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A literary agent is suing the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia contributors for negative comments, but Wikimedia says it's not liable for user-generated content.

Barbara Bauer filed a lawsuit in New Jersey Superior Court alleging that the Wikimedia Foundation is liable for postings that called her one of the "Dumbest of the twenty worst" agents, who has "no documented sales at all."

Wikimedia filed for a motion to dismiss the case, citing the Communications Decency Act, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and state free speech laws as protecting it from such lawsuits. The federal communications law says that owners and operators of Web sites cannot be held liable for user comments.

Courts have ruled in favor of Web sites in a number of similar cases where they upheld the Communications Decency Act. The courts have ruled that people with complaints of defamation on Web sites should focus on users who make comments and not the Web sites that host the comments.

Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, told MediaPost," There is no doubt that Wikimedia qualifies for (immunity) for any claims based on user submissions or edits to Wikipedia, and I would expect any associated lawsuit against Wikimedia alleging libel to be tossed quickly."