This is headline bait. The article in question is about a lawsuit in which Wikipedia is the defendant. The court said that they needed to take down the article just until the lawsuit is resolved, to prevent jury tampering.
This is a nothing burger.
This is a nothing burger.
> amounts to interference in Court proceedings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgW2Xkz21Wc
https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/09/18/explained-whats-ani-v...
> The court has asked Wikipedia to disclose details of individuals who made edits on its ANI page.
From the last archive of the page in question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International_vs._W...
> The case was filed in July 2024 before Justice Navin Chawla in the Delhi High Court as ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v Wikimedia Foundation Inc & Ors. At the time of the suit's filing, the Wikipedia article about Asian News International (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". It also complained that Wikipedia had "closed" the article about ANI for editing except by Wikipedia's "own editors", citing this as evidence of defamation with malicious intent and evidence that WMF was using its "officials" to "actively participate" in controlling content.
> According to Newslaundry, the sentence ANI objects to has "clear citations that lead to the primary source of information", including to The Caravan, The Ken, BBC News, EU DisinfoLab, Politico, and The Diplomat. Newslaundry and journalist Nikhil Pahwa pointed out that none of the media organizations used as sources were included in ANI's complaint. According to The Indian Express, the lawsuit is an attempt to hold WMF liable for edits to Wikipedia.
> Software Freedom Law Center, India, a member-affiliate of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, found the suit to be an attempt at stifling free speech. Nishant Shah, professor of Global Media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and faculty associate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, wrote that Chawla's decision to order the release of personally-identifying information was "a challenge to freedom of speech and information" and would result in the censorship of "any form of critical information that powerful organisations do not like". Pahwa called it censorship that threatened to "stifle the flow of information and knowledge". Multiple lawyers have critiqued Manomhan and Gedela's order to take down the page on the litigation, too, disagreeing with the allegations of interfering with judicial proceedings and noting similar coverage by mainstream media.
> Tanveer Hasan, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, called the proceedings an "assault on the freedom of speech under the guise of technological regulation".
If that were to happen, and you were to then publish an article about this exact court case on your blog, you'd be found in contempt of court and rightly so. Even if the blog article only summarizes and links to other content, like the news articles. You were restricted from speaking about the case, and you broke that restriction. What part of "don't make public statements about this case" didn't you understand?
That's what's going on here. Wikipedia is, essentially, Wikimedia Foundation's blog. This article about the court case is, legally speaking, Wikimedia speaking about an ongoing case they are involved with. If the court issues a gag order, they have to respect it. This is subjudice, not censorship.
The fact that this hasn't happened before should tell everyone that this is not business as usual. No other government in the world has caused WMF to respond in such a way, which leads me to believe that this case is not as obvious as you say.
Also, due to license terms of Wikipedia, by deleting the page, individually and collectively, Wikipedia editors are being denied their rights as authors. This may be a copyright violation in India, in the jurisdiction of the editors, in the legal jurisdiction in which WMF/Wikipedia are incorporated in, and/or all of the above, that is to say, worldwide.
I suspect WMF complied in protest in order to draw attention to the censorious nature of the rulings so far.
Seems like it's working well for them.
Wikipedia explicitly considers it censorship:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c...
Archived just in case!
If something is written on wikipedia it's because they are okay with it. The political slant of wikipedia is an expression of WMF views.
Also an important point is that wikipedia aims to create a work that is a coherent whole spoken with one voice rather than say hosting a discussion where writing is clearly attributed to its respective authors.
I hate this accelerationist tendency in me because the harm to real people is so high, but do it you cowards. Nations keep trying to assert themselves, declare themselves bigger in some kind of refutation of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, but it's broadly unenforceable & self injuring in extreme to cut yourself off from the world.
Whether to shield contributors is a complex question, one I do not envy agencies for.
It'll be interesting to see if this litigation & strong willed court helps or hurts the perception that ANI is in the pockets of the ruling party. This feels a little too eccentric to go big-time world wide, but I wonder if people in India had strong opinions about this before and how that will change now. What's the Streisand effect here?