Threatened With A Ban In India, Wikimedia Agrees To Hand Over Personal Information About Wikipedians To Delhi High Court
As Techdirt stories attest, Wikipedia has been attacked in the past for publishing true information that somebody doesn’t like. As well as wanting articles to be censored, those behind such attacks often also demand the names of those who worked on the article. Something similar is now happening in India, where the Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) has filed a lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundation in the Delhi High Court, claiming to have been defamed in an article on Wikipedia, and seeking 20 million Indian Rupees (about US$240,000) in damages. The Wikipedia article on ANI explains the background:
At the time of the suit’s filing, the Wikipedia article about ANI said the news agency had, “been accused of having served as a propaganda tool for the incumbent central government, distributing materials from a vast network of fake news websites, and misreporting events on multiple occasions”. The filing accused Wikipedia of publishing, “false and defamatory content with the malicious intent of tarnishing the news agency’s reputation, and aimed to discredit its goodwill”.
On 5 September, the Court threatened to hold Wikimedia guilty of contempt for failing to disclose information about the editors who had made changes to the article and warned that Wikipedia might be blocked in India upon further non-compliance.
More recently, an article on the Indian site Scroll.in reported that:
Buckling under the court’s pressure, Wikimedia agreed to submit data of the editors of ANI’s Wikipedia page to the High Court in a sealed cover. However, it proposed redacting personal details of these Wikipedians from public court records and serving notice in the case to them, to ensure confidentiality.
Wikimedia’s decision to share user information with the court may lead to users who edited the ANI page getting involved in the suit. This is a matter of concern for Wikipedia editors, who see this as an infringment of their freedom of speech. “Disclosure of the identities of contributors without an offence being established first will have a chilling effect on the community,” researcher, technologist and Wikipedian Rohini Lakshané explained to Scroll
There is a lively discussion about the case and its implications on the Wikipedia Community pages, a very detailed explanation of what has happened in a Wikipedia Signpost article, and a petition to the Wikimedia Foundation. The latter’s signees say that they are “profoundly concerned at the suggestion that the Foundation is considering disclosing identifying private information about volunteer editors to the Delhi High Court”, and they call upon the Foundation to “prioritize the safety and well being of volunteers, even if it comes with a risk of legal action against the Foundation, or other costs.” The petition concludes:
Any other action risks having a chilling effect on the work of volunteers across the project, and only makes it more likely that such pressure will be exerted in future. In short, it jeopardizes the future of our shared project.
That applies not just to the Wikipedia project in India, but elsewhere. Giving in to demands to reveal the identity of people working on articles in India is likely to embolden those in other countries who would like to make awkward facts disappear and to punish those who dare to reveal them.