given the prevalence of age discrimination, it's disappointing that wikimedia didn't take the birth year down voluntarily
yes, the data's available from other sources, but a prospective employer might not see that until after evaluating some other aspects of her work, and end up hiring her in a situation in which they wouldn't if they found her age immediately
for that matter, i find wikimedia's prominent display of age for people in general to be a bit too forceful. is that really such a defining characteristic of a living person that it belongs in the highlight box ?
Age itself doesn't really matter but I think having birth and death dates listed is really important because it tells you: 1) If the person is still living and 2) what era they lived in. Listing the age is just a natural byproduct of having the other two pieces of information and if it wasn't included conveniently in a box, could be easily calculated. I do agree that society in general puts a strange emphasis on age, as if whether someone is 30 years old matters vs someone who is 60. The only case where it's really relevant is that if they're living especially long, but then that would be mentioned in the article anyway.
Knowing when they were born helps know what age they grew up in. Knowing someone died is great, but how old were they when they died is just as important if not more so.
If you are a employer spending billable time looking up people on wikipedia and facebook, would you not also have the budget to purchase a e-book, pay access to a registry with public data or get credit/police records? The age of the person is very likely to be included somewhere, especially if include it in the book.
> given the prevalence of age discrimination, it's disappointing that wikimedia didn't take the birth year down voluntarily
Consider how well the adoption of the Occlusion Method would work -- or rather, be received -- if applied to any other common adjective to discrimination. (Gender, (lack of) religion, race, redheadedness, etc)
To be clear, I don't think trying to keep your age a secret is an effective way to either a) keep your age a secret, or b) decrease the prevalence of age discrimination.
> for that matter, i find wikimedia's prominent display of age for people in general to be a bit too forceful. is that really such a defining characteristic of a living person that it belongs in the highlight box ?
Who knows. It's two characters, though, that are easily skimmed over when reading, and presumably enough people find the information useful to warrant its presence.
What if they had won? What bearing does suing the Wikimedia Foundation, a US entity, for material published in the US under US publishing laws?
The German Wikipedia is published and maintained by a US entity, there's a local German Wikimedia chapter but it's not the publisher of the German Wikipedia. The article says that they sued the US entity (the Wikimedia Foundation Inc., not Wikimedia Deutschland), but doesn't explain this issue.
Same thing that happens to any other service provider: they might lose the ability to do business in Germany or even get blocked if they knowingly continue violating German law.
Granted, for Wikimedia there would be less at stake than for, say, Facebook, but it should be obvious why an organization offering a localized service might be interested in staying within the bounds of the laws of whatever locale they are targeting.
I doubt Wikimedia Deutschland would fare well if their US-based parent organisation disregarded rulings of German courts, especially when it comes to protecting the privacy of German citizens.
Compare it to, say, US courts suing a EU or Chinese company. Sure, they don't necessarily have any means to enforce the ruling against the foreign company but it would likely be in the company's best interests to follow the ruling if they want to continue providing their services in the US.
> I doubt Wikimedia Deutschland would fare well
> if their US-based parent organisation disregarded
> rulings of German courts.
Well, this has always been the interesting case with these lawsuits against Wikipedia/Wikimedia. The local chapters do not in any way run their respective language editions. After all, why would the Wikimedia Germany and not the Austria or Switzerland chapter run the German Wikipedia?
Even if the heat was turned up on Wikimedia Deutschland as a result of something like this they'd be unable to dictate what goes into their language editions of Wikipedia. The local chapters simply have nothing to do with the editorial policy.
There are plenty of German speakers who edit Wikipedia who live outside of Germany, some even live in the U.S. Is a German court ruling going to decide whether a German speaker living in the U.S. can insert factual information into a U.S.-hosted encyclopedia article about some subject pertinent to Germany?
The entire legal framework around this sort of thing is based on the assumption of locally published paper media, and it's really interesting to see how these cases are treated in the Internet age where it's not a case of local publishing in your country, but your citizens fetching foreign-published information over international boundaries.
So I'm genuinely curious to know what their standing in the case was considered to be.
