India’s largest newswire service ANI has filed a $237,874 defamation lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopedia functions in the country.

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

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being "a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of “distributing material from fake news websites” and demanded the page be taken down.

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

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page - and threatened to shut down the website if it didn’t comply with its orders.

  • subignition@fedia.io
    71·
    22 days ago

    the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page

    … Isn’t the edit history public, though? They should be able to determine the IPs/users who are responsible for the edits.

    I don’t know how the Indian legal system works, but then if necessary you would try to compel Wikipedia to turn over contact information for those users, as with a subpoena in US law.

    …

    …

    After looking over the article, Wikipedia has turned over user info to that effect. ANI is mad because they weren’t allowed to edit their own page, essentially, which is disallowed on Wikipedia in general because of bias.

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

    The ANI page was put under “extended confirmed protection” - a Wikipedia feature used to stop vandalism or abuse - where only users who have already done a certain number of edits can make changes to a page.