Succeeding in Your Business: Are you thinking of contributing? Wikis and the law

By Cliff Ennico

“I’m widely considered an expert in a particular field and thinking of contributing an article to Wikipedia — the online encyclopedia — as a way of promoting my consulting practice. What are the legal ramifications of contributing to a Wiki, and how do I protect myself against liability?”

For those who don’t know, a wiki is a collaborative website on which anyone can contribute content and edit other people’s content. The best-known wiki is probably Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with almost 3.8 million entries in English.

Here’s how it works: You write an article (if one hasn’t already been written) and post it on Wikipedia. By so doing, you agree to Wikipedia’s free documentation license, essentially waiving your rights under the copyright laws. If other people see your article and feel they have something to add, correct or contribute, they can edit your content so that over time, the article becomes longer, more thorough, more fair and balanced, and more up to date than any article by a single author. Likewise, if you feel someone has edited your content incorrectly, you can re-edit your content and send emails to other contributors explaining why you are doing what you’re doing.

Posting an article on Wikipedia can be a terrific way to get exposure for your business. Wikipedia has done an amazingly good job of search engine optimization — search for any relevant topic on your favorite search engine and a Wikipedia article is likely to be in the first 10 results.

But there’s a catch: Because wikis are democratic by nature, you don’t have to establish your credentials as an expert to post an article on Wikipedia. Indeed, anyone can post content on a wiki, whether that person knows anything about the subject matter or not.

To quote from the Wikipedia article about Wikipedia: “Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start and may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as partisan, and after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus. … However, eventually, additional editors expand and contribute to articles and strive to achieve balance and comprehensive coverage.”

Wikipedia and other wikis have adopted policies and procedures to guard against editors whose goal is to distort the truth — called vandals. Most wikis have an online-dispute resolution mechanism for conflicting editors and will bar repeated vandals from editing content on the site.

But what if it’s too late? What if someone edits your article on Wikipedia and does something bad that upsets someone so much that the person sues you? Some examples:

• Someone edits your article and posts false and misleading information about another person — a celebrity, a politician or just an average person — with the goal of ruining that person’s reputation (see the Wikipedia article on defamation).

• Someone edits your article and posts embarrassing — but entirely true — information about someone that invades that person’s privacy (see the Wikipedia article on privacy laws in the United States).

• Someone edits your article by cutting and pasting someone else’s content into your article ver batim (see the Wikipedia article on copyright infringement).

• You have enemies, and they deliberately change your content by inserting incorrect or damaging information that makes you look like a fool (see the Wikipedia article on personality rights).

When contributing content to a wiki or editing someone else’s content, the word “partnership” should pop up in your head. Wikis are collaborative by nature — each article has several or more authors and editors — and collaborators are usually viewed as partners when it comes to legal liability.

That’s not a good thing, because partners have joint and several liability for their acts and omissions: If one partner gets sued, all partners are liable, regardless of whether they were actually at fault (see the Wikipedia articles on partnership and joint and several liability). So, if someone sues the authors of a Wiki article because of a false or misleading statement made by only one of the authors, all contributors to that article are subject to the lawsuit.

Of course, the innocent authors of the article will have recourse against the guilty author. This is called contribution and indemnification (see the Wikipedia page “Contribution Claim (Legal)”). But if the bad author doesn’t have much money, has filed for bankruptcy, has given Wikipedia false data about his or her identity, or is otherwise judgment-proof, then the innocent authors, including you, will be left holding the bag.

When contributing content to a wiki, do your homework well. Make your article as comprehensive, fair and balanced as possible to keep the number of editors at a minimum, and check your contribution at least once each week so you can catch and correct any wayward edits before they get you into legal hot water.

Cliff Ennico (crennico@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist, author and former host of the PBS television series “Money Hunt.”

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