Wikipedia has suffered a significant legal defeat in its attempt to avoid being classified under the UK’s stringent Online Safety Act regulations.
The High Court ruled against the Wikimedia Foundation and a Wikipedia user, known only as “BLN,” who challenged the Secretary of State’s decision to implement Category 1 threshold conditions that could potentially capture Wikipedia under the new regulatory framework.
The Online Safety Act 2023 introduces a tiered system of regulation, with Category 1 services facing the most intensive oversight and duties.
These include requirements for user verification systems, content filtering capabilities, and transparency reporting.
Wikipedia argued that these requirements would fundamentally undermine its collaborative editing model, where articles are typically created and edited by multiple anonymous contributors working independently.
The court case centered on regulation 3 of the Online Safety Act, which defines Category 1 services as those with over 7 million UK users that utilize content recommender systems and allow users to forward or share content.
Wikipedia contended that features like its “New Pages Feed” – a moderation tool used by administrators to review newly created pages – should not qualify as content recommender systems under the Act’s definition.
Justice Johnson acknowledged Wikipedia’s concerns but dismissed the challenge on multiple grounds.
The court (Judiciary.uk) found that the Secretary of State had properly considered Ofcom’s research and advice when setting the Category 1 thresholds.
Ofcom’s research indicated that content recommender systems and forwarding capabilities were the features most relevant to content “going viral” across online platforms.
Technical Implementation Challenges
The ruling creates particular challenges for Wikipedia’s technical infrastructure and community governance model.
The platform’s decentralized editing system, where anonymous users can instantly modify content, conflicts directly with the Act’s user verification requirements.
Section 15 of the Act mandates that Category 1 services must enable users to filter out content from non-verified users, effectively requiring Wikipedia to track and verify the identity of every contributor to each article.
Wikipedia’s evidence demonstrated that a typical article, such as one about Queen Elizabeth II, had been edited over 18,000 times by numerous contributors, with even the first sentence being the product of 11 separate authors.
Implementing verification systems would require completely restructuring how collaborative editing functions, potentially making articles incomprehensible if content from verified and non-verified users needed separation.
The decision leaves Wikipedia facing either significant operational changes or potential restrictions on UK user access, with final implementation dependent on Ofcom’s forthcoming determination of which services qualify as Category 1 platforms.
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