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

Terrible Ruling In Germany: Digitizing The Public Domain Creates New Copyright

from the no,-no,-no,-bad-court,-bad dept

A court in Berlin has made a very bad ruling, saying that digitizing images in the public domain creates a new copyright. We wrote about this case last year, involving the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim suing Wikipedia because users had uploaded 17 images of the museum's public domain artwork. Ridiculously, the German court sided with the museum:

The court ruled against the Wikimedia Foundation and in favour of the Reiss Engelhorn Museum. The German court dismissed the case against Wikimedia Deutschland on the grounds that it was not legally responsible for the files in question, which were held by Wikimedia Commons in the US, which in turn are managed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

This is not a particularly new issue -- it's come up many times in the past. In the US, thankfully, we have a nice precedent in Bridgeman v. Corel that states clearly that exact photographic copies of public domain works are not protected by copyright, because they lack the originality necessary for a copyright. Of course, that hasn't stopped some US Museums from looking to route around that ruling. Over in Europe, where there is no Bridgeman-like ruling, we tend to see a lot more of these kinds of attempts to relock down the public domain by museums. There have been similar attempts in the UK and in France, though as far as I can tell, neither case went to court.

Wikimedia says that it will appeal the ruling, which is the right move, but really an even larger question is why museums, which should want to more widely share such artwork with the world, are being so overprotective of these works. It's not as if someone seeing a digitized image of the Mona Lisa makes anyone less interested in seeing it in a museum.

Filed Under: copyright, germany, museums, public domain, scanning images, wikipedia
Companies: reiss engelhorn museum, wikimedia

FL Senate Candidate Tries To Edit Scientology Links From Wikipedia Page, Streisanding Those Links Everywhere

from the hail-thetan dept

You really would think people would know better by now when it comes to trying to surrepticiously edit Wikipedia pages to hide information, but they don't. There is a long history of people and companies trying to disappear or edit potentially embarrassing facts from Wikipedia, only to have it backfire directly in their faces via a little thing we call The Streisand Effect. And yet they still try.

The latest example of this is the Florida Senate Campaign for David Jolly attempting to simply delete his ties to the Church of Scientology from his Wikipedia page.

Sarah Bascom, Jolly’s spokesperson, confirmed that the campaign removed references to Jolly’s past career as a lobbyist, his association with the Church of Scientology, his support for same sex marriage, and political contributions he made to Democratic candidates. Bascom accused a unspecified rival campaign of adding what she described as “campaign propaganda” in the first place. Two edits were made — one on March 15 and one on April 4 — by a user named “Bascomcomm”. Bascom is the president of Bascom Communications & Consulting, a political firm in Florida.

“We were notified a few months ago that a consultant who works for one of our us senate [sic] opponents has been intentionally editing the David Jolly Wikipedia page to follow their opposition research messaging so they can use it in a mail or digital campaign,” Bascom told BuzzFeed News in an email. “Once we found about it, we went in and attempted to correct his page to be consistent with all of his public bios.”

Except that none of that appears to be true. By all accounts, the sections which Bascom's firm deleted from Jolly's Wikipedia page were heavily sourced and most of the contributions that were disappeared had been put into the page well over a year ago. It would take some Nostradamus-level seeing skills for a rival Senatorial prospect to edit Jolly's Wikepedia page to include damning information years in advance of the campaign actually taking place. And, even if we are dealing with a political prognosticator here, the sections were sourced. Note that nothing in the quote above suggests that the campaign was editing out lies. It only says that it edited the page to be consistent with Jolly's current public bio, that of a Republican senatorial candidate.

One section dealt with Jolly's long history with the Church of Scientology, including financial contributions he's gained from them and his attendance at political rallies hosted by the group. That was all replaced by the campaign with information detailing Jolly's work on flood insurance relief and his committment to reducing government spending. Another section detailed Jolly's career as a lobbyist, replacing that with his history of business ownership in the private sector. When Buzzfeed mentioned to Bascom that the original page contributions were done by long-time Wikipedia editors, in one case an award-winning editor, she repeated her claim that one of them worked for a rival's campaign. When asked to name that campaign?

“I have been told by numerous people who is behind it, but I can’t use that,” she said. “That would be unethical.”

Ah, yes, ethics. The most important of things, except when concerning trying to hide factual information from the public during an election cycle. How politician of you! And now that this has been sussed out, of course, we can all spend much time, energy, and screen-space discussing in volume all of the things that Jolly's campaign had tried to hide from us. The Streisand Effect is a bitter mistress, would-be Senator Jolly, and you've treated her poorly.

