Italian Court Rules The Wikimedia Foundation Is Just A Hosting Provider For Wikipedia's Volunteer-Written Articles

from the could-come-in-handy-one-day dept

Many of us tend to take the amazing resource of Wikipedia for granted: it's hard to imagine online life without it. But that doesn't mean its position is assured. As well as continuing funding uncertainty, it is also subject to legal attacks that call into question its innovative way of letting anyone create and edit articles. For example, in 2012 a former Italian Minister of Defense sued the Wikimedia Foundation in Italy for hosting a Wikipedia article he alleged contained defamatory information. He had sent a letter demanding that the article in question should be removed, without even specifying the exact page or where the problem lay, and filed the suit when the page was not taken down.

In 2013, the Civil Court in Rome ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, cannot be held liable for the content of Wikipedia articles, which it does not control. Unsurprisingly, the former minister appealed, and the Court of Appeals in Rome has just handed down its judgment, which is in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation:

In a ruling that provides strong protection for Wikipedia's community governance model, the Court once again recognized that the Wikimedia Foundation is a hosting provider, and that the volunteer editors and contributors create and control content on the Wikimedia projects. The Court also made clear that a general warning letter, without additional detail about the online location, unlawfulness, or the harmful nature of the content as recognized by a court, does not impose a removal obligation on a hosting provider like the Wikimedia Foundation.

Moreover:

the Court took notice of Wikipedia's unique model of community-based content creation, and the mechanisms by which someone can suggest edits or additions to project content. It found that Wikipedia has a clear community procedure for content modification, which Mr. Previti should have used to address his concerns. He could have reached out to the volunteer editors, provided reliable sources, and suggested amendments to the article, instead of sending a general warning letter to the Foundation.

According to the post on the Wikimedia blog, the article about the former minister will remain online, and Previti will pay the Wikimedia Foundation some of the expenses incurred in defending the lawsuit and appeal. That suggests the matter is now over. The ruling is good news in other ways. As well as recognizing the validity of the the community-based creation model, it also affirms that the Wikimedia Foundation is a hosting provider, not an organization that controls the articles themselves. That's important in the context of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, currently under discussion. Article 13 of the Directive would require upload filters on major sites that are actively involved in the publishing of material. The Italian Appeals Court ruling may help to shield Wikimedia from such an impossible requirement if it is still present in the final version of the EU legislation.

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Filed Under: intermediary liability, italy, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

Wikimedia's Transparency Report: Guys, We're A Wiki, Don't Demand We Take Stuff Down

from the good-for-them dept

Wikimedia, like many other internet platform these days releases a transparency report that discusses various efforts to takedown content or identify users. We're now all quite used to what such transparency reports look like. However, Wikimedia's latest is worth reading as a reminder that Wikipedia is a different sort of beast. Not surprisingly, it gets a lot fewer demands, but it also abides by very few of those demands. My favorite is the fact that people demand Wikimedia edit or remove content. It's a wiki. Anyone can edit it. But if your edits suck, you're going to be in trouble. And yet, Wikimedia still receives hundreds of demands. And doesn't comply with any of them. Including ones from governments. Instead, Wikimedia explains to them just how Wikipedia works.

From July to December of 2017, we received 343 requests to alter or remove project content, seven of which came from government entities. Once again, we granted zero of these requests. The Wikimedia projects thrive when the volunteer community is empowered to curate and vet content. When we receive requests to remove or alter that content, our first action is to refer requesters to experienced volunteers who can explain project policies and provide them with assistance.

On the copyright front, they only received 12 requests. I actually would have expected more, but the community is pretty strict about making sure that only content that can be on the site gets there. Only 2 of the 12 takedowns were granted.

Wikimedia projects feature a wide variety of content that is freely licensed or in the public domain. However, we occasionally will receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove content that is allegedly copyrighted. All DMCA requests are reviewed thoroughly to determine if the content is infringing a copyright, and if there are any legal exceptions, such as fair use, that could allow the content to remain on the Wikimedia projects. From July to December of 2017, we received 12 DMCA requests. We granted two of these. This relatively low amount of DMCA takedown requests for an online platform is due in part to the high standards of community copyright policies and the diligence of project contributors.

