Wikipedia Fighting Overseas SLAPP Suit Because Someone Didn’t Like The Factual Info Posted About Them

Lots of discussion about Wikipedia’s public utility has occurred since its inception. On one hand, it’s true: just about anyone can make edits to the information, unlike physical encyclopedias or websites owned by the former purveyors of these informative hardbound reams of paper.

On the other hand, the editing process is not some Wild West. There are plenty of editors — paid and unpaid — who try to keep the online encyclopedia from becoming, say… Encyclopedia Dramatica. It’s absolutely true anyone reading Wikipedia articles should take factual assertions with a grain of salt. The plus side of this internet encyclopedia is that most factual assertions have to be backed by external sources, providing an instantly accessible bibliography to readers.

Whatever anyone’s concerns are about the ability of Wikipedia to deliver facts, it should never be assumed false information will be given a tacit blessing to remain online. The normal moderation issues are present at Wikipedia, which cannot possibly afford (like any other major internet player) to physically backstop all content creation.

But that doesn’t mean Wikipedia doesn’t care whether or not pages are factual. It does. And that’s why Wikipedia (or its founding entity, Wikimedia) has rarely been sued (and never successfully) over information posted to the site by its users.

In the United States, Wikimedia/Wikipedia has immunity against these lawsuits if the information being sued over targets third party posts. Anywhere else in the world, this immunity simply doesn’t exist. But factual information based on cited sources should never result in lawsuits. The only time it does is when people who’d rather not be recognized for their misdeeds think they can wield local laws to either extract money from the Wikimedia Foundation or try to silence its (apparently) accurate summation of someone’s less-than-legal acts.

The latter form of bullshit is what Wikimedia is dealing with now. Someone who felt Wikipedia had no right to inform the world of his past misdeeds decided he was fully in his rights to sue Wikimedia. But he chose to do so in Portugal, rather than tangle with immunities afforded to Wikimedia elsewhere in the world.

At first, this went poorly for the person asking a court to censor unfavorable publications about him and his past.

Over the last several months, the Wikimedia Foundation has faced a lawsuit from an individual named César de Paço (also known as Caesar DePaço), which presents a threat to the Wikimedia projects and users in Portugal. 

The case started in August 2021 with a complaint that de Paço was upset about the Portuguese and English language versions of the articles about him. These contain information about his right-wing political affiliations and past criminal accusations, topics that had been reported in reliable sources as publicly relevant. The lawsuit went to court in Portugal, and the Foundation won the preliminary case. Like most courts around the world, the lower court’s decision protected the ability of volunteers to research and write about notable topics, including biographies.

And that’s the way it should be. Wikimedia does not pay for article creation, nor does it simply ignore bad faith edits that do nothing more than allow any random editor to grind their ax publicly. All moderation efforts are doomed to fail on one level or another, but there’s nothing on the record suggesting the Wikimedia Foundation encourages contributors to create pages solely for the purpose of demeaning others, much less refuse to alter content if allegations made on those pages can’t be supported by other sources.

The first judicial pass went well. But that’s where the good news ends. The next level of Portugal’s court system decided the lower court was wrong about everything, which means that — for now — the person wanting to memory hole past allegations at least temporarily has the upper hand.

However, the case took a strange turn on de Paço’s appeal. We are filing a series of appeals of our own in Portugal to protect the safety of users who contribute accurate and well-sourced information on important topics to Wikipedia. In our 5 July filing, we asked the Portuguese appellate court to refer several important legal questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). However, the Portuguese court ruled against us on 13 July, and demanded that the Foundation turn over personal data about multiple users who worked on the article.

Obviously, Wikimedia is not just going to hand over user info just because this court weirdly decided it’s the guy who just wants people to stop making (apparently) factual allegations against him. Not only would this surrender of info go against Wikimedia’s own standards, it goes against European law, which does not align with this strange decision by Portugal’s appellate-level court.

Anonymity protections aren’t in place solely to ensure trolls can operate at maximum efficiency. They’re also there to ensure people can criticize or report on powerful people without fearing they’ll be exposed to powerful people simply for making credible assertions based on known facts.

The push back by Wikimedia attacks both the plaintiff and the appellate decision. And one of the main points of leverage is the laws apparently ignored by the appellate court in its decision finding in favor of de Paco.

In our filing on 5 July, we asked the Portuguese appellate court to rule in our favor in order to protect users and their data as well as the integrity of their work. To be clear, by “integrity” we mean wanting to ensure that accurate, good faith information contributed by users is protected. We do not think that article subjects should be able to selectively delete publicly relevant information in order to distort how they are described and perceived. We also identified several questions regarding the EU GDPR that we believed the Portuguese courts needed to refer to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), since Portuguese law may have incorrectly implemented the GDPR to the detriment of free expression and freedom of information. 

If there’s any (Portuguese) justice, the court will reverse its order. Just because someone doesn’t like what’s written about them doesn’t give them the right to unmask contributors. And if the plaintiff still believes he’s been wronged by these contributors, he can definitely sue them personally for libel (or whatever). What he has no right to demand is that a third party unmask users simply because it’s the easiest target to hit.

And his demands for data should, at least, comply with EU data protection laws. Otherwise, why even bother having these in place? If anyone can bypass these laws just by filing a lawsuit, the laws are irrelevant. A filing fee vs. established rights is not a fair fight, especially when those targeted by BS lawsuits aren’t able to simply reestablish their rights by filing a response. Sure, that effort may force a court to think twice about its efforts, but this reverses the expected process by forcing those bogusly targeted by bad-faith lawsuits to assert supposedly enshrined rights, rather than just expect a court of law would, you know, respect the law.