[ad_1]
While ordering the Wikimedia Foundation to undo changes on the Wikipedia page on Asian News International (ANI), the Delhi High Court said “people at large have a tendency to accept statements made on [Wikipedia’s] web pages … as gospel truth”. In the hearing of the defamation suit that ANI had filed in 2024, the court had taken some questionable positions. For example, it sought the identities of the volunteers who edited the ANI page, whose anonymity the platform allows to protect them from retaliation. When the Foundation sought more time, the court observed: “We will close your business transactions here… We will ask the government to block Wikipedia… If you don’t like India, please don’t work in India.” The Foundation had appealed for its right to safe harbour under the Information Technology Act 2000, but the court concluded in favour of the plaintiff because, it observed, “statements on the page pertaining to the plaintiff are all sourced from … editorials and opinionated pages”. Wikipedia is written and maintained by volunteers who are expected to follow the platform’s guidelines. Unlike newspapers or scientific journals, the encyclopedia does not purport to publish new information; volunteers are instead expected to repeat with attribution or reproduce with references, information originally published elsewhere, with a preference for reputable sources. In this light, the court order is problematic.
#
Elements of truth today are often mistaken to be someone’s opinions and vice versa. Politicians and government agencies have been known to punish civil society for repeating an allegedly offensive claim rather than address the original claim itself. Opinions are rejected even as data is withheld to deny those who express them opportunities to align them with verifiable facts. In this case, the court had expressed concern for ANI’s credibility, whether volunteers who edited the ANI page had followed the platform’s guidelines in letter and spirit, and whether the opinion as expressed on the page could be allowed to stand. In the process, it established that the Foundation’s ability to maintain the democratic structure that has allowed Wikipedia to become so popular and reliable is limited for India’s users: to the extent of public tolerance for certain opinions. Ultimately, the aforementioned “people’s tendency” and the state’s ability to influence it put Wikipedia and similar decentralised collaborations at risk. That is a tragedy. These collaborations adopted their designs to sidestep the sort of centralised information control that some countries, including India, have sought. Courts and the state would do well to accommodate these collaborative efforts rather than treat them with contempt — and the people should engage with these efforts and their guidelines as well.
Published – April 07, 2025 12:10 am IST
[ad_2]
Tragedy of a commons: on Wikimedia and the free flow of information
