alter that content, our first action is to refer requesters to experienced volunteers who can explain project policies and provide them with assistance.

On the copyright front, they only received 12 requests. I actually would have expected more, but the community is pretty strict about making sure that only content that can be on the site gets there. Only 2 of the 12 takedowns were granted.

Wikimedia projects feature a wide variety of content that is freely licensed or in the public domain. However, we occasionally will receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove content that is allegedly copyrighted. All DMCA requests are reviewed thoroughly to determine if the content is infringing a copyright, and if there are any legal exceptions, such as fair use, that could allow the content to remain on the Wikimedia projects. From July to December of 2017, we received 12 DMCA requests. We granted two of these. This relatively low amount of DMCA takedown requests for an online platform is due in part to the high standards of community copyright policies and the diligence of project contributors.

This is actually really important, especially as folks in the legacy entertainment industry keep pushing for demands that platforms put in place incredibly expensive "filter" systems. Wikipedia is one of the most popular open platforms on the planet. But it would make no sense at all for it to invest millions of dollars in an expensive filtering system. But, since the whining from those legacy industry folks never seems to recognize that there's a world beyond Google and Facebook, they don't much consider how silly it would be to apply those kinds of rules to Wikipedia.

Also interesting is that Wikipedia has now been dealing with some "Right to be Forgotten" requests in the EU. It notes that in the six month period covered by the transparency report they received one such request (which was not granted):

rom July to December of 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation received one request for content removal that cited the right to erasure, also known as the right to be forgotten. We did not grant this request. The right to erasure in the European Union was established in 2014 by a decision in the Court of Justice of the European Union. As the law now stands, an individual can request the delisting of certain pages from appearing in search results for their name. The Wikimedia Foundation remains opposed to these delistings, which negatively impact the free exchange of information in the public interest.

I don't envy whatever person eventually tries to go after Wikimedia in court over a Right to be Forgotten claim -- though it feels inevitable.

There's more to look at in the report, but it is interesting to look over this and be reminded that not every internet platform is Google or Facebook, and demanding certain types of solutions that would hit all platforms... is pretty silly.

Filed Under: community, editing, takedowns, transparency report, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

Mad Max Fury Road Re-Edit Taken Down Because Of Course It Was

from the copyright-road dept

As I was poking around the interwebz yesterday morning, I came across an interesting project one fan of Mad Max: Fury Road had made. To preface this, if you haven't seen the movie, shame on you and all of your ancestors. It's two hours of mind-blowing nonsense wrapped up in an action film that appears to be attempting to be the definitive action film moving forward. That said, director George Miller has also made some comments about how he would have preferred to have the film edited in black and white, with limited to no dialogue and the musical score taking center stage.

Well, one fan went ahead and worked to produce Miller's vision. The resulting movie was strikingly different and resulted in a very different experience compared with watching the movie. If nothing else, it was a wonderful example of the power of dialogue, editing, musical scores, color and sound. The person responsible for the edited film put it this way.

George Miller has said that the best version of his film is in black and white, with no dialogue. BLACK & CHROME is an attempt to realize Miller’s alternate vision. The cinematography, the editing, the sound design, and the score, are now represented in a completely new experience.

I do not own the rights to this video. All rights belong to its rightful owner/owners. No copyright infringement intended. This is merely an exercise and study of the art of filmmaking.

But before you go rushing to check out this awesomeness for yourself by clicking the link above, you should know that this is what will greet you. Yes, in an outcome that I predicted immediately after I shared the fan project with the rest of my Techdirt compadres, it appears the video has been taken down over copyright issues. And that's dumb on a variety of different levels. First, the takedown itself wasn't necessary. Nothing about Black and Chrome competed with Fury Road. The entire point of the fan project was to show just how different small changes could make the overall experience. Those experiences were unique enough to be non-overlapping from the film viewer's perspective. This is just a control power move by whoever made it.

But I'm not entirely certain fair use shouldn't come into play, as well. As a matter of art, the project is undeniably transformative. Certainly there is little effect on the original work to consider, save perhaps for an increased likelihood that others will want to see the original after seeing the fan-edit. That said, a significant amount of the original work is used to make the derivative, so I'm not sure it goes far enough for fair use. Regardless, the creator of the fan-edit appears to be taking the takedown well.

