If You Want To Know Why Section 230 Matters, Just Ask Wikimedia: Without It, There'd Be No Wikipedia

from the also-just-grow-up,-china dept

It sometimes seems that Techdirt spends half its time debunking bad ideas for reforming or even repealing Section 230. In fact, so many people seem to get the law wrong that Mike was moved to write a detailed post on the subject with the self-explanatory title "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act". It may be necessary (and tiresome) work rebutting all this wrongness, but it's nice for a change to be able to demonstrate precisely why Section 230 is so important. A recent court ruling provides just such an example:

On September 15th, in a victory for the Wikimedia movement and for all user-driven projects online, a Florida judge dismissed claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress against the Wikimedia Foundation. The judge found that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes the Wikimedia Foundation from liability for third-party content republished on Wikipedia. In other words, Section 230 helps Wikimedia safely host the work of Wikipedia's contributors and enables the effective volunteer-led moderation of content on the projects.

As the Wikimedia blog post notes, this was an absolutely crucial result. If collaborative projects that are created, maintained, and curated by volunteers could be held liable every time a user contributed something that was inaccurate or offensive, none of them would last very long -- not least because they generally lack the resources to fight expensive court cases. Back in 2017, Wikimedia wrote a detailed post on Section 230, and why it made Wikipedia and other sites possible

The court's ruling is a big win for Wikimedia. On the other hand, in something of a (minor) defeat, China has yet again blocked the Wikimedia Foundation's application for observer status at WIPO -- the only country to object. This is the second time it has done so, and for the same reason:

As in 2020, China's statement falsely suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation was spreading disinformation via the independent, volunteer-led Wikimedia Taiwan chapter. The United States and the group of industrialized countries at WIPO -- which also includes many European Union member states, Australia, Canada, the Holy See, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom -- expressed their support for the Foundation's application. Since WIPO is generally run by consensus, any one country may veto accreditation requests by non-governmental organizations.

China's blocking of a small, apolitical organization that aims to promote knowledge around the world just looks incredibly petty, and is hardly befitting for a world power.

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Filed Under: china, defamation, free speech, internet platforms, section 230, taiwan, wikipedia, wipo
Companies: wikimedia foundation, wikipedia

Copyright Trolling/SEO Scam, Changing The Photo Credits On Wikimedia Commons

from the shakedown dept

Want to know yet another reason why the CASE Act is so dangerous? It will inspire ever more new attempts at fraud in the copyright trolling space. Giving people the ability to shake down others leads to... lots of attempts to shake down or scam others. The latest scam we've heard of comes to us from photographer Kyle Cassidy, who posted this wonderful photo of NPR host Peter Sagal running to Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY-SA 3.0 (attribution, sharealike) license:

A writer named Eric San Juan used the image, properly attributed on his blog. Last month, Eric received an email from "Aldwin Sturdivant" from a company called "Green Cap Marketing" which claims to be one of the many companies that will scan the web on behalf of photographers and shake down anyone who used those images for money. The site claims "Your Images. Your Revenue." Also, somewhat ironically, it claims: "Nothing is more frustrating than knowing your work is being stolen and used for someone else’s gain." It's ironic, because it appears that it's actually "Green Cap Marketing" that is trying to gain from pretending to hold the copyright on someone else's images. Here's the email that Sturdivant sent to San Juan:

It says:

Hi I hope you are the right person on this.,

I hope you’re doing well.

I am very pleased to see that my creative work in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Running_Man_Kyle_Cassidy.jpg is being used on this article found on your site: .http://ericsanjuan.com/get-more-exercise-day-to-day-with-these-stunning-hacks/.

It means a lot to me that you selected my work. I prefer that you keep the image on as I can see it provides value to your followers.

Simple image credit to my site is all I ask. It motivates me to continue uploading images that contribute to informative content like yours.

Can you support my humble work? Stay safe. 🙂

Cheers,
Aldwin Sturdivant
Content Editor
Green Cap Marketing

Just looking at this should raise some alarm bells. I mean, photograph's file name actually has the name of the actual photographer, Kyle Cassidy, in the file name. San Juan originally assumed that Sturdivant was sincere, and noticed that the Wikimedia Commons page did say that he was the photographer:

But, if you look in the Wikipedia edit history, you'll see that the "photo taken by" credits have changed over time, with a bunch of name changes in the past few months:

Basically, on August 13th, someone changed the photographer to be "Natasha Spencer" of a sketchy health site I will not name. That was reverted. On August 17th, the same thing happened. It was reverted. On November 23rd, the same day "Sturdivant" emailed San Juan, it was changed again to say the photo was taken by Sturdivant, again in association with the sketchy health site.

