What would have happened if the information was in an append only log like git history (where a rebase would be inappropriate) or a blockchain (where it can't occur)?
A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
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Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#52The way I read this article in English, were the original article still online, or had it been archived by archive.org and the Wikipedia link changed, then it could stay up. Does that make sense? The article doesn't link to German coverage so it's hard to learn about the underlying matter.
Still being up does not make it true, particularly if it is in archive.org.
I have no idea what when on, but given the facts as presented in that article, this is possible:
1. Papers publish an article about a professor.
2. Wikipedia repeats was is said in the article, and cites the article as proof.
3. archive.org and others makes copies of the article (perhaps Wikipedia starts taking copied of things it cites - which would be _really_ nice.)
4. Professor notices article and threatens to sue.
5. The papers decides the article can't be defended and so takes it down. If this is what happened copies of the article still appearing on the net doesn't alter the fact the papers acknowledged the article was false and defamatory.
If at this point the paper published an apology acknowledging the article is in error then Wikipedia then IMO Wikipedia doesn't have an ethical leg to stand on.
If they didn't publish an apology didn't this is probably the way it had to happen. They only way I'd change things is I wouldn't not be awarding the professor any damages - if I was the judge I would be saying "it's your own fault for not demanding an apology acknowledging the article was false from the paper".
As it is, Wikipedia left us to drawn our own conclusions from the link disappearing. As I frequent Wikipedia user I find myself in this position all the time and think that's perfectly reasonable, but I can see how the professor and the judge might see things differently.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#53Brexit is seeming smarter every day. What started as knee jerk reaction to immigration seems more sensible than ever, for myrid reasons.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#54>This result is disappointing for us, but it is not a notable change in the law Bullshit. This is a big precedent where Wikimedia will now remove material from Wikipedia if a court orders them to. They even acknowledge that the material in this case was, if not unambiguously true, at least well sourced. That's a huge precedent. It only remains to be seen whether Wikimedia decide to fight a similar decision made by so…
The WMF has operated in this fashion for years and years; they comply with court orders to remove material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_actions describes the English-language policy; German should be effectively the same.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#55Germany censoring things makes me nervous. I think they tried something like this before.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe they comply with every edict from the likes of Turkey or China. Perhaps it's related to taking donations from Germany, or perhaps they want to be able to lobby its government and the EU without appearing to be a criminal organization.
> perhaps they want to be able to lobby its government and the EU without appearing to be a criminal organization. It's interesting because they would only appear that way to the EU itself. For ordinary people, especially in the United States (though I suspect elsewhere), Wikipedia is far more of a respected organization than the European Union. (To be clear, I mean that if Wikipedia says "what we're doing is okay" a…
I think all governments would like to be able to enforce their laws on the Internet. The EU just has a bit more success than most due to the collective size and wealth of its member states. I don't know how to judge what ordinary people want. They seem generally happy to elect politicians who restrict free speech.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#57I would think the Wikimedia would stand on principle and refuse to remove items that are factually true. This capitulation to the whims of globally driven censorship needs to come to an end, and will only happen with an organization with a strong backbone and a commitment to freedom of speech and/or press.
I would prefer them to keep a separate version for Germany which will have additional indication that this page was censored by German government. People coming from other IP addresses should view original page. Surely Germany can't forbid people from the other countries to get some information from servers located outside of Germany.
How unnecessarily expensive would that be to maintain how many versions of facts?
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#58What would have happened if the information was in an append only log like git history (where a rebase would be inappropriate) or a blockchain (where it can't occur)?
For efficiency reasons, the append-only part of both git and blockchains does not contain the content, but instead a hash of the content. Furthermore, they always use cryptographic hashes with strong preimage resistance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimage_resistance), so just knowing the hash does not allow one to obtain the content (other than through brute force).
Therefore, they might not be able to remove "746308829575e17c3331bbcb00c0898b" from the append-only log, but they might be able to remove the mapping "746308829575e17c3331bbcb00c0898b -> Hello, world!" from the repository, without breaking the chain of the append-only log.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is archive.org not exempt? They are outside of EU jurisdiction unless they made the mistake of opening an office over there, which would be trivially fixable by shutting it down.
Wouldn't the same also apply for the Wikimedia Foundation?
I would hope so, but Wikipedia seems large enough to have servers over there.
If the EU can get away with this, what about North Korea and Saudi Arabia? Imagine a Wikipedia that can only say good things about Kim Jong-Un and doesn't contain any pictures of female faces.
Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history
#60What would have happened if the information was in an append only log like git history (where a rebase would be inappropriate) or a blockchain (where it can't occur)?
For efficiency reasons, the append-only part of both git and blockchains does not contain the content, but instead a hash of the content. Furthermore, they always use cryptographic hashes with strong preimage resistance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimage_resistance ), so just knowing the hash does not allow one to obtain the content (other than through brute force). Therefore, they might not be able to remove "…
This doesn't really answer the parent's question though. In a blockchain with a client doing full validation, removing/altering the data would cause the that block to be invalid. You'd need to hardfork the network to accept the altered history. I suspect git also checks the integrity of each commit, at least when pulling/cloning, so that would probably cause git to think the objects/packfiles are corrupt.