Thank you for liking, sharing, and watching BLACK & CHROME. This is it for now. Your response has truly shown what the joy of movies is about. Hopefully, the right person(s) will have WITNESSED this and we can look forward to an official version of Mad Max: Fury Road in black and white. The film has lived, and has died, but can it live again?

It's just too bad the film wasn't allowed to become a fun bit of experience for Mad Max fans everywhere.

Filed Under: culture, editing, fury road, george miller, mad max, remix

Steven Soderbergh Fought To Make Re-Editing Films Illegal; Now He's Re-Editing Famous Films

from the the-rules-don't-apply-to-me dept

First off, I should say that I absolutely love the idea of people (especially experts) taking a classic movie and re-editing it. In the past, we've written about actor Topher Grace's apparently legendary re-edit of Episodes I, II and III of Star Wars into a single film. Only a few people have seen it, at private showings held by Grace. I find it unfortunate that we'll never really be able to see it, because Grace realizes that it would likely get taken down quickly by Disney/Lucasfilm. Indeed, when some amateurs tried to do the same thing, it disappeared quickly.

Thus, it's interesting and amazing that famed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has apparently been re-editing classic movies and posting them online. Last year, he re-edited Psycho, Heaven's Gate and Raiders of the Lost Ark. For whatever reason this hasn't gotten too much attention until yesterday, when he also released his re-edit of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I think this is wonderful -- and a great way to show off some creative editing ideas (and also just how much editing truly makes a movie).

But here's the weird bit: Steven Soderbergh, as much as I admire him as a filmmaker, is a bit of a copyright maximalist, who has fought for stricter copyright laws, greater punishment and (get this) against the right of anyone but the director to make edits of films.

In 2009, Soderbergh, representing the Director's Guild of America, testified before Congress that piracy was killing Hollywood and stricter punishment was needed. He was pushing (strongly) for the "three strikes" model that was just showing up in France (only to be abandoned a few years later as a complete and utter failure). In his testimony, Soderbergh pushed the idea of kicking people off the internet entirely for a year if they get three strikes:

Well, when you go into Target and shoplift, there is a security guy from Target that catches you, and then they make a decision, whether or not they are going to take you to the police and prosecute you. At the very least, you are not allowed to go into Target anymore. And I just feel like we are in a similar situation, that there aren’t enough police officers in the world to sit at Target and Wal-Mart, and all the places where crimes are being committed. It wouldn’t be very difficult for us, if we were given, you know, this ability to identify the people who are making it easiest to transmit this copyrighted material, and if we had some sort of, you know, graduated mechanism along the lines of the French model.

First, they are contacted through the Internet. Then they are contacted through the mail. Then the third time they get pulled for a year.

Later in his testimony, he more or less admitted that he didn't really understand what was going on in France, even though his main message was we should do the same thing here (so it sounds like the DGA just told him to go and "say this"... but, still...). Of course, he also jokes about having decoy files so that when people download them it "wreaks havoc" on downloaders' computers (but rightly notes that "a very, very bright Dutch teenager... would figure out how to break that encryption.")

But the even crazier issue is that Soderbergh was the leading name in the lawsuit against CleanFlicks, a company that tried to re-edit movies to make them more palatable to "religious" audiences (i.e., taking out any scenes or dialog CleanFlicks believed to be offensive or blasphemous. The way it worked was you first had to buy the movie yourself (so valid purchase was made), and then you sent it to CleanFlicks which would send you back an edited version. In that lawsuit, CleanFlicks lost. The judge in that case noted directly that he did not believe that fair use applied to re-editing films. The lawsuit is basically CleanFlicks against filmmakers, with Soderbergh at the top: CleanFlicks was going to appeal that ruling, but basically ran out of money and just gave up. Either way, Soderbergh's name is on a ruling that argues that re-editing flicks is not fair use and is clearly copyright infringement.

Huh.

