ANI Seeks Full Wikipedia Page Removal in Defamation Case

By Pune Media On Oct 26, 2024 18

Asian News International (ANI) pushed to have its Wikipedia page taken down entirely in a hearing on October 25 at the Delhi High Court. The news agency had filed a defamation lawsuit against Wikimedia Technologies, which operates the Wikipedia website, over sections of the page that described it as a propaganda tool of the government and accused it of publishing misinformation.

ANI had filed an injunction against the online encyclopedia under Order 39, Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure. These rules allow the court to issue an injunction against a party to prevent a breach of contract or other injuries.

Wikipedia and ANI are currently involved in two hearings – one is the defamation suit filed by the news agency while the other is Wikipedia’s appeal against being ordered to release the names of their editors. Both hearings will be heard again on October 28.

ANI’s lawyer Siddhant Kumar wanted the page taken down as a whole, and not merely the offending sections. “I don’t know if it’s possible to remove only these statements. Ultimately, the order that Your Lordship will pass is that this page has to be removed,” he told the judge.

Both lawyers also attempted to explain the architecture of the website to the judge and how new information was added to or subtracted from articles.

Is Wikipedia responsible for user edits?

Judge Subramaniam Prasad asked if Wikipedia allowed anybody to edit pages, even those referring to other people. He cited the possibility of false information or statements appearing on such pages.

Kumar agreed with the judge’s understanding of the website and added that there were users with added privileges that could reject edits, called administrators.

However, Jayant Mehta, representing Wikimedia, pointed out that there were user agreement conditions that Wikipedia contributors or editors had to comply with.

The judge told Mehta that this model was “dangerous.”

“It’s an encyclopedia where any user if that information that he finds is worthy of updating or adding, can do that,” argued Jayant Mehta. “Every edit that is made is required to be cross-referenced to a source. So it’s not as if I can simply put up a comment on Wikipedia.”

“It’s an aggregator of defamation,” countered Kumar. “And not just that. That collator represents itself to be an encyclopedia of fact. It represents this information to be true as a matter of fact, not of opinion.”

If Wikipedia collects news articles and presents them in a particular space, then how is it any different from Google, the judge asked.

“Google does not add its own version to the index,” answered Kumar “It will not characterize what the statement is.” He also planned to show that some of the offending statements were not borne out by the source material.

“Secondly, the repetition of a defamatory statement is a cause of action in itself. And in this case, exacerbated by the fact that this is an encyclopedia making a statement of fact or professing to be an encyclopedia of fact, where the public would believe of a modicum of verification and authenticity,” added Kumar.

Background of the case

ANI had filed a defamation lawsuit against Wikipedia on July 9, asking for Rs. 2 crore in damages. On August 20, the court had ordered Wikipedia to disclose the identities of the users who made the edits. Wikipedia subsequently appealed against the order to the Division Bench, which was notified of another Wikipedia page detailing the hearing. The court ordered the website to take down this page within 72 hours, and filed a contempt of court case when it failed to do so. Wikipedia eventually did take down the page, following which the contempt order was scrapped.