Knowledge ownership and wiki-suits (the legal kind)

From the Toronto Star, Wednesday December 9, 2009;
"Ron Livingston, the actor who starred in the 1999 cult comedy Office Space, is suing an anonymous Wikipedia editor for writing that he is a homosexual - Current U.S. law forbids anyone from suing any provider of an "interactive computer service" for libels published on its sites. So Livingston is going after the unnamed writer, who is listed in his lawsuit as "John Doe."

From the New York Times, Saturday December 5, 2009;
"In the summer of 2008, someone created an anonymous blog entitled "Skanks in NYC." The sole target of the site was Canadian ex-pat Liskula Cohen, a former fashion model. - Cohen requested that Google, host of the blogging software used to create "Skanks," reveal the name of the author. Google refused. Cohen sued and won."

The wild-west dog and pony show that was the internet of the late 20'th to early 21'st centuries is on the verge of a revolution.