This is actually really important, especially as folks in the legacy entertainment industry keep pushing for demands that platforms put in place incredibly expensive "filter" systems. Wikipedia is one of the most popular open platforms on the planet. But it would make no sense at all for it to invest millions of dollars in an expensive filtering system. But, since the whining from those legacy industry folks never seems to recognize that there's a world beyond Google and Facebook, they don't much consider how silly it would be to apply those kinds of rules to Wikipedia.

Also interesting is that Wikipedia has now been dealing with some "Right to be Forgotten" requests in the EU. It notes that in the six month period covered by the transparency report they received one such request (which was not granted):

rom July to December of 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation received one request for content removal that cited the right to erasure, also known as the right to be forgotten. We did not grant this request. The right to erasure in the European Union was established in 2014 by a decision in the Court of Justice of the European Union. As the law now stands, an individual can request the delisting of certain pages from appearing in search results for their name. The Wikimedia Foundation remains opposed to these delistings, which negatively impact the free exchange of information in the public interest.

I don't envy whatever person eventually tries to go after Wikimedia in court over a Right to be Forgotten claim -- though it feels inevitable.

There's more to look at in the report, but it is interesting to look over this and be reminded that not every internet platform is Google or Facebook, and demanding certain types of solutions that would hit all platforms... is pretty silly.

Filed Under: community, editing, takedowns, transparency report, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

International Inconsistencies In Copyright: Why It's Hard To Know What's Really Available To The Public

from the messy-copyright dept

Today, Santa Clara University is hosting a gathering of tech platform companies to discuss how they actually handle content moderation questions. Many of the participants have written short essays about the questions that are being discussed at this event. We've published a bunch of essays this week from the conference, and will continue with more next week.

Have you ever wondered why it can be hard to find out what some old paintings look like? Why there seem to be so few pictures of artistic works available from many countries even though they're filled with public sculptures and murals? Or why prices for books and movies can be so wildly different in different countries? The answer is that copyright law is different all over the world, and these differences can make figuring out what to do with these works so difficult or risky that most websites are not willing to have them around at all. This essay talks about a few of these works and why they add a major challenge to content moderation online.

To begin, Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation that hosts it have a mission to host freely available educational content, which means that one of the areas that comes up for us quite often when we receive content moderation requests is whether something is truly free or not. This can come up in a bunch of different ways, and I'd like to talk about a few of them, and why they make it quite difficult to figure out what's really available to the public and what's not.

The first one is old pictures and manuscripts. It's generally accepted that if a work was published before 1923, then it's old enough that the author's rights have expired and the ability to freely copy, share, and remix the work shouldn't be limited by the law anymore. But that raises a couple questions. First, how do you know when something was published, especially back then? There's a whole swath of old pictures and writings that were prepared before 1923, but may have never been published at all until later, which then requires figuring out a different timing scheme or figuring out when the work was published: a sometimes very difficult affair due to records lost during the World Wars and various upheaval in the world over the last century. For just one example, a dispute about an old passport photo recently came down to whether it was taken in Egypt or Syria during a time when those national borders were very fluid. If it had been in Egypt, it would have been given U.S. copyright and protected because it was after 1923, but if it had been in Syria at the time, it would not have been protected because that country wasn't extended recognition for copyrights at the time.

A second example is works from countries with broad moral rights. All the works on Wikimedia projects that were made recently are dedicated by their authors to the public domain or licensed under free culture licenses like Creative Commons. However, these sorts of promises only work in some countries. There are international copyright treaties that cover a certain agreed-upon set of protections for every country, but many countries add additional rights on top of the treaties such as what are called moral rights. Moral rights in many countries give the creator the power to rescind a license and they cannot give up that power no matter how hard they try. It ends up looking something like this: "I promise that you can use my work forever as long as you give me attribution, and anyone else can reuse it too, and I want this to be irrevocable so that the public can benefit without having to come back to me." And then a couple years later, it's "oh, sorry, I've decided that I changed my mind, just forget my earlier promise." In some places that works, and because of that possibility, people can't always be sure that the creative works being offered to them are reliable.