Indeed, this appears to not be so much a copyright trolling scam, but a search engine optimization scam. "Sturdivant" and Green Cap Marketing didn't ask San Juan for payment... but to link to an affiliate site. According to San Juan:

In no time, they send a reply with the link info for me, but what he sent back was a website that had nothing to do with him or the photo, and the photo attribution they asked for was for a BUSINESS, not the photographer. It was a link affiliate site, a commercial site that earns money through clicks. What the hell?

San Juan has blacked out the URL, but I'll take a wild guess that it's likely to be the same one that "Sturdivant" and "Spencer" named when they claimed credit for the Wikimedia photos.

So what originally looked like a copyright trolling scam, may be more of an SEO scam. Either way, it's a scam.

Cassidy himself went snooping and found that there were a bunch of other files attributed to A. Sturdivant, but honestly, many of those appear to be legit, as they appear to be old documents that have some connection to an actual "Sturdivant" from very far in the past.

However, others have pointed out that this is a common problem, with people vandalizing photo credits, and that "A. Sturdivant" was a name used for this in the past as well. Some Wikipedia editors have been reporting and banning users for engaging in this kind of scam.

However, what does seem clear is that Green Cap Marketing (since the "Sturdivant" emails came from there) is not just engaged in typical copyright trolling, but has expanded its business into the truly scammy SEO game, by faking credits on photos and then asking sites to link to their affiliate fee links instead of the actual photographer's images and sites.

Filed Under: aldwin sturdivant, commons, copyright, copyright trolling, creative commons, eric san juan, kyle cassidy, links, natasha spencer, peter sagal, seo, wikimedia commons, wikipedia
Companies: green cap marketing, wikimedia

Turkish Government Finally Lifts Wikipedia Ban

from the you-lost,-losers dept

More than two years ago, the Turkish government blocked all of Wikipedia under the dubious legal theory it was a "threat to national security." A single offending article that linked the Turkish government to various terrorist organizations was the "threat" Turkey felt it couldn't withstand.

Wikipedia challenged this blanket ban -- which covered all of its domains, not just the Turkish version. It appealed the decision in Turkey and petitioned the European Court of Human Rights to declare the government's ban a violation of free speech rights.

The ECHR seemed inclined to give Wikipedia what it asked for. But securing a win wouldn't be enough to lift the ban. Turkey has routinely blown off ECHR verdicts, choosing to keep its human rights violations in place in exchange for periodic fines.

Unfortunately, for Recep Erdogan and his government, another decision was handed down that wasn't so easily ignored. In late December of last year, the country's top court ruled the ban was a violation of freedom of expression rights. It took a few weeks for the government to comply with the order, but the Wikimedia Foundation reports the ban has finally been lifted.

Today, on Wikipedia’s 19th birthday, the Wikimedia Foundation has received reports that access to Wikipedia in Turkey is actively being restored.* This latest development follows a 26 December 2019 ruling by the Constitutional Court of Turkey that the more than two and a half year block imposed by the Turkish government was unconstitutional. Earlier today, the Turkish Constitutional Court made the full text of that ruling available to the public, and shortly after, we received reports that access was restored to Wikipedia.

This win doesn't mean Wikipedia is dropping its ECHR petition. Even if Turkey is unlikely to comply with an ECHR ruling, another declaration of access to Wikipedia as a basic human right will make it a little more difficult for the Turkish government to institute another ban the next time it's offended.

So far, the security of the Turkish nation appears to be as intact as it ever was. Considering the government's unimpaired access to any number of media outlets, it would seem the best thing the country could have done is fight Wikipedia's speech with speech of its own. But that's never enough for authoritarians like Recep Erdogan who use a great deal of their power to silence critics under the guise of securing the nation.

Filed Under: ban, turkey, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

PLOS ONE Topic Pages: Peer-Reviewed Articles That Are Also Wikipedia Entries: What's Not To Like?

from the good-for-the-academic-career,-too dept

It is hard to imagine life without Wikipedia. That's especially the case if you have school-age children, who now turn to it by default for information when working on homework. Less well-known is the importance of Wikipedia for scientists, who often use its pages for reliable explanations of basic concepts:

Physicists -- researchers, professors, and students -- use Wikipedia daily. When I need the transition temperature for a Bose-Einstein condensate (prefactor and all), or when I want to learn about the details of an unfamiliar quantum algorithm, Wikipedia is my first stop. When a graduate student sends me research notes that rely on unfamiliar algebraic structures, they reference Wikipedia.

That's from a blog post on the open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) Web site. It's an announcement of an interesting new initiative to bolster the number of physicists contributing to Wikipedia by writing not just new articles for the online encyclopedia, but peer-reviewed ones. The additional element aims to ensure that the information provided is of the highest quality -- not always the case for Wikipedia articles, whatever their other merits. As the PLOS post explains, the new pages have two aspects:

A peer-reviewed 'article' in [the flagship online publication] PLOS ONE, which is fixed, peer-reviewed openly via the PLOS Wiki and citable, giving information about that particular topic.

That finalized article is then submitted to Wikipedia, which becomes a living version of the document that the community can refine, build on, and keep up to date.

The two-pronged approach of these "Topic Pages" has a number of benefits. It means that Wikipedia gains high-quality, peer-reviewed articles, written by experts; scientists just starting out gain an important new resource with accessible explanations of often highly-technical topics; and the scientists writing Topic Pages can add them to their list of citable publications -- an important consideration for their careers, and an added incentive to produce them.

Other PLOS titles such as PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics have produced a few Topic Pages previously, but the latest move represents a major extension of the idea. As the blog post notes, PLOS ONE is initially welcoming articles on topics in quantum physics, but over time it plans to expand to all of physics. Let's hope it's an idea that catches on and spreads across all academic disciplines, since everyone gains from the approach -- not least students researching their homework.

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Filed Under: peer review, science, wikipedia
Companies: plos

Wikipedia Makes The Case For Google & Facebook To Give Back To The Commons, Rather Than Just Take

from the valid-argument dept

Over the past decade or so we've seen lots of arguments from legacy industries -- mainly recording industries, publishing industries, and film industries -- freaking out about Google and Facebook. The go-to response generally seems to be to run to the government and demand that they force the successful internet companies to transfer some of their wealth to the legacy industries. In some cases, these pleas appear to be working -- such as with the link tax proposal in the EU.

Generally speaking, this whole thing is pretty disgusting. It's usually legacy private companies which had a successful business model under a previous system, failed to adapt to a changing world, and then act as if they're magically entitled to someone else's money. Of course, that's not how it should work (even if sometimes it does). But I'm interested in comparing this approach to the approach of Wikipedia, whose executive director, Katherine Maher, has an article in Wired arguing that Google and Facebook should consider giving back to the site, especially seeing as those platforms are increasingly relying on the information within Wikipedia.

While the title of the Wired piece is provocative -- "Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia" -- it's a title that Maher notes was not chosen by herself and which might not directly represent her views:

And that's correct, because the article itself is much more nuanced. Rather than demanding a forced transfer of wealth from government, or simply demanding that Google and Facebook pay up, Maher does a great job of making the case that Google and Facebook ought to give back to the commons considering how much they're now relying on it. This is especially true today as both companies have started leaning more heavily on Wikipedia to deal with disinformation (i.e., more direct usage of Wikipedia's content, and not just finding what other people have posted in their usual way):

You may not realise how ubiquitous Wikipedia is in your everyday life, but its open, collaboratively-curated data is used across semantic, search and structured data platforms  on the web. Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Home source Wikipedia articles for general knowledge questions; Google’s knowledge panel features Wikipedia content for snippets and essential facts; Quora contributes to and utilises the Wikidata open data project to connect topics and improve user recommendations.

More recently, YouTube and Facebook have turned to Wikipedia for a new reason: to address their issues around fake news and conspiracy theories. YouTube said that they would begin linking to Wikipedia articles from conspiracy videos, in order to give users additional – often corrective – information about the topic of the video. And Facebook rolled out a feature using Wikipedia’s content to give users more information about the publication source of articles appearing in their feeds.

Maher points out that (unlike some others) Wikipedia is thrilled to see that the value of what they've created is being recognized and is so valuable. It's a true validation of the idea that many people spent years mocking. But, Maher suggests, if the tech companies are going to rely so heavily, they ought to consider giving back in ways as well. As she notes, Wikipedia itself works because so many individuals are generous in ways they can be:

But at a deeper level, Wikipedia works because people are generous. Millions of people have contributed their time and effort to create and curate tens of millions of articles simply to share knowledge with the world. And they want that knowledge to be free for everyone. But even the most altruistic creator appreciates a nod for their work and the resources to keep going. Everyone knows the difference between tending a community garden for the use of their neighbours, and tending it for a company to throw a corporate picnic.