Filed Under: david jolly, florida, scientology, streisand effect, wikipedia

Swedish Court: Wikipedia Hosting Photos Of Public Artwork Is Copyright Infringement For Some Reason

from the art-thou-crazy? dept

Wikimedia has, of course, a somewhat tortured history when it comes to copyright and artwork that appears on Wikipedia. Whether it's political logos, German museum art, and this goddamned monkey, Wikipedia often finds itself targeted over uploaded photos of artwork and copyright claims that too often appear to be either baseless or at cross-purposes with the world of art more generally. When you mix all of this up with a strange sense of entitlement by those who produce public art over how that art is photographed, the result is a Swedish court declaring that Wikipedia has violated copyright by hosting pictures of public Swedish statues.

The controversial judgement is a victory for the Visual Copyright Society in Sweden (Bildupphovsrätt i Sverige - BUS), which sued Wikimedia at Stockholm District Court for publishing photos of Swedish public sculptures and other public artworks without first getting permission from the artists.

“We are naturally very disappointed,” Wikimedia's Swedish operations manager Anna Troberg told The Local after the supreme court gave its guidance to the district court. “We view this as an anachronistic and restrictive interpretation of copyright laws. It also runs counter to recommendations from the European Court of Human Rights.”

It also blatantly strains the boundries of common sense. The statues in this case are presented in Sweden in public, by my reading were commissioned as public works by artists who were paid for their efforts with taxpayer dollars, and the images for which were uploaded to Wikipedia by individual administrators for Wikipedia articles. The Swedish court appears to have twisted itself into a pretzel in order to generate this ruling.

In its judgement the supreme court affirmed that Swedish copyright law does permit members of the public to take pictures of public artworks. But, the court said, “it is different when it’s a database where artworks are made available to the public to an unlimited extent without copyright-holders receiving any remuneration. A database of this kind can be deemed to have a commercial value that is not inconsiderable,” the supreme court said in a statement. “The court rules that the copyright-holders have the right to absorb this value. It is not relevant whether or not Wikimedia has a commercial aim.”

Just so everyone is clear, the court is saying that artists should receive compensation for the public art for which they've already been paid, so long as we're talking about pictures of that public art being stored in a database, as opposed to a person simply snapping a picture.

But where is the line between individuals taking pictures and creating "a database"? How does it suddenly become copyright infringement for a non-profit entity like Wikipedia to host these images on its servers, but it's not if you or I do so? Wikipedia has said that it will be consulting with its legal team to talk next steps, with the focus being on how to change the nature of the debate to zero in on how outdated the law and this ruling are, but when was it ever acceptable for taxpayer-funded art to be controlled by private interests?

Filed Under: copyright, public domain, sweden, wikipedia

Bernie Sanders' Campaign DMCAs Wikimedia For Hosting His Logos

from the wrong-on-so-many-levels dept

What is it with political campaigns issuing totally bogus takedown notices? It happens all too frequently, especially with presidential campaigns. But the latest example may be the stupidest one we've seen to date. The folks at the Lumen Database (formerly Chilling Effects) alert us to the ridiculous news that Bernie Sanders' campain issued a bogus DMCA notice to the Wikimedia Foundation, because Wikimedia Commons has hosted some Sanders' logos.

You can read the full takedown letter here, sent by a redacted lawyer at Garvey Schubert Barer, a firm that claims to have expertise in intellectual property law. If that's true, they sure don't show it in this letter. First of all, they're sending a DMCA notice, which only applies to copyright, but posting campaign logos is hardly copyright infringement. When you're talking about logos, at best you're talking trademark, but that's not an issue here either. Whether it's trademark or copyright, Wikimedia hosting campaign logos is clearly fair use. If they're really arguing copyright, then it's an easy fair use call. If it's trademark, there's no "use in commerce" on the Wikimedia side, and no likelihood of confusion. Either one is simply stupid to argue.

Separately, these are campaign logos which are advertising for the campaign. What kind of clueless lawyer thinks the right move is to demand such things get taken down?

And, then of course, there's the inevitable backlash over this. Presidential campaigns trying to censor people -- or worse, a site like Wikipedia -- is always going to backfire. It makes the campaign look thin-skinned, foolish and short-sighted.