There are certain legal doctrines (and treaties) regarding standing. I don't know about the situation between Germany/the EU vis-a-vis the US, but, as an example, the EU rules specify that in almost all cases consumers get to sue / can only be sued at their place of residence (unless they consent to a different venue).
This is to ensure a somewhat level playing field, since the consumer is usually the weaker party. I would argue that, even though it's not a consumer vs. company lawsuit the situation is comparable and it's fair to empower her with the choice of venue. I also don't see it as an unreasonable burden to consider the legal situation in Germany when you're publishing information about a German citizen, in German. This isn't some Pakistani court imposing sharia law on HBO because people could possibly watch it in Karachi if they have the right VPN.
The alternative interpretation of some of these comments is that basically no law should apply to the internet. Even though I have some sympathy for the techno-anarcho mindset (fuck that stupid cookie regulation!), I would argue that if anything that happens online has any power, that power requires checks that go beyond 'might is right'. And even acknowledging all their faults, I haven't come across a better method than a democratically legitimated court of law.
(Having said all that: she lost, the system is working).
I suppose they could have had that page changed / blocked in Germany. It's like any sort of physical product made in the US (or any other nation) and then sold in another country: it can be blocked if it's found in breach of local laws
They'd have to block the entirety of Wikipedia since it uses https. It would be interesting to see what would happen with these sorts of issues if push came to shove.
Usually the resort has been that local countries have threatened local editors living in those countries, e.g. there was a famous case with the French government threatening someone living in France who was writing about French nuclear communication outposts on the French Wikipedia (published in the U.S.).
The issue under discussion in this lawsuit is that the subject of the article is claiming that her birthyear is private information, but the Wikipedia article's source for the birthyear is a book that she herself published[1].
I think some things are being lost in translation in this article, but generally speaking in many European privacy laws you can argue that something that's private information is in the public interest, or you can argue that it's not really private, either because the subject is a public person, or that it's a generally well-known fact.
I think it's really a stretch to maintain that your birthyear is private information if you're a screenwriter/director who has a self-authored book saying what year you were born in. Your birthyear is public information at that point by any reasonable definition.
If you read the whole article and the portions of the ruling that it provides, you'd see that the court specifically addresses this. She has a widely known career producing mass commercial public works (documentaries) and they note that it is in the public interest to know what was produced at what age.
I'm happy that we don't use your personal desire for ignorance as a guide when forming public policy.
The point of these sorts of laws "public persona" laws is not that we all desperately need to know trivia like George Clooney's natural hair color or what year Evelyn Schels was born, but rather that when you insert yourself into the public sphere you're free game for the public press because it's in the public's interest do know who you are and what you represent.
The press is one of the fundamental pillars of any functioning democracy, and if you can't write a basic article about some public personality without mentioning how old they are or other pertinent personal attributes without fear of legal retribution you've enacted a major barrier to public discourse.
You probably also don't need to know all the other stuff on George Lucas' Wikipedia entry. But if you look him up (so you are interesting in information about him), I guess his age is one of the basic info you'd want to know, wouldn't you?
I did not see that comming. Mainly from Wikimedia, since the tone is like they've won a war against Evil Corp for freedom when it looks like they just screw with this person's life. Yes, wikimedia might have the legal rights to do this, but as the awesome community and organization they are this feels completely odd.
I don't see how they are screwing with her life. She, herself, published the info in a book.
> The court recognized that a birth year made accessible by the Claimant herself through publicly available sources such as a book “would not remain limited to a small circle of people … but be accessible to a circle of users unlimited in theory.”
This. The court ruled against her because she demanded information she herself had previously made available to the general public to be removed based on privacy concerns.
While I would maintain that "available to the general public" doesn't equal "available to everyone" (info on the web is more likely widely available than info in a print book) I agree with the court in that her claim against Wikimedia is invalid in this case.
I think she rightfully lost, but I can see a few arguments here. Firstly, the book in question was her dissertation which might require a birth date as a matter of form. Secondly, there's a qualitative difference between a (possibly out-of-print) book and a website. In a way it's a rehash of the whole 'right to be forgotten' debate.