A third problem is pictures of artwork. This one applies, though a bit differently, to both new and old works. With new photos of old works, it's a question of creativity. Copyrights are designed to reward people for their original creativity: you don't get a new "life of the author plus 70 years" of protection for making a photocopy. But in some places, they again go past the international rights agreed upon in the copyright treaties and add extra protections. In this case, many countries offer a couple decades worth of protection for taking a straight on 2-D photograph of an old work of art. The Wikimedia Foundation is currently in a lawsuit about this with the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Germany, where the museum argues that photographs on its website are copyrighted even though the only thing shown in the photo is a public domain painting such as a portrait of Richard Wagner.

The other variation of problems with photos of art is photographs of more recent works out in the public. Did you know that in many places if you're walking in a park and you take a snapshot with a statue in it, you're actually violating someone's copyright? This varies from country to country: some places allow you to photograph artistic buildings but not sculptures or mosaics, other places let you take photographs of anything out in public, and others prohibit photographs of anything artistic even if it's displayed in public. This issue, called freedom of panorama, is one that many Wikimedians are concerned over, and is currently being debated in the European Parliament, but in the meantime can lead to very confused expectations about what sorts of things can be photographed as the answer varies depending on where you are.

The difficulty around so many of these types of works is that they put the public at risk. The works on Wikipedia, and works in the public domain or that are freely licensed more generally are supposed to be free for everyone to use. Copyright is built on a balance that rewards authors and artists for their creativity by letting them have a monopoly on who uses their works and how they're used. But the system has become so strong that even when the monopoly has expired and the creator is long dead, or when the creator wants to give their work away for free, it's extremely difficult for the public to understand what is usable and to use it safely and freely as intended. The public always has to be worried that old records might not be quite accurate, or that creators in many places will simply change their minds no matter how many promises and assurances they provide that they want to make something available for the public good.

These kinds of difficulties are one of the reasons why the Wikimedia Foundation made the decision to defer to the volunteer editors. The Wikimedia movement consists of volunteers from all over the world, and they get to decide on the rules for each different language of Wikipedia. This often helps to avoid conflicts, such as many languages spoken primarily in Europe choosing not to host images that might be allowed under U.S. fair use law, whereas English language does allow fair use images. It's difficult for a small company to know all the rules in hundreds of different countries, but individual volunteers from different places can often catch issues and resolve them even where the legal requirements are murky. As just one example, this has actually led Wikimedia volunteers who deal with photographs to have one of the most detailed policies for photographs of people of any website (and better than many law textbooks). In turn, volunteers handling so many of the content issues means that the Foundation is able to dedicate time from our lawyers to help clarify situations that do present a conflict such as the Reiss Engelhorn case of freedom or panorama issues already mentioned.

That said, even with efforts from many dedicated people around the world, issues like these international conflicts leave some amount of confusion and conflict. These issues often don't receive as much attention because they're not as large as, say, problems with pirated movies, but they present a more pernicious threat. As companies shy away from dealing with works that might be difficult to research or uncertain as to how the law applies to them, the public domain slowly shrinks over time and we are all poorer for it.

Jacob Rogers is Legal Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, international rules, jurisdiction, licensing, public domain, takedowns
Companies: wikimedia

Monkey Selfie Photographer Says He's Now Going To Sue Wikipedia

from the this-will-never-end dept

Thought the monkey selfie saga was over? I'm beginning to think that it will never, ever, be over. If you're unfamliar with the story, there are too many twists and turns to recount here, but just go down the rabbit hole (monkey hole?) of our monkey selfie tag. Last we'd heard, PETA and photographer David Slater were trying to settle PETA's totally insane lawsuit -- but were trying to do so in an immensely troubling way, where the initial district court ruling saying, clearly, that monkeys don't get a copyright would get deleted. Not everyone was comfortable with this settlement and some concerns have been brought before the court. As of writing this, the court seems to be sitting on the matter.

