We Support Wikimedia Foundation’s Challenge to UK’s Online Safety Act

3 weeks 1 day ago

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ARTICLE 19 strongly support the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal challenge to the categorization regulations of the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act.

The Foundation – the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects – announced its legal challenge earlier this year, arguing that the regulations endanger Wikipedia and the global community of volunteer contributors who create the information on the site. The High Court of Justice in London will hear the challenge on July 22 and 23.

EFF and ARTICLE 19 agree with the Foundation’s argument that, if enforced, the Category 1 duties - the OSA’s most stringent obligations – would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors, expose the site to manipulation and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving the site. For example, because the law requires Category 1 services to allow users to block all unverified users from editing any content they post, the law effectively requires the Foundation to verify the identity of many Wikipedia contributors. However, that compelled verification undermines the privacy that keeps the site’s volunteers safe.

Wikipedia is the world’s most trusted and widely used encyclopedia, with users across the word accessing its wealth of information and participating in free information exchange through the site. The OSA must not be allowed to diminish it and jeopardize the volunteers on which it depends.

Beyond the issues raised in Wikimedia’s lawsuit, EFF and ARTICLE 19 emphasize that the Online Safety Act poses a serious threat to freedom of expression and privacy online, both in the U.K. and globally. Several key provisions of the law become operational July 25, and some companies already are rolling out age-verification mechanisms which undermine free expression and privacy rights of both adults and minors.

David Greene

[B] 調査報道のTansaが「報道機関として参政党反対」を宣言

3 weeks 1 day ago
調査報道でいくつものヒットを飛ばし、気をはいている報道NGO「Tansa」が「Tansaは報道機関として参政党に反対します 基本的人権と民主主義を守るため宣言します」という宣言を発した。報道機関として異例の宣言を出した背景には、参政党なるミニナチ政党の出p現と、日本の政治状況を変えかねないほど熱狂的な支持者を増やしているこの国のいびつさがある。(大野和興)
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