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DRM Criticism? What Criticism? And Other Wikipedia Fun

August 15, 2007 Disney, Sony and some other entertainment companies have been caught altering Wikipedia entries about DRM and other criticism.

In the most entertaining thing to happen on the net in some time, a CalTech grad created a database that takes the IP addresses edits on Wikipedia pages were made from and connects those IP addresses to the companies they came from.  Some of them are totally amusing and immature. For example, someone from the New York Times modified a comment to his entry of "jerk jerk jerk jerk" to "jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk" and more jerks. Oh, and apparently Republicans hate children, as someone from a GOP IP address deleted the entire entry to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and replaced it with a one sentence spoiler summing up the whole book shortly after it's release.

On the entertainment front, Sony removed negative comments about DRM and someone at Disney removed a link to a speech by DRM critic Cory Doctorow.

Viacom removed criticism of MTV show Pimp My Ride.

Wal-Mart edited its entry to de-emphasize outsourcing to China and soften criticism of its employment practices, and spins employee pay. Best Buy updated the number of closures of competitor RadioShack stores on RadioShack's entry.

The Wired Blog is keeping a running tally, which is where I found the above examples. But Wikipedia Scanner lets anyone look up companies and click on "reveal my potential victims!" to see what changes they or someone on their network made. It's just really slow right now because like every blogger online is looking stuff up.

Posted by Jennifer Netherby on August 15, 2007 | Comments (0)