Wikipedia May Have To Impose Identity Verification On Readers

A woman browses Wikipedia website on her laptop. (Photo Illustration by Serene Lee/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Wikimedia Foundation has lost its legal battle in the U.K to avoid having to verify the identity of its readers.

At issue were the provisions of the Online Safety Act, which imposes new rules on the content of online platforms, to be managed by regulator Ofcom.

Certain organizations are to be rated as Category 1, assessed on criteria such as the ability to forward or share content and number of users. And these are subject to greater requirements, including user verification, swift removal of harmful content and age verification.

Most of the Category 1 platforms are those you might expect—Facebook, X and YouTube, for example. But Wikipedia is concerned that the criteria to be used could put it into the same category.

This would, it said, threaten online safety by requiring the foundation to interfere with users’ editing decisions and possibly even verify their age. It could allow potentially malicious, users to block unverified users from fixing or removing any content they post—meaning more vandalism, disinformation or abuse.

It could also expose users to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes, the Foundation argued.

The foundation’s only alternative would be to reduce the site’s number of monthly users to take it out of Category 1 scope.

Now, though, the High Court of Justice has dismissed a legal challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations from the Wikimedia Foundation and an anonymous editor known as BLN.

Mr Justice Johnson said there might be ways to work within the law “without causing undue damage to Wikipedia’s operations” – and the Wikimedia Foundation is making the best of a bad job.

“While the decision does not provide the immediate legal protections for Wikipedia that we hoped for, the Court’s ruling emphasized the responsibility of Ofcom and the UK government to ensure Wikipedia is protected as the OSA is implemented,” said Phil Bradley-Schmieg, lead counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation.

“The judge recognized the “significant value” of Wikipedia, its safety for users, as well as the damages that wrongly-assigned OSA categorizations and duties could have on the human rights of Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors.”

Meanwhile, the court stressed that the ruling doesn’t give Ofcom and the Secretary of State a green light to do anything to significantly impede Wikipedia’s operations, and suggested that Ofcom may need to find a particularly flexible interpretation of the rules.

Ofcom’s expected to make its first decisions on categorization this summer.

The Online Safety Act has come in for a barrage of criticism: the issue of categorization comes alongside broader concerns about privacy and safety.

“It is important to stress that this was not a challenge to the Online Safety Act, but instead to the regulations on categorization,” commented Mark Jones, dispute resolution partner at law firm Payne Hicks Beach.

“Further, the door is very much open for further legal challenge by Wikipedia, if Ofcom makes Wikipedia a category 1 service.”

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