I'm guessing that if this makes enough news, the Sanders campaign will back down on this, and say it was an overzealous lawyer or some other such thing, but there's no reason such takedowns should ever be sent in the first place.

Filed Under: bernie sanders, copyright, dmca, takedown, trademark, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia

German Museum Sues Wikimedia Foundation Over Photos Of Public Domain Works Of Art

from the once-public-domain,-always-public-domain dept

The mission of museums and art galleries is generally to spread knowledge and appreciation of beautiful and interesting objects. So it's rather sad when they start taking legal action against others that want to help them by disseminating images of public domain works of art to a wider audience. This obsession with claiming "ownership" of something as immaterial as the copyright in a photograph of a work of art made centuries ago led the UK National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to threaten Derrick Coetzee, a software developer, when he downloaded images from the NPG and added them to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository for Wikipedia, of which he was an administrator. That was back in 2009, and yet incredibly the same thing is still happening today, as this Wikimedia blog post explains:

On October 28, the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, served a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation and later against Wikimedia Deutschland, the local German chapter of the global Wikimedia movement. The suit concerns copyright claims related to 17 images of the museum's public domain works of art, which have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland are reviewing the suit, and will coordinate a reply by the current deadline in December.

The problem, as usual, is that the museum is claiming that the photographs are new creations, and therefore covered by copyright:

The Reiss Engelhorn Museum asserts that copyright applies to these particular images because the museum hired the photographer who took some of them and it took him time, skill, and effort to take the photos. The Reiss Engelhorn Museum further asserts that because of their copyrights, the images of the artwork cannot be shared with the world through Wikimedia Commons.

As Wikimedia points out:

Even if German copyright law is found to provide some rights over these images, we believe that using those rights to prevent sharing of public domain works runs counter to the mission of the Reiss Engelhorn Museum and the City of Mannheim and impoverishes the cultural heritage of people worldwide.

The disagreement over the use of the NPG's images back in 2009 gradually fizzled out. The Museums Journal reported in 2012 that:

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has made changes to its image licensing to allow free downloads for non-commercial and academic uses.

The change means that more than 53,000 low-resolution images are now available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard Creative Commons licence.

And more than 87,000 high-resolution images are available for free for academic use through the gallery’s own licence. Users will be invited to give a donation in return for the service.

Meanwhile, high-resolution NPG images are still available on Wikimedia Commons, although Wikipedia notes that these are prudently hosted in the US, where their legal position as works in the public domain seems clearer. It's really time for other countries to catch up with the US and recognize that photos of public domain works of art are still in the public domain, and that sharing them with the world is something to be praised as helpful, not pursued as harmful.

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Filed Under: copyright, germany, images, museum, public domain, scans, wikipedia
Companies: reiss engelhorn museum, wikimedia

Court Dismisses Wikimedia's Lawsuit Over NSA Surveillance

from the not-over-yet dept

Back in March, we noted that Wikimedia was suing the NSA over its mass surveillance program under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. This is the part of the law that the NSA uses to justify its "upstream" collection -- which lets the NSA partner with backbone providers like AT&T and tap their fiber lines at entry/exit points from the country and sniff through all the traffic. The problem in many lawsuits concerning NSA surveillance is that it's been difficult for the plaintiff to satisfy the requirements necessary to get "standing." That is, can the plaintiff prove that he/she/it had rights violated by the program. Many earlier attempts failed, because they just presented stories of "well, the NSA is collecting everything, so..." and the courts have said that's not enough, since it needs to be shown that the plaintiff, in particular, was a target.

Wikimedia (and the ACLU, who is helping with the case), believed they had a smoking gun that could grant them standing. The following slide, which was revealed by Ed Snowden: See that Wikipedia logo? Wikimedia Foundation and the ACLU argued that this presented evidence that the NSA was targeting Wikipedia users, and thus the Wikimedia Foundation had standing.

Unfortunately, so far, it's not working. Earlier today, the court tossed out the lawsuit, saying that Wikimedia did not present enough evidence to prove it has standing. The court, not surprisingly, relies heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Clapper v. Amnesty International, in which SCOTUS rejected Amnesty's similar claim by saying the organization failed to prove it had standing, since it couldn't prove its team was caught up in dragnet surveillance. Of course, famously, to get to that ruling, the US government flat out lied to the Supreme Court (something it has since admitted), claiming (incorrectly) that if information collected via such surveillance was used in criminal cases, the defendants would be told about it.

