{"id":270571,"date":"2025-07-17T23:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270571\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T23:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T23:37:09","slug":"we-support-wikimedia-foundations-challenge-to-uks-online-safety-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270571\/","title":{"rendered":"We Support Wikimedia Foundation\u2019s Challenge to UK\u2019s Online Safety Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Electronic Frontier Foundation and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.article19.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ARTICLE 19<\/a>\u00a0strongly support\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wikimediafoundation.org\/news\/2025\/07\/17\/wikimedia-foundation-challenges-uk-online-safety-act-regulations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the Wikimedia Foundation\u2019s legal challenge<\/a> to the categorization regulations of the United Kingdom\u2019s Online Safety Act.<\/p>\n<p>The Foundation \u2013 the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/wikimedia-policy\/wikipedias-nonprofit-host-brings-legal-challenge-to-new-online-safety-act-osa-regulations-0f9153102f29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announced its legal challenge earlier this year<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>EFF and ARTICLE 19 agree with the Foundation\u2019s argument that, if enforced, the Category 1 duties &#8211; the OSA\u2019s most stringent obligations \u2013 would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia\u2019s 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\u2019s volunteers safe.<\/p>\n<p>Wikipedia is the world\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the issues raised in Wikimedia\u2019s lawsuit, EFF and ARTICLE 19 emphasize that the Online Safety Act\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/pages\/uk-online-safety-bill-massive-threat-online-privacy-security-and-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">poses a serious threat to freedom of expression and privacy online<\/a>, both in the U.K. and globally. Several key provisions of the law become operational July 25, and some companies already are rolling out<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.social\/about\/blog\/07-10-2025-age-assurance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> age-verification mechanisms<\/a> which undermine free expression and privacy rights of both adults and minors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation and\u00a0ARTICLE 19\u00a0strongly support\u00a0the Wikimedia Foundation\u2019s legal challenge to the categorization regulations of the United&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-270571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114871208767241172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}