We knew exactly why PETA didn't want its big loss to remain on the books, but it initially appeared that Slater was more neutral. However, he's now claiming that he's preparing to sue Wikipedia -- in which case having the earlier ruling off the books (where it makes it clear that a monkey can't get a copyright) would probably be helpful. This bit of news about a planned Wikipedia lawsuit was a throwaway line in... well... a pretty bad episode of This American Life, which takes on the monkey selfie story, but does a surprisingly awful job of it. I'm a huge fan of This American Life, and in the past when they've done stories where I'm intimately familiar with the details, I think they've done a really excellent job.

But, on this story, TAL falls flat on its face. It presents the story of David Slater mostly through his own telling of it, and frames Wikipedia declaring the image to be in the public domain to be a fairly radical position. I'm actually surprised that TAL didn't talk to a copyright lawyer about this (they quote Slater's lawyer, but specifically on questions related to PETA's case -- and not the copyright status of the image). Indeed, I'm surprised that the reporter, Dana Chivvis, didn't appear to speak to anyone at Wikipedia itself. She kicks off the discussion of Wikipedia's role in the monkey selfie case with this bit of utter nonsense that does not reflect Wikipedia's view at all:

In other words, anyone could use it, without David's permission, for free. To David, that was just stealing. He makes a living from selling his pictures, so it was really helpful to have one that was such a hit. But now, anyone could download it from Wikipedia and hang it on their wall. Or print it in their publication.

Wikipedia's opinion is that information on the internet should be free.

Where to start? This is just so full of wrong, it's embarrassing. Whether or not Slater makes his living from that photo has no bearing on the legal question of who holds the copyright. And Wikimedia's reason for declaring the monkey selfie in the public domain is not that "information on the internet should be free." Its position is that the law is well established that non-human creators don't get copyright, and thus the image is in the public domain. This isn't some crazy "ooh man, everything should be free" argument. It's a legal argument based on the entire history of copyright law. While (thankfully!) Slater and/or TAL left us out of this story (Slater frequently blames us in combination with Wikipedia for the sin of accurately reporting on the law, but somehow we got spared in this story), it does a terrible job presenting the actual legal arguments about the public domain question. Wikipedia does support making knowledge available to the public, but that's unrelated to the legal question of whether the image is in the public domain -- but the way Chivvis presents it, it's as if Wikipedians just randomly declare images in the public domain because they think everything online should be free. That's wrong. And it's just bad reporting.

Chivvis does do a much better job getting into the legal issues with PETA's dumb lawsuit and accurately presenting the issues at play there, but that's a separate issue from whether or not the image is in the public domain (even if the issues are somewhat entangled). She also leaves out the key part of the settlement being a desire to delete the original ruling in the case -- or the fact that the court does not appear to have accepted the settlement, and the case is technically still open (she claims that it's all settled).

There is just a quick aside about Slater's plan to sue Wikipedia at the end, right before the supposed "kicker" to the story: Slater claims that "Naruto" -- the monkey PETA claims it represents and who it claims took the photo -- is not, in fact, the monkey who took the selfie. This isn't a new argument, as it's been raised before (by Slater and others) that Naruto is the wrong monkey.

Either way, suing Wikipedia for accurately claiming the monkey selfie image is in the public domain would not be a wise move on Slater's part. He's almost certain to lose if it goes that way. He's also threatened to sue us in the past over this same issue, and that would be even dumber (again: we just reported on the copyright status of an image based on his own statements about how the image came to be -- he has since changed his story to make it appear that he had more of a role in the photo, but that was not his original story at all). Note that in original story, Slater said he left the camera "unattended" and the camera "attracted the attention" of a macaque. It was only later, after people pointed out that under those conditions, he doesn't have a copyright that the story began to morph into one where Slater had a bigger role (which is also heard in the TAL broadcast).