But, no matter, the court says that under the Clapper ruling, Wikimedia does not have standing, and basically argues that this case really is no different than that one. It rejects the idea that, thanks to Snowden, we now know a lot more about the NSA's surveillance program, basically saying that it's still too speculative.

Plaintiffs cannot provide a sufficient factual basis for their allegations because the scope and scale of Upstream surveillance remain classified, leaving plaintiffs to prop their allegation of actual injury on suppositions and speculation about how Upstream surveillance must operate in order to achieve the government's "stated goals." Indeed, plaintiffs cite the government's "stated goals" in nearly every facet of their argument.... It is, of course, a "possibility" that the NSA conducts Upstream surveillance in the manner plaintiffs allege, but this "bare assertion" is unaccompanied by "factual matter" that raises it "above a speculative level," and hence does not establish standing.

The court notes that the "speculative chain" may be "shorter" than in the Clapper case, but "it is a chain of speculation nonetheless."

The court also rejects the claim that since it's been revealed that the NSA does "about" searches in addition to "to" and "from" searches, that reveals much more broad searches. If you don't recall, one of the revelations is the fact that the NSA can run queries not just on something like "emails to or from Osama bin Laden" but also "emails about Osama bin Laden" which obviously would include a much larger set of content to sniff through. The court doesn't think this matters very much:

... plaintiff's contention that "about surveillance" is like the hypothetical government agent reading every piece of mail misses the mark. Unlike the hypothetical government agent reading every word of every communication and retaining the information, "about surveillance" is targeted insofar as it makes use of only those communications that contain information matching the tasked selector.

In short... it's not a problem that the NSA sniffs through everything to find all the emails about Osama bin Laden, because it's not using the data in all the ones it rejects. Besides, the court argues, the argument is still highly speculative.

Finally, the court looks at a few specific arguments for why Wikimedia and some of the other plaintiffs have more direct evidence that situate themselves differently. First, there's lawyer Joshua Dratel, who is somewhat well known for taking some rather high profile cases, such as handling Ross Ulbricht's defense over the Silk Road arrest, or defending the widow of Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlane Tsarnaev. Two other clients were Agron Hasbajrami and Sabirhan Hasanoff -- and in both cases, the government has admitted those two were subject to Section 702 surveillance. From there, the ACLU argues this means that Dratel's communications were almost certainly swept up and looked at by the NSA as well. However, the court doesn't buy it, saying that while it may be true that Dratel's communications were likely swept up, there's still not enough evidence that it was swept up by the 702 upstream program that the lawsuit is about:

Plaintiffs in this case... do not allege facts that plausibly establish that the information gathered from the two instances of Section 702 surveillance was the product of Upstream surveillance. In neither of Dratel's cases did the government indicate whether the information at issue was derived from PRISM or Upstream surveillance, and no factual allegations in the AC plausibly establish that Upstream surveillance--rather than PRISM--was used to collect the information. Moreover, given what is known about the two surveillance programs, it appears substantially more likely that PRISM collection was used in these cases...

The court is probably right here. There are two major surveillance programs under 702. The "Upstream" program that taps the backbone and then PRISM, in which a list of big internet firms agree to hand over certain information pursuant to a FISA court ruling rubber stamp telling them to hand over that information. And it is actually likely that the part of 702 that was used on Dratel's clients was of the PRISM variety. But the "well, you were surveilled under this other program using the same authority..." reason to dump this argument seems pretty weak. Because it still means surveillance of dubious legality under the same legal authority.

Then there's the case of Wikimedia, who argues that given the government's "stated goals," and the vast amount of traffic going to Wikipedia, it's all but certain that Wikipedia has been swept up in the Upstream collection. The court still isn't buying it:

Plaintiffs' argument is unpersuasive, as the statistical analysis on which the argument rests is incomplete and riddled with assumptions. For one thing, plaintiffs insist that Wikimedia's over one trillion annual Internet communications is significant in volume. But plaintiffs provide no context for assessing the significance of this figure. One trillion is plainly a large number, but size is always relative. For example, one trillion dollars are of enormous value, whereas one trillion grains of sand are but a small patch of beach. Here, the relevant universe for comparison purposes is the total number of annual Internet communications, a figure plaintiffs do not provide--nor even attempt to estimate--in the AC. Without defining the universe of the total number of Internet communications, it is impossible to determine whether Wikimedia's alleged one trillion annual Internet communications is significant or just a drop in the bucket of all annual Internet communications.

