A controversial Canadian businessman has launched a $10-million lawsuit over edits made to his Wikipedia page.
The suit was filed in California on June 11, and alleges a cabal of editors conspired to publish “false and defamatory” statements about VitaPro founder Yank Barry. Named in the suit are five editors: Richard Fife, Nate Gertler, Ethan Urbanik, John Nagle and one identified only as “Does 1-50.”
It’s unknown if the editor’s names are real, or simply aliases used on Wikipedia.
Barry is a Montreal-based entrepreneur known for organizing humanitarian initiatives in places ranging from Syria to Japan. He’s also no stranger to controversy; he was found guilty of extortion in 1982 and was also convicted in 2001 of bribing officials to secure a lucrative food supply contract with state prisons in Texas.
The latter charge was overturned, and Barry was acquitted in 2005.
Barry was also the subject of a 2012 profile in the National Post which cast doubt on some of his claims, including being nominated for multiple Nobel Peace Prizes, his association with celebrities like Muhammad Ali and Celine Dion, and his involvement with the Kingsmen, the band behind the hit song Louie, Louie.
The lawsuit includes a list of allegedly defamatory statements culled from Barry’s Wikipedia page, as well as the “talk” page associated with the entry. Among them are claims that VitaPro was a “pyramid-style company” that “raised money by selling shares on a sham stock exchange.”
“My page was so ridiculously false and made me sound like a terrible person and people believed it causing deals to fall through,” Barry said in a press release issued by PR NewsChannel. “I finally had enough.”
News of the suit first surfaced on Wikipediocracy, a self-styled watchdog site critical of Wikipedia’s administrators.
“Looks like a classic POV edit war, between Barry supporters and Barry enemies. With Wikipedia mishandling it as usual,” one commenter wrote on the site.
The full lawsuit can be read here.
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