Either way, Slater continues to tilt at this windmill, and it's not going to change the law. PETA's lawsuit was dumb and hopefully it really is over (though, hopefully the original ruling remains on the books). I really feel sorry that PETA decided to pick Slater as the victim of one of its stunts as it's a shitty experience to be sued. But for Slater to think the lesson to take from all of this is to sue others would be disappointing.

Filed Under: copyright, dana chivvis, david slater, monkey selfie, public domain, this american life, wikipedia
Companies: peta, wikimedia, wikipedia

Wikipedia Warns That SESTA Could Destroy Wikipedia

from the be-careful-what-you-aim-for dept

So much of the debate about SESTA has focused on three companies: Backpage, Facebook and Google. The focus on Backpage was because it's the go to example for why some claim this bill is needed (even though Congress passed another law two years ago to target Backpage, and that law has never been used, and even though there's already a federal grand jury investigating Backpage and there's nothing that stops the DOJ from going after Backpage under federal law). The focus on Facebook and Google is a bit more nebulous, but could be summed up as: "those companies are too big and should do more to stop bad stuff happening online." There's a pretty easy path from "Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says internet platforms aren't responsible for what their users do" to "we need them to be more responsible" to "let's amend CDA 230." This line of thinking is problematic for any number of reasons that we've already discussed, so I won't go over them again now.

But, as we've tried to explain, SESTA doesn't just impact Backpage, Facebook and Google. Indeed, Facebook and Google are uniquely positioned to handle the burdens (bogus takedowns, trollish threats, baseless litigation) enabled by SESTA. We've already shown how SESTA leaves small sites like our own at tremendous risk (and we're still waiting for anyone -- but especially the bill's authors -- to explain how we avoid that risk), but lots and lots of other sites will be impacted as well.

Take Wikipedia for example. The Wikimedia Foundation has published an excellent article describing how Wikipedia only exists because of CDA 230 and how it creates the space for a site driven entirely by its userbase to exist. More importantly, the article, by Wikimedia's Leighanna Mixter, details three ways in which SESTA puts Wikipedia at serious risk by upsetting the careful balance created by CDA 230. And here's where it's important to remind people that CDA 230 actually does two things. Many of its largest critics, incorrectly, think that all CDA 230 does is give websites a free pass to ignore everything that happens on their platform. But it also encourages sites to moderate activity that they don't want on their platform by noting that they don't lose their immunity in doing some forms of moderation. It's this part of CDA 230 that gets less attention, but is potentially more important. And yet SESTA rips that apart. That leads to Wikimedia's first concern:

1. Website operators need freedom to review content without legal risks

The fundamental goal of Section 230 is to keep the internet free and safe by encouraging operators to host free expression and remove problematic content without the disincentive of possible lawsuits.

SESTA introduces a vague standard for website operators that expands liability for “knowing” support of certain criminal activity. This will encourage websites to avoid gaining knowledge about content (to avoid liability) instead of actively engaging in content moderation.

The post then drills down (as we have) to explain why the knowledge standard in SESTA (even as updated) leaves Wikipedia in serious danger. Because Wikipedia is maintained by thousands upon thousands of volunteers -- what will constitute "knowledge" of illegal behavior. If one of the volunteers comes across links to sex trafficking and fails to remove them, does that mean all of Wikipedia has "knowledge"? Do all editors of Wikipedia now need to be deputized to respond to sex trafficking issues? Does Wikipedia need to stop allowing volunteer editing (its entire basis of existing) and switch only to paid editors?

A second problem with SESTA is how it opens up any web platform to a whole variety of state laws that smaller sites are unlikely to be able to follow and understand (and which can change over time).

SESTA would amend Section 230 to allow, for the first time, civil and criminal liability for websites under state law as well as federal law in cases where the federal sex trafficking law has also been broken. This improves upon an earlier version of the bill, which would have allowed for much broader liability under state law. Website operators should not have to monitor and attempt to comply with differing laws in all 50 states. Doing so would require substantial time and resources just to stay aware of new laws and ensure compliance, which would be particularly difficult for a small company or nonprofit like the Wikimedia Foundation. It also would put operators in an impossible bind if two states passed laws with contradictory requirements.

