Violet Blue tries to restrain critic with court order instead of sexy rubber strap
Internet sex educator Violet Blue has asked a court to serve a restraining order against Ben Burch, a Wikipedia editor. Blue's entry on Wikipedia has been home to almost as much conflict as the fallout from her deletion from the popular blog Boing Boing: her boyfriend, Jonathan Moore, is responsible for at least eighteen of the entry's edits (as "Wikiwikimoore"), prompting Burch and others to question whether he can observe the site's requirement for a neutral point of view regarding all subjects. Blue's response, based on documents forwarded to Valleywag, is to ask a court to declare Burch a threat to her physical safety.
Blue may not like what Burch has to say about her online, but when does obsessive Wikipedia editing cross the line into stalking? She'd have good grounds for a libel suit if it were standard defamation. Or if it were false — one of Burch's claims is that her legal name has not always been Violet Blue, but Wendi Sullivan Blue. But she's not claiming libel, and Blue's Internet presence extends way beyond a paltry Wikipedia entry about her.
Let's guess how it will play out: Armed with a posse of Internet yaysayers, Blue will complain that no, really, she's so threatened by a single page on the Internet that she's willing to go to court to block anyone whose edits upset her. We may as well give her a SXSW panel now.
Violet Blue's complaint:
