Wikipedia biography controversy
Encyclopedia
The Wikipedia biography controversy, sometimes called the Seigenthaler incident, was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax article in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia
about John Seigenthaler
, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations
of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy
. The 78-year-old Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination".
The hoax was not discovered and corrected for more than four months, after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today
. The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other websites with user-generated content
that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials. After the incident, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
stated that the encyclopedia had barred unregistered users from creating new articles.
. On May 26, 2005, Chase added a new article that contained, in its entirety, the following false text:
, a friend of Seigenthaler's, discovered the entry. After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler e-mailed friends and colleagues about it. On September 23, 2005, colleague Eric Newton
copied and pasted Seigenthaler's official biography into Wikipedia from the Freedom Forum
web site. The following day, this bio was removed by a Wikipedia editor on the grounds of copyright
policy violation, and it was replaced with a short original biography. Newton informed Seigenthaler of his action when he ran into Seigenthaler in November in New York at the Committee to Protect Journalists
dinner.
In October 2005, Seigenthaler contacted the then-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, Jimmy Wales
, who took the then-unusual step of having the affected versions of the article history hidden from public view in the Wikipedia version logs, in effect removing them from all but Wikipedia administrators
' view. Some "mirror
" websites not controlled by Wikipedia continued to display the older and inaccurate article for several more weeks until this new version of the article was propagated to these other websites.
article describing the particulars of the incident, which appeared in USA Today
, of which he had been the founding editorial director. The article was published on November 29, 2005. In the article, he included a verbatim reposting of the false statements and called Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool." An expanded version was published several days later in The Tennessean
where Seigenthaler was editor-in-chief in the 1970s. In the article, Seigenthaler detailed his own failed attempts to identify the anonymous person who posted the inaccurate biography. He reported that he had asked the poster's Internet service provider
, BellSouth
, to identify its user from the user's IP address
. BellSouth refused to identify the user without a court order, suggesting that Seigenthaler file a John Doe
lawsuit against the user, which Seigenthaler declined to do.
Daniel Brandt, a San Antonio
activist who had started the anti-Wikipedia site "Wikipedia Watch" in response to problems he had with his eponymous article, looked up the IP address in Seigenthaler's article, and found that it related to "Rush Delivery", a company in Nashville
. He contacted Seigenthaler and the media, and posted this information on his website.
On December 9, Brian Chase admitted he had posted the false biography to Wikipedia. After confessing, Chase resigned from his job at Rush Delivery. Seigenthaler received a hand-written apology and spoke with Chase on the phone. Seigenthaler confirmed—as he had previously stated—that he would not file a lawsuit in relation to the incident, and urged Rush Delivery to rehire Chase, which it did. Seigenthaler commented: "I'm glad this aspect of it is over." He stated that he was concerned that "every biography on Wikipedia is going to be hit by this stuff—think what they'd do to Tom DeLay
and Hillary Clinton, to mention two. My fear is that we're going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result."
to discuss the matter. On December 6, 2005, the two were interviewed on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation
radio program. Wales described a new policy that he implemented in order to prevent unregistered users from creating new articles on the English-language Wikipedia, though their ability to edit existing articles was retained.
In the CNN interview, Seigenthaler also raised the spectre of increased government regulation of the Web:
Seigenthaler criticized Congress for passing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for disseminating content provided by their customers and users, "unlike print and broadcast companies."
In the December 6 joint NPR interview, Seigenthaler said that he did not want to have anything to do with Wikipedia because he disapproved of its basic assumptions. In an article Seigenthaler wrote for USA Today in late 2005, he said, “I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.” He also pointed out that the false information had been online for over four months before he was aware of it, and that he had not been able to edit the article to correct it, when he did not even know of the article's existence. After speaking with Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales, Seigenthaler said: "My 'biography' was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers 'edited' it only by correcting the misspelling of the word 'early.' For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before I erased it from the website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks." Editing Wikipedia, he suggested, would lend it his sanction or approval, and he stated his belief that editing the article was not enough and instead he wanted to expose "incurable flaws" in the Wikipedia process and ethos.
