The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has asked India\u2019s Supreme Court to quash an order directing the online encyclopedia operator to take down a page describing its legal dispute with a domestic news agency, it emerged on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Wikimedia told the court that complying with the directive would have a \u201cchilling effect on free speech\u201d.<\/p>\n
Indian news agency ANI last year sued Wikimedia for defamation in the Delhi High Court over the way in which the news agency was described on the platform, which is run by a community of volunteer editors. ANI said in its lawsuit it was being described on its Wikipedia page as an agency facing criticism for being a \u201cpropaganda tool\u201d for the government. Edits that reflected the \u201ctrue and correct\u201d position were removed by the platform, it said.<\/p>\n
While that case is still pending, the high court in October ruled another Wikipedia page related to the legal dispute be taken down, calling it \u201cinterference in court proceedings\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a new legal challenge against that decision, Wikimedia has told India\u2019s Supreme Court to quash the ruling, saying it infringes on its right to \u201chost a page on court proceedings\u201d.<\/p>\n
The challenge was filed on January 15, and has not been made public. It was reviewed and verified by Reuters today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe selective and permanent takedown \u2026 creates a chilling effect on free speech, and restricts access to knowledge,\u201d Wikimedia said in the appeal filing.<\/p>\n
The appeal was heard by judges on Monday for the first time. The Supreme Court noted the issue involved a question \u201cabout freedom of media\u201d and asked ANI to file a written response on the legal challenge.<\/p>\n
ANI\u2018s lawyer Sidhant Kumar declined to comment on Wikimedia\u2019s challenge \u201csince the matter is pending before the Supreme Court\u201d. Wikimedia did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Reuters, which owns a 26 per cent stake in ANI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it was not involved in ANI\u2019s business practices or operations.<\/p>\n
Wikimedia is the second major tech platform in recent years to take legal action against content takedown orders in India. Social media platform Twitter, now known as X, is also fighting a case challenging the federal government\u2019s orders to block some posts about farmer protests in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has asked India\u2019s Supreme Court to quash an order directing the online encyclopedia operator to take down a page describing its legal dispute with a domestic news agency, it emerged on Tuesday. Wikimedia told the court that complying with the directive would have a \u201cchilling effect on free speech\u201d. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6981,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions\/6981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}