And tech companies that are using that content could also help out:

As companies draw on Wikipedia for knowledge – and as a bulwark against bad information – we believe they too have an opportunity to be generous. At Wikimedia, we already love and deeply appreciate the millions of people around the world who make generous charitable contributions because they believe in our values. But we also believe that we deserve lasting, commensurate support from the organisations that derive significant and sustained financial value from our work.

And it’s not just us. From groups that set open standards, such as IETF, ICANN and W3C, to organisations that support critical open source projects, such as the Software Freedom Conservancy, to Creative Commons, which enables us to share creativity freely, to the digital knowledge and data commons supported by Wikimedia, we do the work that helps the rest of the internet thrive.

There's a lot more in the piece, and I find it fascinating. It's also different than the legacy companies, in that it's coming from a non-profit that has always survived solely on donations. It's an organization that knows how to ask for support, rather than demand or expect it. At one level, there are similarities to the arguments of the old school legacy companies. But the approach is so very different. Rather than threatening and demanding, this approach is welcoming and collaborative. It's appealing to the better nature of those companies, rather than just scolding them and screaming about how they're evil. One wonders what kind of internet and cultural community we might have if the legacy companies had tried that approach in the early days, rather than the antagonistic approach they did take.

I have no idea if this approach will work. But it's fascinating to see and to contrast it with the legacy players.

Filed Under: commons, sharing, wikipedia
Companies: facebook, google, wikimedia

Italian Court Rules The Wikimedia Foundation Is Just A Hosting Provider For Wikipedia's Volunteer-Written Articles

from the could-come-in-handy-one-day dept

Many of us tend to take the amazing resource of Wikipedia for granted: it's hard to imagine online life without it. But that doesn't mean its position is assured. As well as continuing funding uncertainty, it is also subject to legal attacks that call into question its innovative way of letting anyone create and edit articles. For example, in 2012 a former Italian Minister of Defense sued the Wikimedia Foundation in Italy for hosting a Wikipedia article he alleged contained defamatory information. He had sent a letter demanding that the article in question should be removed, without even specifying the exact page or where the problem lay, and filed the suit when the page was not taken down.

In 2013, the Civil Court in Rome ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, cannot be held liable for the content of Wikipedia articles, which it does not control. Unsurprisingly, the former minister appealed, and the Court of Appeals in Rome has just handed down its judgment, which is in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation:

In a ruling that provides strong protection for Wikipedia's community governance model, the Court once again recognized that the Wikimedia Foundation is a hosting provider, and that the volunteer editors and contributors create and control content on the Wikimedia projects. The Court also made clear that a general warning letter, without additional detail about the online location, unlawfulness, or the harmful nature of the content as recognized by a court, does not impose a removal obligation on a hosting provider like the Wikimedia Foundation.

Moreover:

the Court took notice of Wikipedia's unique model of community-based content creation, and the mechanisms by which someone can suggest edits or additions to project content. It found that Wikipedia has a clear community procedure for content modification, which Mr. Previti should have used to address his concerns. He could have reached out to the volunteer editors, provided reliable sources, and suggested amendments to the article, instead of sending a general warning letter to the Foundation.

According to the post on the Wikimedia blog, the article about the former minister will remain online, and Previti will pay the Wikimedia Foundation some of the expenses incurred in defending the lawsuit and appeal. That suggests the matter is now over. The ruling is good news in other ways. As well as recognizing the validity of the the community-based creation model, it also affirms that the Wikimedia Foundation is a hosting provider, not an organization that controls the articles themselves. That's important in the context of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, currently under discussion. Article 13 of the Directive would require upload filters on major sites that are actively involved in the publishing of material. The Italian Appeals Court ruling may help to shield Wikimedia from such an impossible requirement if it is still present in the final version of the EU legislation.

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Filed Under: intermediary liability, italy, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

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

Monkey Selfie Photographer Says He's Now Going To Sue Wikipedia

from the this-will-never-end dept

Thought the monkey selfie saga was over? I'm beginning to think that it will never, ever, be over. If you're unfamliar with the story, there are too many twists and turns to recount here, but just go down the rabbit hole (monkey hole?) of our monkey selfie tag. Last we'd heard, PETA and photographer David Slater were trying to settle PETA's totally insane lawsuit -- but were trying to do so in an immensely troubling way, where the initial district court ruling saying, clearly, that monkeys don't get a copyright would get deleted. Not everyone was comfortable with this settlement and some concerns have been brought before the court. As of writing this, the court seems to be sitting on the matter.

