Quoted for hilarious: Ron Knight of Knight Mediacom International threatens Wikipedian
I used to find Wikipedia’s legendary Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents rather scary and depressing. I now tend to find it hilarious. And today is no exception.
A guy called Ron Knight (check his LinkedIn profile) has threatened a Wikipedia administrator for deleting the self-promotional article about his company, “Knight Mediacom”–not to be confused with the other MediaCom.
The full text of his e-mailed legal threat is up on the ANI thread.
Mr. Schumin;
You have under your actions, pretenses and non-authority, with lack of education and understanding on the history of our firm, deleted the Wikipedia page for Knight Mediacom International, which you state has no other Wikipedia references, nor credible references to exist. If you have done your homework, you will have found countless references to Knight Mediacom International by both ISBN and UPC code, as the only authorized video distribution company to have distributed the works of CCTV and seven leading motion picture studios in China, as well as the USA, Belgium and Brazil, all within the United States, all of which titles may be found on Amazon and countless other film and motion pictures based resource and reference sites.
Further, other Wikipedia links were in fact linked to Facets Multimedia, FAO Schwarz, Archie Comics, Universal Studios and other major media firms in the United States. While reviewing your credentials, which appear collegiate at best and Wiki web based only, I would suggest that the next party can just as easily, with no further credentials, decide to delete you and your respective history and page on Wikipedia, solely for you as just a Web blog, it makes you of no importance nor credential should someone in turn just choose to delete you. You may well be a college student, but you have no professional track record nor any link to be “cleaning up” as a “credible clean up source” for a public Wiki space, and certainly you possess no credible certificate of noteworthiness of linked commercial industry nor brands.
Last, as you have deleted a trail from our time and investment in positioning actions on the web as a basis for stating a protection of trademarked intellectual properties and copyrights, which could be cause for a justified pursuit in the Courts against you, as a principal action to be construed as a case of action in law, this action should we choose can cause you great time, trouble and costs for your rather non well researched decision on such action.
Clearly your action to delete a company file is troublesome, and may well be so for you.
This note is made to be civil. You should return to Wikipedia and Undelete the Page for Knight Mediacom International, with explanation that you had failed to do complete research on all historic links, ties and other references, less aside from a court case filing, you may not wish to find someone simply coming along to delete You and your web based positions.
You have deleted our Intellectual Property as positions using Wiki references as the tool in our pursuits of trademark and copyrights filings and published position protections, and we maintain full rights on these claims of loss and damages. We trust you will take soonest action to return to Wikipedia and Repost to remove the Delete of Knight Mediacom International, with all its linked references within 10 days of receipt of this email notification.
Do what’s right. Awaiting your soonest action and reply.
Respectfully,
Ron Knight President Knight Mediacom International
C.c. Charles Grimes, Counsel at Law, Grimes & Battersby
C.c. Peter Eichler, Counsel at Law, Jennings & Strauss, Attorneys at Law
C.c. Paul Mirowski, Counsel at Mirowski Law, LLC
Apparently, according to this incompetent dickmuncher, it is the legal responsibility of Wikipedia administrators to not delete his content, and presumably it is also the legal responsibility of the Wikimedia Foundation to continue hosting “his” intellectual property, even though when he submitted it to Wikipedia, he presumably saw the bit on the edit page that said:
Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable.
By clicking the “Save Page” button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
And below that:
If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. All text that you did not write yourself, except brief excerpts, must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia’s Terms of Use before you submit it.
“Deleting it because it is shit” is definitely included in “edited, used, and redistributed at will”.
Anyway, if you are thinking of hiring Ron Knight of Knight Mediacom International for the wide variety of media-related services he offers, you may wish to take the above into consideration, as he seems to be legally incompetent despite apparently retaining the services of three lawyers. He doesn’t seem to understand that no aspect of American copyright law entitles you to threaten Wikipedia administrators for deleting self-promotional content. Also, do feel free to savour the terrible grammar, sloppy sentence construction and general stupidity of the letter. Ask yourself: do you want this man working for your business?
If you feel you want to share Ron Knight’s legal theories with the world, feel free to link to this page with any link text you feel appropriate.
Or you could learn from Mr Knight’s failings: if/when your Wikipedia page gets deleted, sending a poorly-written, clueless legal threat to a Wikipedia administrator is a terrible way to promote your business or, indeed, getting your Wikipedia page restored. But it will amuse people, or at least the morally bankrupt ANI readers, for a few hours.
