Still being up does not make it true, particularly if it is in archive.org.

I have no idea what when on, but given the facts as presented in that article, this is possible:

1. Papers publish an article about a professor.

2. Wikipedia repeats was is said in the article, and cites the article as proof.

3. archive.org and others makes copies of the article (perhaps Wikipedia starts taking copied of things it cites - which would be _really_ nice.)

4. Professor notices article and threatens to sue.

5. The papers decides the article can't be defended and so takes it down. If this is what happened copies of the article still appearing on the net doesn't alter the fact the papers acknowledged the article was false and defamatory.

If at this point the paper published an apology acknowledging the article is in error then Wikipedia then IMO Wikipedia doesn't have an ethical leg to stand on.

If they didn't publish an apology didn't this is probably the way it had to happen. They only way I'd change things is I wouldn't not be awarding the professor any damages - if I was the judge I would be saying "it's your own fault for not demanding an apology acknowledging the article was false from the paper".

As it is, Wikipedia left us to drawn our own conclusions from the link disappearing. As I frequent Wikipedia user I find myself in this position all the time and think that's perfectly reasonable, but I can see how the professor and the judge might see things differently.

Wikipedia isn’t supposed to make such judgements. If the article is on archive.org or anywhere it can be cited; articles about challenges to the veracity of such an article can also be cited and discussed.

Well, it depends. The EU doesn't like free speech; archive.org is not exempt (April 10th):

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190410/14580641973/eu-te...

Something I've been very unclear about for a long time: to what extent does the EU have jurisdiction over websites hosted and operated in non-EU countries, who don't do any business with the EU beyond serving web pages to EU IP addresses?

Presumably, if China asked Wikipedia to remove something, Wikipedia would say no, regardless fo whether doing so violates Chinese law... right? What makes China different from the EU?

This question applies to GDPR as well.

How is archive.org not exempt? They are outside of EU jurisdiction unless they made the mistake of opening an office over there, which would be trivially fixable by shutting it down.

They are not exempt in the sense that the EU (or individual member states) will start blocking the Internet Archive if they don't comply.

Is there any precedent for EU countries blocking websites due to libel claims? I don't think what you're describing has ever happened.

Cool. Let the EU have their own little mini-Internet in complete denial of the existence of wrongthink.

Wouldn't the same also apply for the Wikimedia Foundation?

I would hope so, but Wikipedia seems large enough to have servers over there.

If the EU can get away with this, what about North Korea and Saudi Arabia? Imagine a Wikipedia that can only say good things about Kim Jong-Un and doesn't contain any pictures of female faces.