In that ruling, the judge argued that re-edits were not truly transformative, but more important, rejected the argument that these edits did not impact the market for the video, saying:

The argument has superficial appeal but it ignores the intrinsic value of the right to control the content of the copyrighted work which is the essence of the law of copyright. Whether these films should be edited in a manner that would make them acceptable to more of the public playing them on DVD in a home environment is more than merely a matter of marketing; it is a question of what audience the copyright owner wants to reach.

Frankly, I think the judge got this very, very wrong, but it's fascinating in this context. Because this appears to be a case where the judge (ruling in favor of Soderbergh) is clearly saying what Soderbergh is doing now is very much copyright infringement.

With the edit of Raiders, Soderbergh noted, "This posting is for educational purposes only." While we can argue over whether or not that impacts the fair use analysis, the whole thing does seem bizarre.

Once again, we see a case of a copyright maximalist, who argues for stronger penalties for infringement, who then ignores all of that when he wants to make use of others' content himself. This seems to happen quite frequently.

Again, I think it's great that Soderbergh is making these edits and posting them for everyone to see (and also discussing some of his thinking). That's awesome. I think he should be allowed to do so. I just find it strange (and somewhat hypocritical) that this is coming from the very same Steven Soderbergh who has fought for greater punishment for copyright infringers and whose name sits atop a court ruling that directly says re-editing films the way you'd like to see them is infringing.

Filed Under: copyright, editing, fair use, films, re-edits, steven soderbergh

Group Of Major PR Firms Pledge To Play Nice On Wikipedia

from the good-start dept

There's always been an air of distrust when it comes to how public relations firms deal with Wikipedia pages for their clients, especially when it comes to making edits. I'd guess this general feeling has likely come about due to equal parts a misunderstanding about how most PR groups operate and a few bad actors spoiling everyone's opinion. Contrary to what some might believe, there is a place for representative requests to edit out incorrect material on Wikipedia, so long as the ultimate goal is to serve public the most accurate information. That someone is on the payroll of the subject of an article sounds like it should be a conflict of interest, but that's simply not always the case. Good PR firms are less about spin and more about managing the communication channels and getting the public accurate information about their clients. Still, the distrust persists -- in part because there are plenty of PR firms that aren't so "good."

Now a group of the larger public relations firms are coming out with a pledge to deal fairly and accurately when it comes to Wikipedia edits and to route them through the proper channels.

In the statement, 11 PR agencies "publicly state and commit" to abide by five principles that would prevent them from editing a client's Wikipedia entry without first going through proper channels. It also makes overtures toward repairing the tenuous relationship between the PR industry and Wikipedia.

"On behalf of our firms, we recognize Wikipedia's unique and important role as a public knowledge resource," the statement begins. "We also acknowledge that the prior actions of some in our industry have led to a challenging relationship with the community of Wikipedia editors. Our firms believe that it is in the best interest of our industry, and Wikipedia users at large, that Wikipedia fulfill its mission of developing an accurate and objective online encyclopedia. Therefore, it is wise for communications professionals to follow Wikipedia policies as part of ethical engagement practices."

The companies signing onto the statement include Edelman, Ogilvy and Mather, Fleishman Hillard, Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum, Porter Novelli, Peppercomm, MDC Partners, Voce Communications, Allison and Partners, and Beutler Ink. Those are some impressive names in the industry and the statement they released represents a serious step forward both for how the industry interacts with the Wikipedia community and for affirming Wikipedia's stature as a whole. You have to understand that in PR-land, you don't make this kind of promise unless you have every intention of keeping it. PR is all about managing expectations, but this statement sets the reader's expectations quite high. The statement essentially promises to refrain from creating so-called sock-puppet Wikipedia accounts used to edit articles on which there is a conflict of interest. Even the management for the firms appear to be on board with playing by the ethical rules.

"If you are a paid advocate, then you should refrain from editing articles directly," said Mr. Beutler. "But PR people can contribute by making sure correct information is made correct." And what happens when an unhappy client calls its agency asking them to remove or edit something on its Wikipedia page? According to Mr. Beutler, these agencies should go to Wikipedia's "talk" areas and make their case about why an article should be edited. "This works," he said. "But it doesn't work terribly efficiently," he added.

Even as this pledge is being made, Wikipedia itself is making some significant modifications to their ToS to codify this sort of thing and attempt to increase the transparency on edits made by paid actors. Volunteer editors and those working with libraries and museums will continue to operate as they always have, but those receiving any kind of pay for editing articles are required to make disclosures as such.

If you are paid to edit, other rules beyond the Terms of Use may also apply. Specific policies on individual Wikimedia projects, or relevant laws in your country (such as those prohibiting fraudulent advertising), may require further disclosure or prohibit paid advocacy editing altogether. Details on the legal issues and risk associated with undisclosed paid advocacy editing may be found in this FAQ.

That seems to line up everyone's goal at promoting good behavior nicely. Except, that is, for all those PR firms and agencies that didn't sign on to this pledge. Wikipedia's changes put them on notice that it is going to take this kind of thing seriously and the proactive pledge from the other PR firms makes non-signees look late to the game. If this works, it will hopefully only amplify the status of Wikipedia as an open and trusted source for reliable information.

Filed Under: editing, pr, public relations, transparency, wikipedia
Companies: allison and partners, beutler ink, burson-marstellar, edelman, fleishman hillard, ketchum, mdc partners, ogilvy and mather, peppercomm, porter novelli, voce communications, wikipedia

Wikimedia Scandal: Proof Of Unreliability Or Confirmation That Crowdsourcing Works?

from the guess-who-caught-the-bad-guys dept

While Glyn just recently wrote about Jimmy Wales' effort to stymie UK snooping, it appears there may be other issues to address in England. If Wikipedia has had to fight any stigma, it's been the notion that a crowdsourced encyclopedia in which most anyone could contribute would be so rife with errors and bias as to be unusable. After all, there have indeed been reports of individuals and companies editing negative information out of thier own pages. This perception persists, despite evidence that Wikipedia is every bit as accurate as printed encyclopedias.

And so we have another such story, in which Roger Bramkin, Wikimedia trustee, is being accused of running a pay-for-play system using Wikipedia's "Did You Know" and GLAM projects to keep his day job clients in the wiki bloodstream. Essentially, it appears Bramkin took the country of Gibraltar on as a consulting client and then routinely pumped their stories into Wikipedia.

Roger Bamkin, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a high-return-earning PR consultant, appeared to be using Wikipedia's main page "Did You Know" feature and the resources of Wikipedia's GLAM WikiProject (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) initiative to pimp his client's project.

Now, it would be easy for anyone so inclined to throw their hands around and make a great deal of noise about how this proves Wikipedia's unreliability. Crowdsourcing, it would seem, has led to corruption of the bloodstream. This hand-wringing would be particularly easy in light of a second such Wikipedian in Residence (an editor held in high esteem) being found to have run a similar operation focused on SEO and Wikipedia pages for paying clients. Wikipedians in Residence are typically required to recuse themselves from editing pages in which they have a conflict of interest, and these incidences seem to violently violate those rules.

But here's what is being swept under the rug with all the hand-waving: it was the Wikipedia community members who found all this out and are bringing it to light. This entire incident began on a Wikipedia discussion page over abuse of DYK and that is exactly how Wikipedia is supposed to work. So, while conflicts of interest issues and erroneous entries in Wikipedia are certainly a huge concern, it is selective bias at work to point to them as examples for why crowdsourcing information doesn't work while also failing to mention that the same crowd was responsible for its ceasing.

Filed Under: crowdsourcing, editing, roger bramkin, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia foundation

Making The Case For PR Pros Editing Wikipedia

from the is-it-really-notable dept

Obscured amidst the hysteria over anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA has been a valuable discussion bubbling up within public relations about PR people editing clients’ Wikipedia entries.

It’s a topic that has been debated for years. From Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stating in 2006 that “PR firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very, very strongly” to last year’s Bell Pottinger lobbying scandal, where it emerged that the firm was surreptitiously manipulating client’s Wikipedia entries — raising the ire of Mr. Wales and his Wikipedia acolytes — it’s a discussion that seemingly knows no end.

PR people have long been frustrated by the complexities of the Wikipedia editing process. Colleagues tell us they feel rebuffed by what they believe is an arcane system meant to ostracize them whenever they attempt to correct inaccurate or outdated employer or client entries.