On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on C-SPAN
's Washington Journal
with Brian Lamb
hosting. He said he was concerned that other pranksters would try to spoof members of Congress or other powerful figures in government, which may then prompt a backlash and turn back First Amendment
rights on the Web.
In the June 2007 issue of Reason
magazine, Seigenthaler also expressed concern about the lack of transparency underlined by Wales' removal of the hoax pages from the article's history page. He has also stated that many of the comments left by users in the edit summaries are things he would not want his nine-year-old grandson to see.
business editor Larry Ingrassia sent out a memo to his entire staff commenting on the reliability of Wikipedia and writing, "We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper." Several other publications commented on the incident, often criticizing Wikipedia and its open editing model as unreliable, citing the Seigenthaler incident as evidence.
The scientific journal Nature
published a (not peer-reviewed) study comparing the accuracy of Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica
in 42 hard sciences related articles in December 2005. The Wikipedia articles studied were found to contain four serious errors and 162 factual errors, while the Encyclopædia Britannica also contained four serious errors and 123 factual errors. Referring to the Seigenthaler incident and several other controversies, the authors wrote that the study "suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule."
on December 13, 2005, Wales discussed the reasons the hoax had gone undetected and steps being taken to address them. He stated that one problem was that Wikipedia's use had grown faster than its self-monitoring system could comfortably handle, and that therefore new page creation would be deliberately restricted to account-holders only, addressing one of Seigenthaler's main criticisms.
He also gave his opinion that encyclopedias as a whole (whether print or online) were not usually appropriate for primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative (as some were doing), but that nonetheless Wikipedia was more reliable as "background reading" on subjects than most online sources. He stated that Wikipedia was a "work in progress".
A variety of changes were also made to Wikipedia's software and working practices, to address some of the issues arising. A new guideline, '', was created on December 17, 2005; editorial restrictions were introduced on the creation of new Wikipedia articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people were implemented.
The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the MediaWiki
software, accessible to around 20 experienced editors nominated by Wales. This originally allowed for specific historical versions to be hidden from everyone (including Oversight editors), which then become unable to be viewed by anyone except developers via manual intervention, though the feature was later changed so that other Oversights could view these revisions to monitor the tool's use. Currently such procedures are standardized by the 'Office actions' policy which states: "Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation has to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es). These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user." Anyone with a Wikipedia account can email User:Oversight which will bring such problems to the attention of the users with the oversight tool. Those without a Wikipedia account can use normal email and write to , see Wikipedia:Requests for oversight.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
about John Seigenthaler
John Seigenthaler
John Lawrence Seigenthaler is an American journalist, writer, and political figure. He is known as a prominent defender of First Amendment rights....
, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
. The 78-year-old Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination".
The hoax was not discovered and corrected for more than four months, after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
. The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other websites with user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials. After the incident, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
stated that the encyclopedia had barred unregistered users from creating new articles.
Hoax
The author of the hoax article was later identified as Brian Chase, an operations manager of Rush Delivery, a delivery service company in Nashville, TennesseeNashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. On May 26, 2005, Chase added a new article that contained, in its entirety, the following false text:
Detection and correction
In September, Victor S. Johnson, Jr.Victor S. Johnson, Jr.
Victor Samuel Johnson, Jr. was an American lawyer who was president of Aladdin Industries, a manufacturer of vacuum bottles, kerosene lamps, and stoves. He was notable for creating the market for decorative lunch boxes. The company was further diversified under Johnson's leadership...
, a friend of Seigenthaler's, discovered the entry. After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler e-mailed friends and colleagues about it. On September 23, 2005, colleague Eric Newton
Eric Newton
Eric Newton is an American journalist and Senior Adviser to the President at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, an organization created by one of the founding families behind the Knight Ridder newspaper group.Newton earned a B.A...
copied and pasted Seigenthaler's official biography into Wikipedia from the Freedom Forum
Freedom Forum
The Freedom Forum was created in 1991 under the direction of Al Neuharth, former publisher of USA Today newspaper. Funding was provided by a foundation started by publisher Frank E. Gannett in 1935, called the Gannett Foundation...
web site. The following day, this bio was removed by a Wikipedia editor on the grounds of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
policy violation, and it was replaced with a short original biography. Newton informed Seigenthaler of his action when he ran into Seigenthaler in November in New York at the Committee to Protect Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.-History:A group of U.S...
dinner.
In October 2005, Seigenthaler contacted the then-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
, who took the then-unusual step of having the affected versions of the article history hidden from public view in the Wikipedia version logs, in effect removing them from all but Wikipedia administrators
System administrator
A system administrator, IT systems administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network...
' view. Some "mirror
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...
" websites not controlled by Wikipedia continued to display the older and inaccurate article for several more weeks until this new version of the article was propagated to these other websites.
Anonymous editor identified
Seigenthaler wrote an op-edOp-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
article describing the particulars of the incident, which appeared in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, of which he had been the founding editorial director. The article was published on November 29, 2005. In the article, he included a verbatim reposting of the false statements and called Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool." An expanded version was published several days later in The Tennessean
The Tennessean
The Tennessean is the principal daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Its circulation area covers 39 counties in Middle Tennessee and eight counties in southern Kentucky....
where Seigenthaler was editor-in-chief in the 1970s. In the article, Seigenthaler detailed his own failed attempts to identify the anonymous person who posted the inaccurate biography. He reported that he had asked the poster's Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
, BellSouth
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
, to identify its user from the user's IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
. BellSouth refused to identify the user without a court order, suggesting that Seigenthaler file a John Doe
Doe subpoena
A Doe subpoena is a subpoena that seeks the identity of an unknown defendant to a lawsuit. Most jurisdictions permit a plaintiff who does not yet know a defendant's identity to file suit against John Doe and then use the tools of the discovery process to seek the defendant's true name...
lawsuit against the user, which Seigenthaler declined to do.
Daniel Brandt, a San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
activist who had started the anti-Wikipedia site "Wikipedia Watch" in response to problems he had with his eponymous article, looked up the IP address in Seigenthaler's article, and found that it related to "Rush Delivery", a company in Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. He contacted Seigenthaler and the media, and posted this information on his website.
On December 9, Brian Chase admitted he had posted the false biography to Wikipedia. After confessing, Chase resigned from his job at Rush Delivery. Seigenthaler received a hand-written apology and spoke with Chase on the phone. Seigenthaler confirmed—as he had previously stated—that he would not file a lawsuit in relation to the incident, and urged Rush Delivery to rehire Chase, which it did. Seigenthaler commented: "I'm glad this aspect of it is over." He stated that he was concerned that "every biography on Wikipedia is going to be hit by this stuff—think what they'd do to Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
and Hillary Clinton, to mention two. My fear is that we're going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result."
Seigenthaler's public reaction
On December 5, 2005, Seigenthaler and Wales appeared jointly on CNNCNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
to discuss the matter. On December 6, 2005, the two were interviewed on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation is a talk radio program based in the United States, produced by National Public Radio, and is broadcast nationally from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Its focus is current events and controversial issues....
radio program. Wales described a new policy that he implemented in order to prevent unregistered users from creating new articles on the English-language Wikipedia, though their ability to edit existing articles was retained.
In the CNN interview, Seigenthaler also raised the spectre of increased government regulation of the Web:
Seigenthaler criticized Congress for passing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Communications Decency Act
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...
which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for disseminating content provided by their customers and users, "unlike print and broadcast companies."
In the December 6 joint NPR interview, Seigenthaler said that he did not want to have anything to do with Wikipedia because he disapproved of its basic assumptions. In an article Seigenthaler wrote for USA Today in late 2005, he said, “I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.” He also pointed out that the false information had been online for over four months before he was aware of it, and that he had not been able to edit the article to correct it, when he did not even know of the article's existence. After speaking with Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales, Seigenthaler said: "My 'biography' was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers 'edited' it only by correcting the misspelling of the word 'early.' For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before I erased it from the website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks." Editing Wikipedia, he suggested, would lend it his sanction or approval, and he stated his belief that editing the article was not enough and instead he wanted to expose "incurable flaws" in the Wikipedia process and ethos.
