Latest news with #CategorisationRegulations
Scotsman
28-07-2025
- Scotsman
Online Safety Act: Wikipedia could ‘introduce cap' in UK
Wikipedia has challenged part of the Online Safety Act in the High Court 🚨 Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Wikipedia could be forced to cap UK users, it has claimed. The website has raised privacy concerns about a part of the Online Safety Act. Wikimedia Foundation has challenged part of the bill in the High Court. A cap on the number of visitors able to use Wikipedia could be introduced, it has been warned. Wikimedia Foundation, the outfit behind the website, is challenging the Government's new Online Safety Act in the High Court over concerns about how it could impact the privacy of its volunteers. The case was heard last week, but a decision has yet to be returned. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The nonprofit is particularly concerned about the Categorisation Regulations contained within the bill, and how the website could be in the top tier: category one. It would require Wikipedia to enforce ID verification on its anonymous voluntary moderators, as well as visitors. In a statement announcing the legal challenge earlier this year, Wikimedia said: 'Category 1 demands would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors, expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism, and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving Wikipedia, one of the world's most trusted and widely used digital public goods.' The foundation does add that it is not 'bringing a general challenge to the OSA as a whole', simply to the categorisation regulations. Wikipedia would fall under category one - which includes websites that have an average number of monthly UK users that 34 million and uses a content recommender system, or has more than 7 million monthly users, uses a content recommender system, and provides a functionality for users to forward or share regulated user-generated content on the service with other users of that service. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Wikipedia is challenging part of the Online Safety Act in the UK High Court | Riccardo Milani / Hans Lucas /AFP via Getty Images Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said: 'The Court has an opportunity in this case to set a global precedent for protecting public interest projects online.' Biometric Update reports that the foundation has warned category one rules would 'undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors, expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism, and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving Wikipedia, one of the world's most trusted and widely used digital public goods.' The website added that in court, Wikipedia's lawyers floated the idea of a monthly quota to keep it below the Category 1 threshold, meaning that UK access to Wikipedia could become less like browsing the web and more like trying to buy a concert ticket, with a cap on how many people get in. Phil Bradley-Schmieg, Lead Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, explained: 'We are taking action now to protect Wikipedia's volunteers, as well as the global accessibility and integrity of free knowledge. We call on the Court to defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors from flawed legislation'.
Euronews
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
UK online legislation threat to operations,Wikipedia to argue in court
The foundation behind the crowdsourced information site Wikipedia will argue in British court this week that new legislation threatens its operations. The Wikimedia Foundation will tell London's Royal Courts of Justice on July 22nd that the regulations under the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) put it at 'unacceptable risk' of being subject to Category 1 duties as a 'high-risk site'. Websites with this designation have many more responsibilities under the OSA than their peers, including the need to verify their contributors. That would mean Wikipedia would have to identify the 'thousands' of Wikipedia volunteers in the UK that edit and contribute to its pages, something which would 'undermine the[ir] privacy and safety'. It could also expose the website's contributors to 'data breaches, stalking, lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes,' the Wikimedia Foundation wrote in a statement. Stephen LaPorte, general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a press release that the court could set 'a global precedent for protecting public interest projects online,' if it rules favourably in this case. Wikimedia says the lawsuit is the last step after several years of engagement with British lawmakers in an attempt to fix the scope of the regulations. What is the case arguing? The case is not being launched against the OSA in general, just a small set of additional regulations called the Categorisation Regulations. 'We do not dispute the need for sensible online regulation … but for services like Wikipedia to thrive, it is essential that new laws do not endanger charities and public interest projects,' Phil Bradley-Schmieg, Wikimedia's lead counsel, wrote in a blog post. As a 'Category 1' site under the regulations, Wikipedia is then subjected to many 'burdensome' requirements that it argues will affect the quality of its site, Bradley-Schmieg added. He argued that the regulations, along with a sister piece of legislation, could force 'potentially malicious' users to block any unverified users from fixing or removing content they post. This could result in 'significant amounts of vandalism, disinformation or abuse going unchecked on Wikipedia,' the blog post added. Wikipedia also relies on a 'content recommender system' or algorithm to suggest what sites a user could be interested in, which Bradley-Schmieg believes is enough to land them 'Category 1' status. What that means is some of their tools that use algorithms to fight 'harmful content,' like the New Pages Feed that keeps track of pages that are ready to be reviewed or Translation Recommendations, which help their volunteers translate text, could be at risk. The regulations also designate Category 1 sites as those that receive more than 34 million monthly views. Wikipedia gets 11 billion global views a month (Wikipedia puts this number at 15 billion) with 844 million of them coming from the UK, according to web analytics website Analyzify. The OSA regulations 'seemingly do not differentiate between users who visit the site just once a month … versus those who spend hours each day 'doomscrolling' potentially harmful content on social media,' Bradley-Schmieg argued.
