Preparations for a class action law suit against the owners and operators of Wikipedia are underway. I can’t figure out whether this is a chilling shot across the bow of any site with user-generated content, or whether it’s a timely reminder of the obligations to society that technologists must observe as they invent within that society. Or, possibly–and I only throw this out as a remote and wild conjecture, a hypothesis (if you will) to be tested against available datum, a brainstorming session “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” flag to be run up the pole so it may be seen who salutes it–that it’s a case of greedy opportunist whiners out to make any quick buck they can from whatever makes the headlines in the last slow news week. Ahem. Update: the lawsuit web page has the same whois data as QuakeAID, a site whose authenticity Wikipedia questions–see this summary of what happened for why the site may just be a Google Ad-revenue trick. Thanks, alert readers Nathan de Vries and Matt! Update 2: The people behind the class action site deny the connection and explain why the whois data is the same. Check the comments in the blog entry for details.
