Dimitris Liourdis, a 23-year-old trainee lawyer from Athens, was sued for libel last year for writing about a Greek politician, Theodore Katsanevas. Last week, the judge overseeing the case issued an order that he remove the article from the site.

That got the attention of the Wikimedia Foundation, which has now made a public vow to support Liourdis throughout the litigation.

"[T]he statements were and still are supported by reputable secondary sources," wrote Wikimedia Foundation lawyer Michelle Paulson in a blog post published Friday. "The Greek Wikipedia community decided, through discussion, that they were appropriate for the article. Mr. Katsanevas has ignored these facts and is now using the legal system against those who do not share his financial means and influence."

Liourdis, who writes on Greek Wikipedia as "Diu," faces monetary and criminal penalties over the article he edited. The article mentions that Katsanevas was called a "family disgrace" in the will of his father-in-law, former Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. In the will, Papandreou also accused Katsanevas of trying to exploit his name to further his political ambitions.

The comments in the will were publicly disclosed in 1996. The will's authenticity is disputed by Katsanevas, but the "disgrace" comment was widely reported in the Greek and international press, including the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune.

"We hope that Mr. Katsanevas will reconsider his pursuit of this unconscionable lawsuit, which we see as an assault on our users, our projects, and freedom of speech," wrote Paulson. "Until then, we stand with Diu."

Ctrl-Alt-No Delete

In an e-mail interview with Ars, Liourdis described the situation in the courtroom last week. The hearing lasted just a few minutes, he wrote, and only the lawyers were allowed to speak. "My lawyer tried to explain [to the] judge how Wikipedia works and that I couldn't effectively remove the text," he wrote. "Anybody who knows how Wikipedia works knows that if he removes ... a text, which is verified by reliable sources, finally he will [be] banned from the project. We pointed that [out], but unfortunately she didn't understand."

Liourdis followed the judge's instructions to delete the text, but sure enough, it was quickly replaced. At press time, a version of the Greek Wikipedia page on Katsanevas, translated via Google Translate, shows that the "disgrace" comment remains.

More to the point, the judicial order and strong response from Wikimedia have caused the comments to proliferate, rather than disappear. English-language Wikipedia did not host a page about Katsanevas at all until Friday, when the dispute was publicized to the community by Wikimedia's blog post.

Following the injunction, the Greek wiki-community contacted local journalists and created a banner on the top of the pages of Greek Wikipedia, explained Liourdis.

"Now, we have the same article (with the reference to the will and the lawsuit against me) in English, Catalan, Polish, Yakut, French, and Italian," he said. "It reminds me of the Barbara Streisand effect."

And yes—that's Yakut as in Yakutsk, that province on the far right of your Risk board that you probably never bothered attacking. It's a language spoken by 360,000 people in the Sakha Republic, a vast and sparsely populated zone of Russia.

Liourdis said that he's standing his ground, with the help of Wikimedia's Legal Fees Assistance Program. "I'm very delighted with the reaction of Wikimedia," he wrote.

Liourdis hadn't met Katsanevas in person until the court proceedings began.

"It was a not-so-good experience," he wrote. "We (me, a witness and my lawyer) faced a verbal attack. Outside of the Judge's office, he was swearing, but I don't want to refer to what exactly [he] said. I don't think there is a chance to give up."

A disputed will, a “dominant personality”

Katsanevas is seeking €200,000 from Liourdis. The case proper is scheduled to be heard in 2016; a hearing on the preliminary injunction to remove the offending statements is scheduled for March 11, 2014. The order in place now is a "pre-preliminary injunction," according to Wikimedia's Paulson.

In addition to Liourdis, Katsanevas also sued the Greek Free/Open Source Software Society. According to Paulson, the open software group is "a nonprofit organization in Greece that Mr. Katsanevas mistakenly believed to be the organization running Wikipedia."

The dispute stems from comments in the will of Greece's former Socialist prime minister, Papandreou. Papandreou's will was controversial because he left everything to his second wife, a former airline stewardess named Dimitra Liani, and stiffed his four children—including his daughter, Katsanevas' wife. That led to Katsanevas and his wife filing a lawsuit to try to get some of Papandreou's estate.

Papandreou was one of the founders of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, PASOK. He was prime minister of Greece on three separate occasions and was "the dominant political personality of his time," according to the Chicago Tribune. He was controversial for his left-wing and anti-American politics.

In the will, Papandreou also urged his children to distance themselves from Katsanevas, which they did not do. Rather, they denounced their stepmother, saying she had taken advantage of their father.

Katsanevas served as a PASOK member of Greek Parliament from 1989 until 2004. Today, he is a college professor. In 2013, he founded a movement known as Drachma Five Star, which advocates for Greece moving away from the Euro and re-adopting the drachma as its currency.

The Wikimedia Foundation declined to comment on the case beyond Paulson's blog post, but this case marks the first time Wikimedia has gone public with its legal-fee coverage for editors. Katsanevas didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Twitter.