Moreover, plaintiffs conclude that there is a greater than 99.9999999999% chance that the NSA has intercepted at least one of their over one-trillion communications on the bases of an arbitrary assumption, namely that there is a 0.00000001% chance the NSA will intercept any particular Internet communication. Plaintiffs provide no basis for the 0.00000001% figure, nor do they explain why the figure is presented as a conservative assumption. Plaintiffs seem to presume a string of zeroes buys legitimacy. It does not. Indeed, a closer look reveals that the number of zeros chosen by plaintiffs leads conveniently to plaintiff's desired result. If three more zeros are added to plaintiffs' figure (0.00000000001%), the odds that at least one of Wikimedia's one trillion annual communications is intercepted drops to approximately 10%. If four more zeros are added (0.000000000001%), the odds that at least one of Wikimedia's communications is intercepted drops to 1%. In short, plaintiffs' assumption appears to be the product of reverse engineer; plaintiffs first defined the conclusion they sought--virtual certainty--and then worked backwards to find a figure that would lead to that conclusion. Mathematical gymnastics of this sort do not constitute "sufficient factual matter" to support a "plausible allegation."

Ouch.

The court also rejects the idea that this kind of ruling means that the Upstream program can never face judicial review, pretending that the fact that the FISA court reviewed it (without any adversarial party) is enough... and (again, incorrectly) that criminal defendants prosecuted with information collected under the program can challenge said collection. And, yes, it's true that the DOJ has now said that it will start informing defendants, but it didn't for years.

The ACLU is, not surprisingly upset by the ruling, and I imagine it will be appealed soon.

Filed Under: fisa amendments act, joshua dratel, prism, section 702, standing, surveillance, upstream, wikipedia
Companies: aclu, wikimedia foundation

Google Struggling To Deal With Right To Be Forgotten Requests -- Will Now Delete Wikipedia Page From Search Results

from the but,-uh,-it's-editable dept

Late last week, Google responded to the concerns raised by some EU regulators regarding how it is implementing the new "right to be forgotten" rules. Google's full response is well worth reading going into a fair bit of detail, highlighting how there are a lot of non-trivial decisions to be made in this process -- brought on by a ridiculous European Court of Justice ruling. As part of it, Google notes that the process is entirely one-sided and they only get information from the person wishing to delete information from search engines:

We generally have to rely on the requester for information, without assurance beyond the requester’s own assertions as to its accuracy. Some requests turn out to have been made with false and inaccurate information. Even if requesters provide us with accurate information, they understandably may avoid presenting facts that are not in their favour. As such, we may not become aware of relevant context that would speak in favour of preserving the accessibility of a search result. An example would be a request to remove an old article about a person being convicted of a number of crimes in their teenage years, which omits that the old article has its relevance renewed due to a recent article about that person being convicted for similar crimes as an adult. Or a requester may not disclose a role they play in public life, for which their previous reported activities or political positions are highly relevant. We have also seen examples of data subjects who indiscriminately submit many URLs that are displayed as search results for their name, even though some URLs are actually about another person with the same name.

As if to highlight the difficulty, Google is apparently now set to disappear a Wikipedia page from its index due to a right to be forgotten request. But, of course, Wikipedia pages are open and constantly editable, so it seems weird to order that the page be removed entirely from the search engine when someone could just edit it instead. And, if the edit gets reverted, well, perhaps it's because it's factual information that is perfectly fine to include in Wikipedia and in Google.

The article does not reveal the particular Wikipedia page or any further information, but highlights just what a ridiculous ruling the original ECJ ruling was. Google is a search engine. Its entire purpose is to help people find what they're looking for -- not to judge whether or not it's appropriate for someone to be seeking that information in the first place. And then, once you include the editable nature of Wikipedia to the mix, you're creating a situation that is doubly ridiculous, since there are so many other options for how to deal with the issue.

Filed Under: europe, right to be forgotten, wikipedia
Companies: google

Group Of Major PR Firms Pledge To Play Nice On Wikipedia

from the good-start dept

There's always been an air of distrust when it comes to how public relations firms deal with Wikipedia pages for their clients, especially when it comes to making edits. I'd guess this general feeling has likely come about due to equal parts a misunderstanding about how most PR groups operate and a few bad actors spoiling everyone's opinion. Contrary to what some might believe, there is a place for representative requests to edit out incorrect material on Wikipedia, so long as the ultimate goal is to serve public the most accurate information. That someone is on the payroll of the subject of an article sounds like it should be a conflict of interest, but that's simply not always the case. Good PR firms are less about spin and more about managing the communication channels and getting the public accurate information about their clients. Still, the distrust persists -- in part because there are plenty of PR firms that aren't so "good."

