Golfer sues law firm over Wikipedia article defacement
Monday, February 26, 2007
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Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller wants to sue the anonymous person who vandalised his article in the Wikipedia encyclopedia, a website resource almost anyone can edit.
An IP address from Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, wrote a biased paragraph about him creating uproar from the golfer. The entry was posted twice: once sometime last year, and again in December 2006. The paragraph was removed last month, and deleted from the article history by Danny Wool, a staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Zoeller is suing Josef Silny & Associates to find out who added this text.
“The Zoeller family wants to take a stand to put a stop to this. Otherwise, we’re all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity,” said Zoeller’s attorney, Scott Sheftall.
The offensive edits, about which the suit is based, allegedly suggested that Zoeller admitted to consuming mass quantities of drugs and alcohol and beat his wife.
Through the court, Wikipedia can not be sued for a vandalous edit. The person or company, in this case, will be sued. In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation has not been contacted by Zoeller or his representatives about the lawsuit.