If You Want To Know Why Section 230 Matters, Just Ask Wikimedia: Without It, There'd Be No Wikipedia
from the also-just-grow-up,-china dept
It sometimes seems that Techdirt spends half its time debunking bad ideas for reforming or even repealing Section 230. In fact, so many people seem to get the law wrong that Mike was moved to write a detailed post on the subject with the self-explanatory title “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act”. It may be necessary (and tiresome) work rebutting all this wrongness, but it’s nice for a change to be able to demonstrate precisely why Section 230 is so important. A recent court ruling provides just such an example:
On September 15th, in a victory for the Wikimedia movement and for all user-driven projects online, a Florida judge dismissed claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress against the Wikimedia Foundation. The judge found that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes the Wikimedia Foundation from liability for third-party content republished on Wikipedia. In other words, Section 230 helps Wikimedia safely host the work of Wikipedia’s contributors and enables the effective volunteer-led moderation of content on the projects.
As the Wikimedia blog post notes, this was an absolutely crucial result. If collaborative projects that are created, maintained, and curated by volunteers could be held liable every time a user contributed something that was inaccurate or offensive, none of them would last very long — not least because they generally lack the resources to fight expensive court cases. Back in 2017, Wikimedia wrote a detailed post on Section 230, and why it made Wikipedia and other sites possible
The court’s ruling is a big win for Wikimedia. On the other hand, in something of a (minor) defeat, China has yet again blocked the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status at WIPO — the only country to object. This is the second time it has done so, and for the same reason:
As in 2020, China’s statement falsely suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation was spreading disinformation via the independent, volunteer-led Wikimedia Taiwan chapter. The United States and the group of industrialized countries at WIPO — which also includes many European Union member states, Australia, Canada, the Holy See, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom — expressed their support for the Foundation’s application. Since WIPO is generally run by consensus, any one country may veto accreditation requests by non-governmental organizations.
China’s blocking of a small, apolitical organization that aims to promote knowledge around the world just looks incredibly petty, and is hardly befitting for a world power.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.
Filed Under: china, defamation, free speech, internet platforms, section 230, taiwan, wikipedia, wipo
Companies: wikimedia foundation, wikipedia
Comments on “If You Want To Know Why Section 230 Matters, Just Ask Wikimedia: Without It, There'd Be No Wikipedia”
yet the rest of the world has no 230 and somehow has wikipedia.
Re: DO THEY?
Wikipedia is very much a U.S. organization, despite its efforts to pretend to be multinational. They make a lot of cave-ins for political reasons, but push to shove they’re based on U.S. law. Would Australia have Wikipedia, without the U.S.? Not a chance! They would never have imagined it.
Billboard
Make a LArge Poster.
Show them That If they x? says something, it only affect this.
If x?? says something it does that.
Make it so a 2 year old could understand.
Why are China blocking Wikimedia? I have a feeling that it’s about Taiwan…..
Re: Re:
The CCP is like the Borg in that they have no beef with you until they see you as a threat.
china blocks wikipedia, it has articles on human rights, democracy, free speech,uighers repression, lgbt rights, curruption among chinese official,s ,basically china is 1984, anything that reflects on real life or political freedom will be blocked or sanitised ,
of course it does not like any source of free speech especially for minority groups
Re: Re:
As I said, PRC is like the Borg in that they go after you if they see you as a threat (The US is more like a combination of Klingons and Ferengi).
Re: Re: Re:
I get ferengi but where/how does klingon come in?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Because of how violent our foreign policy is.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Ah, fair enough.
Section 230 Matters
but it’s nice for a change to be able to demonstrate precisely why Section 230 is so important. A recent court ruling provides just such an example:
https://htlmadras.com/blog-par-traffic-kaise-badhaye/
https://htlmadras.com/mp3-juice-dj-free-mp3-music-download/
Wikipedia has vast resources, that it can and often does use to fight lawsuits. It’s their choice to fight them on the basis Wikipedia apparently couldn’t and shouldn’t do even the minimal things that would be effective in preventing harm, such as their website identifying the wrong man as a serial killer. In that specific case, all it would have taken was paying a staff member to monitor the press for mentions of Wikipedia, and make edits accordingly. They simply don’t care, preferring to wait in the vain hope someone, somewhere, will notice. Worse, they would rather people think they spend money on good causes instead, like countering racism (the misidentification here was most likely due to racism).
china blocks wikipedia, it has articles on human rights, democracy, free speech,uighers repression, lgbt rights, curruption among chinese official,s ,basically china is 1984, anything that reflects on real life or political freedom will be blocked or sanitised ,
of course it does not like any source of free speech especially for minority groups
Many subject areas of Wikipedia go unmanaged for long periods, so it’s easy for them to be influenced by a biased editor. If Chiba had stated this I don’t think many could argue with their decision, you would hope Wikipedia would learn from this but they don’t seem to be doing.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is very much a U.S. organization, but working so hard to be multinational.