Finally, perhaps the biggest concern is how SESTA opens up smaller sites to what's likely to be myriad new lawsuits, in part because people will be testing the contours of the new law, but also because the standards in the law are so vague. Again, Facebook and Google can handle themselves when faced with lawsuits. Smaller sites? Not so much. As we expressed in our earlier post, small sites like our own and other individually owned blogs will have tremendous difficulty dealing with frivolous lawsuits under the law, but even Wikipedia notes that this would be very damaging.

When plaintiffs target online speech, they often go after the website, not the speaker. It can be difficult to track down individual users, and suing a website may appear to be more lucrative. For two decades, Section 230 has protected websites with a shield from civil liability for user-created content. Critically, Section 230 does not prevent websites from being held responsible for their own actions — websites that are directly involved in illegal activities can already be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. However, SESTA would open up websites to more liability under federal and state law, likely resulting in increased litigation. Some of these lawsuits will be legitimate responses to improper conduct by websites; others may simply target the website over the speaker as an easier way to attack online speech. Even if these lawsuits are meritless, getting them dismissed demands significant time and resources.

Small internet companies, startups, and nonprofit websites like the Wikimedia projects lack the resources to defend against a flood of lawsuits. Websites shouldn’t be sued into the ground, or afraid to even launch, simply because of holes in Section 230’s protections. Any amendments to Section 230 must take into account their effects not just on large, well-funded tech companies, but on startups and nonprofit organizations as well.

For many people supporting SESTA, the discussion seems to start and end with "sex trafficking is bad, this bill says it targets sex trafficking and therefore it's good" (and maybe with a touch of "if it hurts big internet companies, that's fine, they deserve it.") But, the impact of SESTA goes way beyond that (not to mention it doesn't actually do anything to stop sex trafficking and could make the problem worse). It's good to see Wikimedia speak up -- and hopefully someone in Congress will finally start to understand why SESTA is such a bad bill.

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, knowledge, lawsuits, section 230, sesta, user generated content, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

Appeals Court Revives Wikimedia's Lawsuit Against The NSA

from the doesn't-'collect-it-all'-mean-'collect-it-all?' dept

Back in 2015, Wikimedia's lawsuit against the NSA -- filed with several other plaintiffs and with the help of the ACLU -- was tossed out by the district court. Wikimedia argued it was illegally the subject of NSA upstream surveillance, thanks to the nature of this Section 702 collection. Wikimedia's reach is global, making it highly likely the NSA was gathering its content and communications while snagging data off internet backbones.

To further demonstrate the probability of this happening, Wikipedia submitted leaked Snowden documents, including an NSA presentation slide that contained Wikimedia's logo.

No dice. The district court said Wikimedia had no standing to pursue these claims, even with the unexpected buttress of leaked NSA documents. The court went even further, disabusing Wikipedia of its "99.9999999999% certainty" notion that the NSA had illegally harvested at least one of its trillions of internet transactions. In all, it was a very ugly day for Wikimedia and its lawsuit.

Fortunately, for Wikimedia, its lawsuit has been revived on appeal. The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court is far more amenable to Wikimedia's claims, finding them to be more credible than the lower court determined. From the opinion [PDF]:

[A]t least at this stage of the litigation, Wikimedia has standing to sue for a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And, because Wikimedia has self-censored its speech and sometimes forgone electronic communications in response to Upstream surveillance, it also has standing to sue for a violation of the First Amendment.

The court doesn't necessarily treat all of Wikimedia's allegations as true, but finds it has handed over enough background evidence to give it standing to pursue its First and Fourth Amendment claims.

