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(CN) — A British judge on Monday dismissed Wikipedia’s claims that a new user verification rule will end up hurting the free digital encyclopedia’s editors because many of them want to remain anonymous for their own safety.
Wikipedia sued the British government last month, seeking to be exempted from a pending requirement under the Online Safety Act that major online platforms must verify the identities of their contributors. This provision is part of a bigger set of regulations designed to protect people from online trolls, anonymous attacks and hurtful viral content.
Wikipedia argued it should not be treated the same as social media giants like X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
But Justice Jeremy Johnson, a judge at the High Court of Justice in London, found that regulators correctly applied the law in determining that Wikipedia may need to comply with the user verification rule. Regulators are expected to announce soon which platforms are subject to user verification rules.
However, Johnson added that his ruling should not be seen as giving regulators a “green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia’s operations.”
“If they were to do so, that would have to be justified as proportionate” and shown to not infringe on contributors’ freedom of expression, the judge wrote in his decision.
Phil Bradley-Schmieg, a lead lawyer for Wikimedia, welcomed the judge’s emphasis on the need to protect Wikipedia editors.
“The judge recognized the ‘significant value’ of Wikipedia, its safety for users, as well as the damages that wrongly-assigned OSA [Online Safety Act] categorizations and duties could have on the human rights of Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors,” he said in a statement.
To protect Wikipedia and other platforms where there’s no risk of “viral dissemination,” Johnson indicated regulators may need to be flexible in interpreting the rules or ask lawmakers to tweak them.
Johnson also said testimony provided by a longtime Wikipedia contributor and top-level administrator — identified as BLN in court documents — gave “detailed and compelling reasons for wishing to remain anonymous as a Wikipedia user.”
BLN provided “extensive evidence of threats” made against Wikipedia administrators, Johnson said.
In court documents, government lawyers argued the law was not intended to target only the “largest and most risky social media companies.”
“Risk of harm is not a pre-condition or a mandatory relevant consideration,” the government argued. Instead, the law was designed to treat all “large services which enable user-generated content to be readily disseminated to a broad range of users.”
Wikipedia Foundation, a nonprofit that runs Wikipedia and associated projects, said it had not decided whether to appeal the ruling.
In passing the Online Safety Act in 2023, the British Parliament wanted to crack down on sexual abuse, racism, bullying, fraud and other harmful material on the internet.
Violators of the law can be fined 18 million pounds (about $24.3 million) or 10% of a company’s global turnover, whichever is greater. The law also allows a platform to be blocked in extreme cases.
Free speech groups and human rights advocates have long warned the law threatens online freedom of expression and privacy.
About 260,000 people around the world curate some 65 million entries on Wikipedia, but the platform has a policy of collecting minimal personal data from volunteers. Worldwide, Wikipedia says its articles are viewed more than 15 billion times per month.
Wikipedia warns the Online Safety Act threatens to “undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors” and “expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism.”
Wikipedia said forcing contributors to verify their identities could expose them to “data breaches, stalking, lawsuits, or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.”
Under the law, Wikipedia said it might even be forced to allow anonymous users to block Wikipedia collaborators from fixing or removing content unless it complies with the verification provisions.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
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