Now a group of the larger public relations firms are coming out with a pledge to deal fairly and accurately when it comes to Wikipedia edits and to route them through the proper channels.

In the statement, 11 PR agencies "publicly state and commit" to abide by five principles that would prevent them from editing a client's Wikipedia entry without first going through proper channels. It also makes overtures toward repairing the tenuous relationship between the PR industry and Wikipedia.

"On behalf of our firms, we recognize Wikipedia's unique and important role as a public knowledge resource," the statement begins. "We also acknowledge that the prior actions of some in our industry have led to a challenging relationship with the community of Wikipedia editors. Our firms believe that it is in the best interest of our industry, and Wikipedia users at large, that Wikipedia fulfill its mission of developing an accurate and objective online encyclopedia. Therefore, it is wise for communications professionals to follow Wikipedia policies as part of ethical engagement practices."

The companies signing onto the statement include Edelman, Ogilvy and Mather, Fleishman Hillard, Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum, Porter Novelli, Peppercomm, MDC Partners, Voce Communications, Allison and Partners, and Beutler Ink. Those are some impressive names in the industry and the statement they released represents a serious step forward both for how the industry interacts with the Wikipedia community and for affirming Wikipedia's stature as a whole. You have to understand that in PR-land, you don't make this kind of promise unless you have every intention of keeping it. PR is all about managing expectations, but this statement sets the reader's expectations quite high. The statement essentially promises to refrain from creating so-called sock-puppet Wikipedia accounts used to edit articles on which there is a conflict of interest. Even the management for the firms appear to be on board with playing by the ethical rules.

"If you are a paid advocate, then you should refrain from editing articles directly," said Mr. Beutler. "But PR people can contribute by making sure correct information is made correct." And what happens when an unhappy client calls its agency asking them to remove or edit something on its Wikipedia page? According to Mr. Beutler, these agencies should go to Wikipedia's "talk" areas and make their case about why an article should be edited. "This works," he said. "But it doesn't work terribly efficiently," he added.

Even as this pledge is being made, Wikipedia itself is making some significant modifications to their ToS to codify this sort of thing and attempt to increase the transparency on edits made by paid actors. Volunteer editors and those working with libraries and museums will continue to operate as they always have, but those receiving any kind of pay for editing articles are required to make disclosures as such.

If you are paid to edit, other rules beyond the Terms of Use may also apply. Specific policies on individual Wikimedia projects, or relevant laws in your country (such as those prohibiting fraudulent advertising), may require further disclosure or prohibit paid advocacy editing altogether. Details on the legal issues and risk associated with undisclosed paid advocacy editing may be found in this FAQ.

That seems to line up everyone's goal at promoting good behavior nicely. Except, that is, for all those PR firms and agencies that didn't sign on to this pledge. Wikipedia's changes put them on notice that it is going to take this kind of thing seriously and the proactive pledge from the other PR firms makes non-signees look late to the game. If this works, it will hopefully only amplify the status of Wikipedia as an open and trusted source for reliable information.

Filed Under: editing, pr, public relations, transparency, wikipedia
Companies: allison and partners, beutler ink, burson-marstellar, edelman, fleishman hillard, ketchum, mdc partners, ogilvy and mather, peppercomm, porter novelli, voce communications, wikipedia

DailyDirt: Judging The Quality of Science

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Scientific Method is often taught as a linear process that proceeds from hypothesis to theory. In practice, science -- like any other human endeavor -- can be much more haphazard. Science isn't perfect, but it has some built in processes for error correction to help weed out mistakes and outright fraud. There are some well-known issues with the traditional peer review mechanism, but science is adapting and coming up with new ways to improve its results and conclusions. Here are just a few links on judging the quality of science.

• The Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford is planning to develop a meta-research institution to research... research. The new lab will be called METRICS for short, and it'll study factors like irreproducibility and publication bias. [url]
• Jimmy Wales has decided that no pseudo-science will be accepted for publication on Wikipedia. Wales says, "If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals -- that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately." [url]
• As more scientific research is done more globally, is the diversity of the researchers influencing the quality of the results? Some analysis suggests that papers with geographically diverse authors are better, in the metric of getting more citations. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: jimmy wales, meta-research, peer review, publication bias, reproducibility, science, wikipedia