Key Points
The Delhi high court on Monday issued a stern warning to Wikipedia, expressing strong disapproval over a page dedicated to a pending 2 crore defamation suit filed by Asian News International (ANI) against the platform, and warned its parent firm Wikimedia Foundation that its safe harbour protections under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act would be at risk if it continued to interfere with judicial proceedings in India..
This page will have to be taken down by your client in case he even wants to be heard, a bench of chief justice Manmohan and justice Tushar Rao Gedela remarked, slamming the firm for assailing a previous order that directed Wikipedia to disclose information about subscribers who had edited the ANI page on the online crowd-sourced information platform..
The bench said that Wikipedia -- it calls itself a free, online encyclopaedia -- cannot not put the judge in fear or threaten him..
Asserting that Wikipedias structure could not shield editors from accountability in cases of defamation, it warned that if it protected defamatory content, it risked losing legal immunity..
Though Sibal argued that the individuals who edited the ANI page are not employees or agents of Wikimedia but independent administrators, the court countered that the platforms anonymity could not serve as a shield in the face of defamation claims, emphasising that Wikipedias operational model should not get away with allegedly defamatory statements under a cloak of privacy..
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