But this revival is limited to Wikimedia and only some of its claims. The seven other plaintiffs aren't invited to the next district court round. A lack of produced evidence appears to have killed off the "dragnet" claims raised by the plaintiffs (which includes Wikimedia). The other defendants have a much smaller web footprint, making it less plausible their communications were subjected to upstream collection by the NSA. The only way those claims would be plausible is if the court found the "dragnet" assertions plausible… which it doesn't.

The Dragnet and Wikimedia Allegations share much in common. Because each alleges the same particularized and ongoing cognizable injuries, our analysis of the injury-in-fact, traceability, and redressability elements of Article III standing with respect to the Wikimedia Allegation also applies here. But there’s a key difference in the scope of the two allegations. In the Dragnet Allegation, Plaintiffs must plausibly establish that the NSA is intercepting “substantially all” text-based communications entering and leaving the United States, whereas it’s sufficient for purposes of the Wikimedia Allegation to show that the NSA is conducting Upstream surveillance on a single backbone link. Because Plaintiffs don’t assert enough facts about Upstream’s operational scope to plausibly allege a dragnet, they have no Article III standing.

The difference between the two claims is one of numbers. Wikimedia only had to show its traffic traveled across enough internet backbones to plausibly claim harvesting from any one of them would result in interception of its communications. The "dragnet" argument claims the NSA is harvesting almost everything that travels across multiple backbones. The majority finds this assertion unlikely. The dissent, however, says the same arguments Wikimedia put forth to demonstrate the probability of illegally-intercepted communications lend credence to the "dragnet" argument simply because that's how internet traffic works.

Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that the NSA surveils most backbone links because — based on the technical rules governing internet communications — the agency cannot know which link the communications it targets will traverse when they enter or leave the United States. The path that packets take along the internet backbone is determined dynamically based on unpredictable conditions. Thus, a communication sent by a surveillance target can enter the United States through one backbone link, but an immediate response returned to the surveillance target can traverse a different backbone link. Similarly, communications sent by a surveillance target at different times or locations can traverse different backbone links. Given this technical limitation, the government’s disclosure that the NSA seeks to “comprehensively acquire communications that are sent to or from its targets,” J.A. 49, renders Plaintiffs’ allegation plausible. If the NSA cannot know which backbone link its targets’ internet communications will traverse, then the only way it can comprehensively acquire its targets’ communications is by surveilling virtually every backbone link.

It's a good point but it's not enough to save the rest of the plaintiffs, which include the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. Perhaps a further examination of Wikimedia's arguments by the lower court will aid these plaintiffs in their future legal endeavors.

Filed Under: 4th circuit, nsa, section 702, standing, surveillance, upstream collection
Companies: wikimedia

My Talk At Wikimedia: Copyright Impacts Everything

from the it-does dept

Last week, I mentioned that I was giving a talk at the Wikimedia Foundation about copyright. It was a fun time, and the video from the talk is now online. Unfortunately, the audio and the video are... not entirely great. I'd complain about the terrible microphone, but that sounds like a certain presidential candidate. The video is okay, but the colors are off, so my presentation looks a little weird. Either way, you should still be able to get the basics. There's an introduction from Jan Gerlach at the Wikimedia Foundation, talking about all the important policy work they do, then my talk that runs about half an hour, followed by a Q&A with the audience that runs another half hour or so. It was a fun time, with a really great group of folks, and the conversation continued on after the official session ended for quite a while. Check it out:

Filed Under: 1201, censorship, copyright, dmca, free speech, impact
Companies: wikimedia

Why Wikipedia Is Worried About Global 'Right To Be Forgotten' Delistings

from the book-of-laughter-and-forgetting dept

As Techdirt reported last year, the problematic "right to be forgotten" -- strictly speaking, a right to be delisted from search results -- took a really dangerous turn when the French data protection regulator told Google that its orders to delist results should apply globally, not just in France, a view it confirmed twice. The latest development in this saga is the submission of a petition to the French Supreme Court against the global reach of delisting, made by the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia. As its blog post on the move explains:

Although the [French data protection authority] CNIL's case is directed towards Google, the gradual disappearance of Wikimedia pages from Google search results around the world ultimately impacts the public's ability to find the invaluable knowledge contained within the Wikimedia projects. Search engines have played an important role in the quest for knowledge -- roughly half of Wikipedia visits originate from search engines.