The issue over edits made on Wikipedia is one that affects more than just the public relations profession. It has implications for every business, organization and institution around the world, given Wikipedia’s widespread use as an information resource.

The matter gained particular prominence recently when Phil Gomes, an executive at Edelman Digital, began to peel back the layers of distrust and confusion between PR people and Wikipedians with a blog post and Facebook group aimed at bringing together the sparring parties.

Gomes’ initiative, dubbed the Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, is based on four pillars:

1. Corporate communicators want to do the right thing.
2. Communicators engaged in ethical practice have a lot to contribute.
3. Current Wikipedia policy does not fully understand Nos. 1 and 2, owing to the activities of some bad actors and a general misunderstanding of public relations in general.
4. Accurate Wikipedia entries are in the public interest.

It’s a noble effort and one that my organization, the Public Relations Society of America, wholeheartedly supports.

Techdirt further examined the issue when Mike Masnick asked, rather pointedly, whether PR people should be “able to edit otherwise ignored Wikipedia pages of their clients to correct errors?” He focused on some fairly glaring issues that we believe Wikipedia has yet to adequately address. Among them: Where do professionals turn to if their efforts to go through the proper channels to request edits to inaccurate or outdated information are either rebuffed or ignored?

That question has been overlooked for far too long. As Mr. Gomes pointed out in the comments of Mr. Masnick’s Techdirt post, “Some of us are working together to help [the] PR [profession] do the right thing by the Wikipedia community, especially considering that guidance is at times contradictory.”

The Case for PR Pros Editing Wikipedia

We believe there is a case to be made for PR professionals to responsibly edit client Wikipedia entries in an ethical and transparent manner.

At its most basic level, it is a matter of serving the public interest.

An accurate Wikipedia entry serves the public interest far better than inaccurate entries that are allowed to languish with errors because Wikipedia editors refuse to allow “paid advocates” to make necessary, accurate changes. A disclosure of one’s professional affiliation with a business should not automatically exempt him or her from being allowed to responsibly edit Wikipedia entries.

Greater accuracy and transparency within Wikipedia entries should be the basis of how Wikipedia goes about its practices. It should not matter who edits a page, so long as the information is accurate, unbiased and properly sourced.

PRSA certainly does not condone behavior on the part of public relations people or PR firms that is unethical or dishonest in respect to their editing of clients’ Wikipedia entries. To be sure, there are some who wish to abuse the system. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking otherwise. But on the whole, we believe that PR professionals, particularly those whose work adheres to the PRSA Code of Ethics, are responsible and respectful of the online communities in which they engage and seek to influence.

We’re encouraged by efforts in the U.K., where the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is establishing guidelines on how the PR profession deals with Wikipedia. We hope to do the same in the U.S. by working with Wikipedia to develop rigorous and explicit editing guidelines that can be used throughout the profession.

Our position on this matter is simple: it's wrong for the PR profession to think it can run roughshod over the established Wikipedia community. PR professionals must engage with it in a reasonable manner that respects the community’s rules and protocols, while also ensuring they are acting in their clients' best interests. But the engagement should be a two-way street in which Wikipedia is willing to see and accommodate both sides of the issue. At the moment, we do not believe that to be the case.

Gerard F. Corbett, APR, Fellow PRSA, is chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Filed Under: companies, editing, pr, wikipedia
Companies: wikileaks

Should PR People Be Able To Edit Otherwise Ignored Wikipedia Pages Of Their Clients To Correct Errors?

from the the-community-won't-like-that... dept

As a tech blogger with a reasonably large audience, I am fairly inundated with pitches from PR people on a daily basis. Almost all of these pitches are mistargeted and not at all well thought out. They are about things we obviously would never cover, and many are clearly mass mailings (my favorites are the ones who address me by the name of other tech bloggers -- you'd be amazed how many times I've been called Om). It's pretty rare that we ever get a "story" from a PR person. Most of the time, honestly, PR pitches are about as close to spam as can be. Multiple times, I've publicly lashed out at bad PR people for being much more of a nuisance than helping. All that said... it's easy to jump to the conclusion that all PR people are bad and not helpful. But that's an exaggeration. There are, certainly, some very good and very helpful PR people out there, and I've worked with many. Generally, they're not pitching me on "stories," but helping me get answers -- or they're people who actually read the site and understand what we talk about here, and recognize that, "because my client wants me to get this story on Techdirt," is not a good reason to pitch us, if the story has nothing to do with what we talk about.