On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
's Washington Journal
Washington Journal
Washington Journal is an American television series on the C-SPAN network in the format of a political call-in and interview program. The program features elected officials, government administrators and journalists as guests, answering questions from the hosts and from members of the general...
with Brian Lamb
Brian Lamb
Brian Patrick Lamb is the founder and chief executive officer of C-SPAN, a television network dedicated to coverage of government proceedings and public affairs. Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Lamb earned a degree from Purdue University before joining the United States Navy...
hosting. He said he was concerned that other pranksters would try to spoof members of Congress or other powerful figures in government, which may then prompt a backlash and turn back First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
rights on the Web.
In the June 2007 issue of Reason
Reason (magazine)
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
magazine, Seigenthaler also expressed concern about the lack of transparency underlined by Wales' removal of the hoax pages from the article's history page. He has also stated that many of the comments left by users in the edit summaries are things he would not want his nine-year-old grandson to see.
Other reactions
In reaction to the controversy, The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
business editor Larry Ingrassia sent out a memo to his entire staff commenting on the reliability of Wikipedia and writing, "We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper." Several other publications commented on the incident, often criticizing Wikipedia and its open editing model as unreliable, citing the Seigenthaler incident as evidence.
The scientific journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
published a (not peer-reviewed) study comparing the accuracy of Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
in 42 hard sciences related articles in December 2005. The Wikipedia articles studied were found to contain four serious errors and 162 factual errors, while the Encyclopædia Britannica also contained four serious errors and 123 factual errors. Referring to the Seigenthaler incident and several other controversies, the authors wrote that the study "suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule."
Wikimedia Foundation reaction
In an interview with BusinessWeekBusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
on December 13, 2005, Wales discussed the reasons the hoax had gone undetected and steps being taken to address them. He stated that one problem was that Wikipedia's use had grown faster than its self-monitoring system could comfortably handle, and that therefore new page creation would be deliberately restricted to account-holders only, addressing one of Seigenthaler's main criticisms.
He also gave his opinion that encyclopedias as a whole (whether print or online) were not usually appropriate for primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative (as some were doing), but that nonetheless Wikipedia was more reliable as "background reading" on subjects than most online sources. He stated that Wikipedia was a "work in progress".
A variety of changes were also made to Wikipedia's software and working practices, to address some of the issues arising. A new guideline, '', was created on December 17, 2005; editorial restrictions were introduced on the creation of new Wikipedia articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people were implemented.
The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
software, accessible to around 20 experienced editors nominated by Wales. This originally allowed for specific historical versions to be hidden from everyone (including Oversight editors), which then become unable to be viewed by anyone except developers via manual intervention, though the feature was later changed so that other Oversights could view these revisions to monitor the tool's use. Currently such procedures are standardized by the 'Office actions' policy which states: "Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation has to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es). These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user." Anyone with a Wikipedia account can email User:Oversight which will bring such problems to the attention of the users with the oversight tool. Those without a Wikipedia account can use normal email and write to , see Wikipedia:Requests for oversight.
External links
- Seigenthaler and Wikipedia – Lessons and Questions: A Case Study on the Veracity of the Wiki concept
- Is an Online Encyclopedia, Such as Wikipedia, Immune From Libel Suits? by Prof. Anita RamasastryAnita RamasastryAnita Ramasastry is a law professor at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle and a director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology. She is also a regular columnist for the online legal commentary Writ....
on WritWrit (website)Writ is a legal commentary website on the topic of the law of the United States hosted by FindLaw. Writ publishes at least one new column by one of its regular columnists every business day, and frequently posts a second column by a guest columnist... - John Seigenthaler, "Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, and Wiccans" 49 minute presentation at Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
, Oct 21, 2011, C-Span Video Library