Category: Legal

You can also read this post in Spanish and in French. Back in 2001, the European Parliament came together to pass regulations and set up copyright laws for the internet, a technology that was just finding its footing after the dot com boom and bust. Wikipedia had just been born, and there were 29 million websites. No one….

Imagine you are a teacher at a public school, and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am always looking for creative ways to develop teaching materials as Open Educational Resources (oer-musik.de), so that everyone can….

It has been some time since we last provided an update on Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA, our legal challenge to the United States National Security Agency’s “Upstream” mass surveillance practices. As you may recall, after we brought the suit in 2015, the government argued that the Foundation’s claims weren’t “plausible” because the NSA hadn’t admitted….

In an attempt to harmonize copyrights for the use of sound recordings created before 1972, the U.S. Senate is currently poised to pass a bill which could endanger the preservation and sharing of historical sound recordings online. The Music Modernization Act (MMA), which was passed in the House of Representatives in April and recently received….

When should companies that run websites be required to delete what you post online? At Wikimedia’s 11 July summer legal fellow panel, “The Future of Intermediary Liability,” legal scholars and practitioners discussed the rules for when and how online platforms are held legally responsible for what their users contribute. Under Section 230 of the 1996….

The Wikimedia Foundation has supported free access to the sum of all knowledge for fifteen years. This longstanding vision would not be possible without the dedication of community members who contribute content to the Wikimedia projects. As a global platform for free knowledge, we are sometimes approached by governments and private parties with requests to….

In a well-reasoned opinion, the California Supreme Court recognized that CDA 230 offers broad protection to sites like Yelp from liability for user-created content.

A proposed new copyright package in the European Union is a threat to our fundamental right to freely share information. The time to speak out is now.

Now that it has passed a critical vote in the European Parliament, we have one last opportunity to make the EU revise its proposed copyright directive and ensure the internet stays open for everyone.

As policymakers increasingly suggest technological solutions to fight illegal and controversial content online, we ask them to consider the rights of internet users and to leave room for the human side of content moderation.