Consider that preamble for a simple point: there are good PR people who do good work, and it's generally people who actually understand what they're talking about. PR guru Phil Gomes, who I've known for many, many years, is definitely one of the good guys. A Linux-using, open source-loving techie to the core, he's not your ordinary PR guy. He's also a guy who I can sit down and talk with about ridiculous government actions and crazy intellectual property cases for many hours, and the conversation is always fun, and we tend to agree on most things. But when he put out a pitch to Jimmy Wales at Wikipedia, saying that, in certain, very specific cases, PR people should be able to edit Wikipedia pages of the companies they work with, I cringed a bit. Something about the concept feels wrong. Though, the case Phil makes is pretty compelling. He's arguing that if a company page is completely inaccurate, and not updated properly, it's silly that a PR person can't go in and fix things.

• Wikipedia is on the first page of search results for nearly every company, brand, product, personality, captain-of-industry, etc. This shoulders Wikipedia with a great level of responsibility, whether asked for or otherwise.
• Many entries are derelict, even for important topics and well-known industry bellwethers. Financial data is often years old. Some companies are described as remaining in businesses long divested. A WikiProject for reviving abandoned articles, and a proposal for a similar effort, themselves both appear abandoned.
• You can imagine why a company might consider its entry to be a high priority (perhaps even to the point of distraction) and task its communications staff to "do something", especially if the entry is inaccurate.
• Entreaties on Talk pages—determined as the most appropriate place for a company representative to make his/her case—often go ignored for very long periods while inaccurate information persists. 
• The small concession to PR on the FAQ (that a company can "fix minor errors in spelling, grammar, usage, or fact", etc.) takes a lot for granted and helps neither a PR representative nor Wikipedia. For example, too often, a company representative will “go native” when it comes to separating matters of “fact” from matters upon which reasonable people might disagree. On the other hand, activists (hardly of a neutral point of view) appear to enjoy much more latitude. 

Thus, he comes up with some specific suggestions to try to solve this issue, in which in very limited situations, and with tremendous transparency, perhaps PR people might be able to edit some pages for clients:

When an entry is derelict (duration and definition TBD), a communications representative should be granted greater leeway in editing the entry. The entry can have a notification at the top indicating the derelict status, or even that a communications representative has had a hand in updating it. This will allow visitors to make their own judgments on how to evaluate the entry or even prioritize it in terms of how and when it gets evaluated and/or revised by a neutral party. The choice is between the certainty of an inaccurate entry or the possibility that the entry would not meet NPOV guidelines. Negative attention to bad behavior (or even to mediocre efforts) would mitigate the impact of the latter.

That actually started to make me uncringe -- and actually does make some sense. The issue here is that he's actually talking about both greater accuracy and greater transparency, both of which seem like good things. Phil also suggests a system by which companies could create entries, posted to their own corporate sites, along with a way to alert "independent Wikipedians" to react to the content and decide if it's worthy of being on the site.

An interesting discussion ensued, with folks in a variety of camps... including Jimmy Wales, who weighed in himself, sticking to his initial stance that paid PR folks have other avenues to alert Wikipedians.

Best practice is very simple and no one in the PR industry has ever put forward a cogent argument (and seldom bother putting forward an argument at all) why it is important that they take the potentially (especially if I have anything to do with it) reputation damaging step of directly editing entries where they are acting as paid advocates.

The simple and obvious answer is to do what works, without risking the reputation of the client: talk to the community, respect their autonomy, and never ever directly edit an article.

There are many avenues for you to make simple factual corrections, and these avenues actually do work. You can post on the talk page. If you don't get a timely response there you can escalate to appropriate noticeboards. Perhaps the most effective thing you can do is email us! The OTRS team is very good about helping out with basic issues.

He also notes that there is "comprehensive" evidence that "paid advocates do not make good editors." In the end, he notes (quite accurately) that the community itself has made it clear that it doesn't want paid advocates -- and having paid advocates edit the site definitely leads to backlash.

