Why online encyclopedia has run into legal trouble in India

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India, which experts say could impact how the online encyclopedia operates in the country.

The battle stems from a 20 million rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest news service against the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.

In the suit in the Delhi High Court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its Wikipedia description falsely accused it of being a “propaganda tool for the present (federal) government” and of “distributing material from fake news sites”. and requested that the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says that the content on the site is managed entirely by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to reveal who made these allegedly defamatory changes to the ANI page – and threatened to shut down the site if it did not comply with its orders.

The hearing is still ongoing, but Wikipedia has since agreed to share basic user information with the court in a sealed cover, though it’s unclear what that would be.

Experts say the case is an important one because its outcome could affect people’s access to platform-neutral information.

“It will tell us whether India is living in the age of the Internet, where information is truthful and free for everyone,” says tech law expert Mishi Choudhary.

The hearing began in July after ANI petitioned the court, saying it tried to change the allegedly defamatory material on Wikipedia, but its edits were not accepted.

The ANI page has been placed under “extended confirmed protection” – a Wikipedia feature used to stop vandalism or abuse – where only users who have already made a certain number of edits can make changes to a page.

In its lawsuit, ANI requested that the allegedly defamatory content be removed. However, he did not sue the news that is cited on the Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia, for its part, claimed that despite being a community-driven platform, it had a robust fact-checking system.

Wikipedia operates on a self-regulating model, where anyone can make changes to a page as long as it is supported by an authentic, published source and written from a neutral point of view – this means that no one can add new, unpublished information to Wikipedia.

There are volunteers on the site who edit and verify the information, keeping their anonymity.

Any discussions between volunteers about changes are visible to everyone on the page. In case of disagreements, there are guidelines on how to resolve disputes. The website also uses bots to keep track of changes.

In court, the Wikimedia Foundation said it only provided technical infrastructure and had no relationship with the volunteers who manage the content on the site.

But that model came under scrutiny after a page about the ongoing case appeared on Wikipedia.

Last week, the court ordered it to be disbanded, saying it interfered with legal proceedings.

The Foundation has since suspended the page. Observers say this is possibly the first time an English Wikipedia page has been removed following a court order.

Transparency reports published by the Foundation since 2012 show that of about 5,500 requests to remove and modify content globally, it complied with fewer than 10, and none of them were for the English-language site.

The move was criticized by some digital experts who said it was wrong to pull the page because it leaked what the media reported about the case.

Quite simply, a lot.

Experts say the outcome of the case is likely to have significant ramifications for the platform’s operations in India.

Tech journalist and digital rights expert Nikhil Pahwa fears the case could encourage more people and brands to start policing their Wikipedia pages.

“A lot of people don’t like the way they’ve been portrayed on Wikipedia. Now anyone can file a case, ask to identify the publishers, and the court could grant it without determining whether there was defamation,” he says.

Ms Choudhary says the case could have a “chilling effect” on free speech, as publishers may hesitate to write truthful content.

Any form of self-censorship could seriously impede access to neutral information about a topic on the platform, she adds.

Of course, Wikipedia is no stranger to controversy. It has faced various forms of censorship in at least 13 countries. China banned it in 2019 and Myanmar in 2021.

He also had run-ins with the Russian government and courts. Moscow has blocked several pages critical of the government, and courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation for refusing to remove these articles.

In 2023, Pakistan blocked the website for three days after it failed to remove alleged “blasphemous content”.

Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey in April 2017 after it refused to remove articles critical of the country’s government. Turkey’s supreme court lifted the ban in 2020.

In India, experts say the platform is one of the few organizations that has defied federal government orders to remove content.

But a ban could seriously derail its operations in the country.

If the verdict is not in Wikipedia’s favor, “we as a society will suffer because we will not have access to unbiased information,” Ms Choudhary says.

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