We knew exactly why PETA didn't want its big loss to remain on the books, but it initially appeared that Slater was more neutral. However, he's now claiming that he's preparing to sue Wikipedia -- in which case having the earlier ruling off the books (where it makes it clear that a monkey can't get a copyright) would probably be helpful. This bit of news about a planned Wikipedia lawsuit was a throwaway line in... well... a pretty bad episode of This American Life, which takes on the monkey selfie story, but does a surprisingly awful job of it. I'm a huge fan of This American Life, and in the past when they've done stories where I'm intimately familiar with the details, I think they've done a really excellent job.

But, on this story, TAL falls flat on its face. It presents the story of David Slater mostly through his own telling of it, and frames Wikipedia declaring the image to be in the public domain to be a fairly radical position. I'm actually surprised that TAL didn't talk to a copyright lawyer about this (they quote Slater's lawyer, but specifically on questions related to PETA's case -- and not the copyright status of the image). Indeed, I'm surprised that the reporter, Dana Chivvis, didn't appear to speak to anyone at Wikipedia itself. She kicks off the discussion of Wikipedia's role in the monkey selfie case with this bit of utter nonsense that does not reflect Wikipedia's view at all:

In other words, anyone could use it, without David's permission, for free. To David, that was just stealing. He makes a living from selling his pictures, so it was really helpful to have one that was such a hit. But now, anyone could download it from Wikipedia and hang it on their wall. Or print it in their publication.

Wikipedia's opinion is that information on the internet should be free.

Where to start? This is just so full of wrong, it's embarrassing. Whether or not Slater makes his living from that photo has no bearing on the legal question of who holds the copyright. And Wikimedia's reason for declaring the monkey selfie in the public domain is not that "information on the internet should be free." Its position is that the law is well established that non-human creators don't get copyright, and thus the image is in the public domain. This isn't some crazy "ooh man, everything should be free" argument. It's a legal argument based on the entire history of copyright law. While (thankfully!) Slater and/or TAL left us out of this story (Slater frequently blames us in combination with Wikipedia for the sin of accurately reporting on the law, but somehow we got spared in this story), it does a terrible job presenting the actual legal arguments about the public domain question. Wikipedia does support making knowledge available to the public, but that's unrelated to the legal question of whether the image is in the public domain -- but the way Chivvis presents it, it's as if Wikipedians just randomly declare images in the public domain because they think everything online should be free. That's wrong. And it's just bad reporting.

Chivvis does do a much better job getting into the legal issues with PETA's dumb lawsuit and accurately presenting the issues at play there, but that's a separate issue from whether or not the image is in the public domain (even if the issues are somewhat entangled). She also leaves out the key part of the settlement being a desire to delete the original ruling in the case -- or the fact that the court does not appear to have accepted the settlement, and the case is technically still open (she claims that it's all settled).

There is just a quick aside about Slater's plan to sue Wikipedia at the end, right before the supposed "kicker" to the story: Slater claims that "Naruto" -- the monkey PETA claims it represents and who it claims took the photo -- is not, in fact, the monkey who took the selfie. This isn't a new argument, as it's been raised before (by Slater and others) that Naruto is the wrong monkey.

Either way, suing Wikipedia for accurately claiming the monkey selfie image is in the public domain would not be a wise move on Slater's part. He's almost certain to lose if it goes that way. He's also threatened to sue us in the past over this same issue, and that would be even dumber (again: we just reported on the copyright status of an image based on his own statements about how the image came to be -- he has since changed his story to make it appear that he had more of a role in the photo, but that was not his original story at all). Note that in original story, Slater said he left the camera "unattended" and the camera "attracted the attention" of a macaque. It was only later, after people pointed out that under those conditions, he doesn't have a copyright that the story began to morph into one where Slater had a bigger role (which is also heard in the TAL broadcast).

Either way, Slater continues to tilt at this windmill, and it's not going to change the law. PETA's lawsuit was dumb and hopefully it really is over (though, hopefully the original ruling remains on the books). I really feel sorry that PETA decided to pick Slater as the victim of one of its stunts as it's a shitty experience to be sued. But for Slater to think the lesson to take from all of this is to sue others would be disappointing.

Filed Under: copyright, dana chivvis, david slater, monkey selfie, public domain, this american life, wikipedia
Companies: peta, wikimedia, wikipedia