Of course, to some extent, I think both Phil and Jimmy are right. Just as in my initial cringe, plenty of people don't like the idea of paid advocates/PR people directly editing client pages. There are just too many areas to insert bias into a system that supposedly insists on keeping a neutral point of view (though it doesn't always succeed). That bias can be subtle -- and it may not even be done consciously by the advocate, but it's still likely to be there. However, I'm still partially swayed by Phil's first suggestion. So if the methods that Jimmy lays out (talk pages, noticeboards, email) simply don't work and no one responds, would it then be okay if a PR person made corrections with the clear caveat of who they are, what they're doing and why they're doing it? Perhaps followed up with a further notice for independent Wikipedians to check their work? I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, as a last resort. After all, isn't accurate info more important in the long run than inaccurate info untouched by PR people?

Filed Under: companies, editing, pr, wikipedia

How To Become A Scientific Author In Poland: Delete Part Of Someone Else's Article You Think Is Wrong

from the it's-that-easy? dept

Copyrightgirl pointed us to a bizarre judgement from the Polish Supreme Court last year, which found that you can become co-author of a scientific text by deleting a few sentences that you believe to be incorrect:

The defendant wrote an article about music therapy, i.e. applying music in medical treatment. Not being a physician herself, the author had requested three colleagues to verify the article and, as a result, they suggested deleting some parts, which, in their view, were not compatible with accepted medical knowledge (they were probably right, as one of the deleted sentences considered replacing anesthesia by music during surgery, which even to devoted music lovers must sound rather extreme). The defendant initially agreed to publish the article together with her – then – colleagues as co-authors, but later changed her mind. The colleagues duly sued to have their co-authorship recognised and, in the eyes of many experts surprisingly, won in all instances, including the Supreme Court.

The trouble with this, of course, is that it leads to some ridiculous possibilities:

It also provokes the question whether all reviewers in scientific journals or university professors tutoring students, who certainly quite often (rightly or wrongly) consider certain parts of the reviewed works inaccurate or incorrect and have them deleted should not be regarded co-authors (if so, this would probably have to be the case with all university professors guiding their students through a thesis!).

It will be interesting to see what kind of cases try to build on this decision.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: co-authors, editing, poland

Is Quoting Someone Out Of Context Defamation?

from the in-the-9th-circuit... dept

Earlier this year, there was certainly plenty of discussion in the political news business of the Shirley Sherrod incident, where Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Sherrod speaking, which implied she had made certain decisions on the basis of skin color. However, after Sherrod was fired from her job at the USDA, it quickly came out that the video clips of Sherrod speaking were taken totally out of context, and the message of the speech was completely the opposite of what had been implied. This quickly resulted in a scramble as pretty much every publication in the world covering the story wrote articles questioning whether or not she had a legitimate case of libel.

Of course, as with any highly politically charged legal discussion, it often appeared that those picking a side over whether or not she had a case might have been somewhat influenced by their political views on the matter. However, much of the discussion focused on what Breitbart said separately in relation to the video, rather than the video itself. Still, a recent case may bring the video back into discussion.

Michael Scott points us to the news of a recent ruling against newscaster John Stossel for allegedly posting video that was apparently taken out of context, and while a lower court protected him via California's anti-SLAPP law, an appeals court has ruled that the defamation case can move forward over the video. It doesn't mean that the defamation claim will necessarily stand, but the video edit and context apparently is seen as grounds for a potential defamation claim: Of course, Breitbart claims he didn't edit the video in the Sherrod case, which then raises other legal questions about whether or not he's protected himself on the video part, and whether or not he can use journalist shield laws to protect the "source" who provided him the video. All in all, while I can understand the desire to push a libel case in such situations, I do wonder if it actually results in much good. At this point, it's difficult to find anyone who isn't familiar with the "full story" of what happened with the out-of-context video, so it's not about "correcting" false info that's out there. Still, this latest ruling is a reminder that if you happen to quote someone out of context, you may risk a defamation claim.

Filed Under: andrew breitbart, defamation, editing, john stossel, shirley sherrod, video