The CNIL's most recent order, if upheld, threatens the capacity to write and share important information about history, public figures, and more. It undermines the public's ability to find relevant and neutral information on the internet, and would make it exceedingly difficult for projects like Wikimedia's to provide information that is important for society.

The fact that half of Wikipedia's visits come from online searches emphasizes the point that delisting a page from search results effectively removes it from the Internet. The Wikimedia post goes on to make all the obvious -- and completely valid -- arguments why global delisting is such a bad idea. It also mentions the following:

As part of our efforts to bring more transparency to these requests, when we receive notice that a Wikipedia article was removed from a search engine due to a "right to be forgotten" delisting request, we publish the notice in a public index for the Wikimedia community's reference.

The page not only includes interesting statistics about delisting notices, but also helpfully provides copies of the notices themselves. From these we can see the Wikipedia articles that are no longer listed in search engines, which allows us to guess the names of those who don't want information about them to be readily available, and inevitably encourages us to speculate why that might be.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: censorship, eu, france, right to be forgotten, rtbf
Companies: google, wikimedia

Free Open Shared: A Conversation With Me About Copyright At Wikimedia

from the come-join-us dept

For folks in the San Francisco area, on Thursday night, I'll be at the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikimedia's brand new, awesome event series: Free Open Shared. I'll be giving a talk on copyright, why it matters, and how the fight over copyright reform impacts all sorts of important stuff, including many things that people don't think of as being related to copyright. I'll be giving a talk and then there will be a Q&A session as well. For those not in the area, they're planning on live streaming the event, and there should be a recording that we can post here as well, but it's always nice to see folks in person (and also, it's much easier to take part in the Q&A that way...). RSVP is required and space is limited, so if you can make it, join us for a fun conversation on copyright.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform
Companies: wikimedia

Brazilian Court Agrees Wikipedia Can Use Publicly-Available Personal Information For An Article

from the wow,-you-don't-say dept

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about a victory in the courts for Creative Commons licenses, noting that such judgments were still rather few and far between. That's unfortunate, in the sense that some people still think CC licensing is weird, rarely-used or even invalid. The situation regarding Wikipedia is similar. Even though it has been around for 15 years -- just like Creative Commons -- it too suffers from continuing doubts about its aims and methods, and a relative dearth of legal cases helping to clarify the status of both.

Here's one from Brazil, which has recently been settled in favour of Wikipedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. It concerns the Brazilian musician Rosanah Fienngo, who had brought a lawsuit objecting to information about her personal life being included on her Portuguese Wikipedia page. Wikimedia pointed out:

The Portuguese Wikipedia article about Ms. Fienngo contained information about her as a notable public figure in Brazil. This information included some details of her personal life, but this information was derived from public sources, most of which Ms. Fienngo had provided herself, such as an interview Ms. Fienngo gave to the gossip website O Fuxico.

You would have thought that someone who had provided details about her personal life to a gossip website would (a) realize that people might pass on that public information -- that's how gossip works -- and (b) be grateful to those who spread details she herself had chosen to make public. Fortunately, the judge seems to have understood the situation:

The court stated that although the information available on her Wikipedia page concerned her private life, Ms. Fienngo had already disclosed that information to the media herself, so its inclusion on Wikipedia was not an invasion of her privacy.

It's ridiculous that it required a court case to establish that, but the good news is the judgment should help to discourage others from bringing more such suits. Well, probably. Unfortunately, another similarity between the Brazilian Wikipedia case and the earlier Creative Commons one is that Ms. Fienngo could make an appeal, although Wikimedia notes:

We believe that the decision was strong enough that community members should feel free to make editorial decisions to write articles like the one about Ms. Fienngo.

Let's hope they're right.

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Filed Under: brazil, private information, public information, rosanah fienngo
Companies: wikimedia, wikipedia