Assume somebody spreads libel on a public, calling you a Nazi, for example. What do you do?
The first question to ask, perhaps, is what do you want to achieve?
1. Take the offender to court, if he can be identified.
2. Have the offending content removed.
3. If the offense is being repeated, force the wiki host to take preventive measures (banning the offender)
If the problem can be solved without resorting to a LegalSolution (SoftSecurity), so much the better. But what about a legal solution to the problem?
In Switzerland there’s a law to protect your honor ¹. It says:
Wer jemanden bei einem andern eines unehrenhaften Verhaltens oder anderer Tatsachen, die geeignet sind, seinen Ruf zu schädigen, beschuldigt oder verdächtigt, wer eine solche Beschuldigung oder Verdächtigung weiterverbreitet, wird, auf Antrag, mit Gefängnis bis zu sechs Monaten oder mit Busse bestraft.
Which says, more or less, that if you accuse somebody of dishonorable behaviour, or you distribute such an accusation, you will be charged with six months of prison or a fine.
This assumes that you will be taking a known person to court.
What if the poster is anonymous, however? How can you force the service provider (the entity running the wiki) to help you identify the offender?
In Germany, there is a law that requires service providers to remove offending content immediately, unless they want to be held responsible for it ²:
Diensteanbieter sind für fremde Informationen, die sie für einen Nutzer speichern, nicht verantwortlich, sofern
sie keine Kenntnis von der rechtswidrigen Handlung oder der Information haben und ihnen im Falle von Schadensersatzansprüchen auch keine Tatsachen oder Umstände bekannt sind, aus denen die rechtswidrige Handlung oder die Information offensichtlich wird, oder 2. sie unverzüglich tätig geworden sind, um die Information zu entfernen oder den Zugang zu ihr zu sperren, sobald sie diese Kenntnis erlangt haben. Satz 1 findet keine Anwendung, wenn der Nutzer dem Diensteanbieter untersteht oder von ihm beaufsichtigt wird.
Which says more or less that you are not responsible as a service provider if you 1. didn’t know about it, or 2. reacted immediately upon receiving notice.
What about Switzerland? The Federal Office of Justice has a page with some links ³, and there is JAAC 64.75 (Gutachten des Bundesamtes für Justiz vom 24.Dezember 1999) with a discussion of why *access* providers (ordinary ISPs) can be held accountable if the original authors cannot ⁴.
The law in question is Art. 27 and 322bis StGB. (Strafrechtliche Verantwortlichkeit der Internet-Access-Provider):
Auch reine Zugangsvermittler können, wenn der Autor in der Schweiz nicht vor Gericht gestellt werden kann, im Sinne des Medienstrafrechts subsidiär verantwortlich sein. Dies setzt aber voraus, dass die Provider von einer Strafverfolgungsbehörde klar auf den illegalen Inhalt aufmerksam gemacht worden sind.
It says more or less that *access* providers can be held responsible if the author cannot be put to trial in Switzerland, if they have been given clear notice by the office in charge of the investigation.
It therefore appears that, in order to get libel removed from a wiki, you first charge the author, and if the author is unknown, the access provider will be held partly responsible for the content. What does this mean? You can force all ISP’s to block the wiki or wiki page in question. But you cannot reach the *service* provider (the person running the wiki). We want that, however, because we want the service provider to take preventive measures such as banning the user.
There is a paper by the police talking about these issues ⁵ linked to from the Federal Office of Justice page mentioned above ⁶. There, it defines the following terms on page 3:
In the definition of the term *ISP* they also mention the providing of storage space on a web-server, and call them *hosting providers*.
This is interesting, because a wiki can be understood as a service providing storage space on a web-server, and therefore the entity running the wiki can be termed a “hosting provider”, which in turn is an ISP, an “internet service provider”.
On page 4, they say that the reasoning used in the article mentioned above (Strafrechtliche Verantwortlichkeit der Internet-Access-Provider) can also be applied to other service providers on the Internet:
Das eingangs erwähnte Gutachten des BJ führt eingehend aus, auf Grundlage welcher Bestimmungen des StGB ein Access-Provider strafrechtlich verantwortlich werden kann. Die dort gemachten Erwägungen können auch dazu dienen, die strafrechtliche Verantwortlichkeit in Bezug auf die übrigen Funktionen eines ISP respektive der weiteren Funktionsträger im Internet herzuleiten.
This means that they believe that **service providers such as a wiki host can be liable for non-identified contributions**, if they got prior notice of an offense. Now, wiki service providers don’t want to be held responsible for everything their users post. How can they avoid liability?
We have to return to the law protecting your honor in Switzerland ⁷:
Nimmt der Täter seine Äusserung als unwahr zurück, so kann er milder bestraft oder ganz von Strafe befreit werden.
If the offender takes back his words as untrue, the punishment may be less severe or waived entirely.
As wiki hosts, we will therefore have to make sure that we do the equivalent thing when given notice. I think reverting the change and maybe posting an explanatory comment should be enough.
So how do we get from there to banning repeating offenders? We don’t! We just rely on the fact that wiki hosting providers will either perpetually clean up behind offenders, or ban offenders of their own volition.
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#Wikis