The Foundation supports challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that jeopardize Wikipedia’s community-led governance model and the right to freedom of expression.
An amicus brief, also known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief, is a document filed by individuals or organizations who are not part of a lawsuit, but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to raise awareness about their concerns. The Wikimedia Foundation’s amicus brief calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question.
“These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work,” said Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. “For over twenty years, a community of volunteers from around the world have designed, debated, and deployed a range of content moderation policies to ensure the information on Wikipedia is reliable and neutral. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice to protect Wikipedia’s unique model of community-led governance, as well as the free expression rights of the encyclopedia’s dedicated editors.”
“The quality of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia depends entirely on the ability of volunteers to develop and enforce nuanced rules for well-sourced, encyclopedic content,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “Without the discretion to make editorial decisions in line with established policies around verifiability and neutrality, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with opinions, conspiracies, and irrelevant information that would jeopardize the project’s reason for existing.”
Can Wikipedia simply not allow users from Texas or Florida? I.e. not operate in that jurisdiction?
Yes, but that kinda defeats the point of an open knowledge library for all. This is a problem that should be fixed with legislation and not artificial blocking. We shouldn’t punish the unfortunate for being stuck with the stupid.
I’m a Texan and over 7 mil didn’t vote in the last gubernatorial election. Block us. It’ll piss off high school and college students royally and they’re the blocks we need voting.
Cheers for this (and my condolences), as much as it sucks to block Texas, it’d be much worse to let Texas ruin Wikipedia for the rest of the world.
History has taught us restricting access to knowledge never goes well. It will piss some people off, sure. Enough to make a difference? Can’t say, most people are indifferent. As long as they get AN answer, that’s all they care about. Not necessarily the correct one.
What would happen, if they ignored the laws and did not geoblock Texas and Florida, just say they don’t operate there, but not restrict the users and still operate the way they operated until now?
Fines I would assume. Lawsuits even.
How does that work?
Like, let’s say I’m born in Oregon, I live my whole life in Oregon, I get to vote for national representative and Oregon representatives. I set up a server in Oregon, my server responds to electronic requests that it receives from an Oregon company which I connect to with a wire that goes through Oregon.
Then I get sued for breaking Texas laws. At what point did I become subject to Texas law?
At best, at best, you could say that I’m doing “interstate commerce” which is governed by the federal government, not state law.
If I remember correctly, at least some of Wikipedia’s servers are in Florida. So Florida would definitely be able to take action against them.
But, like when they would say in their EULA, that people from Texas and Florida are not allowed, then by using the service would be breaking of EULA and the wikipedia foundation could theoretically say that they’re not operating there and it’s the users fault. Like could someone still sue them then?
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Why can’t you restrict usage if you don’t comply with local laws? Why can companies like Facebook restrict usage of their new features like Threads in the EU then? Or some US news network restricting access from the EU?
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I feel like they should see the consequences of their actions. The politicians might learn that the public won’t put up with this shit, rather than have it forced upon them by a higher court so they can continue to play the victim card.
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I understand your point. My intention isn’t so much to “punish” as to have them see the consequences of their policies. Which should drive a sane voting public against them once they really see first hand the consequences. If SCOTUS or someone hands down a ruling to counter them, then they just play the victim card, and their supporters are emboldened.
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Honestly… I get your point and I know people in Texas that don’t agree with Texas politics. However, the largest party in the county is the party of “I don’t vote.” If you actually manage to wake up 10%… 20%… 30%… of those people, plus all the Republican voters that didn’t want it, plus all the Democrats that didn’t want it and/or got lazy with their state votes… Well we might actually see major change in representation from Texas.
“If you don’t like being bombed, get your neighbors to stop supporting Hamas.”
Collective punishment.
Which part of “not able to” don’t you get? Calling disenfranchised people asleep is victim blaming that doesn’t give them the right and ability to vote back.
Oh bull shit. There are way more apathetic people that don’t vote because they don’t want to (because they don’t think it matters or don’t care) than people that are actually not able to vote.
If your “disenfranchisement” in particular boils down to “both sides … my vote doesn’t matter” I have 0 sympathy for you. It very clearly does matter.
Not if they are just blocking editors/authors, not regular viewers.
That would conflict with the proposed law. They want to be able to write what they want, not see what already exists.