NEW DELHI, Sept 5: The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a contempt of court notice to Wikipedia, considered as online encyclopaedia, over withholding information about edits to an entry on news agency ANI. The court warned Wikipedia against non-compliance with Indian laws, declaring “if you don’t like India, please don’t work in India… we will ask government to block your site.”
The court was hearing a case filed by ANI claiming defamation by Wikipedia for allowing certain edits to a page with information about the news agency. The alleged edit referred to ANI as “the propaganda tool” of the Indian government. The court had ordered Wikipedia to reveal details about three accounts that made the edits, but ANI claimed that this has not been revealed till date. This was after ANI reportedly pointed out Wikipedia had not, in fact, said the three individuals, also named in the case, were not editors.
In its defence Wikipedia told the court that the release of the information had been delayed pending submission of certain documents from its side, which, in turn, was delayed because Wikipedia was not based in India. Unimpressed by the argument, Justice Navin Chawla said, “It is not a question of the defendant not being an entity in India. We will close your business transactions here. We will ask the government to block Wikipedia… Earlier also you took this position.” “If you don’t like India, please don’t work in India,” he said.
The matter has been posted next for October, for which the court has ordered that a representative of the company be present. In July the Wikimedia Foundation released a statement on the case filed by ANI, identifying itself as a “technology host” and explaining it did not add to or edit content published on Wikipedia. This content is “determined by its global community of volunteer editors… who compile and share information on notable subjects”, the Foundation said.
Wikipedia faces damages claim of ₹ 2 crore from ANI, which has also sought directions to remove the edits and prevent publishing of such content in the future. Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, the website is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is based in San Francisco in the United States.
(Manas Dasgupta)
