Judge's gavel in a courtroom with a stack of law books

District Court rules for government in Wikimedia Foundation’s mass surveillance case against the NSA

Update: On February 14, 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation filed a notice of appeal in this case before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. We respectfully disagree with the District Court’s ruling, and believe that information in the public domain shows that the NSA is using Upstream surveillance to copy and search Wikimedia’s communications.….

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Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Amanda Keton as General Counsel

The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce the appointment of Amanda Keton as General Counsel. Amanda brings more than a decade of legal, nonprofit management, and compliance experience to the role. She will join the organization on 7 October. The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. Together,….

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Do Europeans have a right to be globally delisted? The Court of Justice of the European Union says no.

Update (May 6, 2020): In 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation intervened in support of Google’s efforts to define the scope of the “right to be forgotten” in France. Faced with an order from the French data protection authority (“CNIL”) to delist information worldwide in response to a right to be forgotten request, Google challenged the order….

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Wikimedia panelists discuss EU copyright reform and its effects

Earlier this year, the European Parliament voted to pass a new copyright directive that will take effect across the European Union (EU) and likely affect all online activities. At Wikimedia’s 18 July summer legal fellow panel, “EU Copyright & You,” technology law scholars and practitioners discussed the directive itself, events leading up to its passing, and….

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The European Commission chooses truly free licenses for its content

Last February, the European Commission defined (pdf) two Creative Commons (CC) licenses as the default for most of what it publishes: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (“CC BY 4.0”) for all content. Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication deed (“CC0”) for raw data, metadata or other documents of comparable nature.   The European Commission’s….

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Our legal case against Turkey’s block of Wikipedia has been expedited. Here’s what that means.

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation welcomes the news that our case brought before  the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey has been communicated to the Turkish Government and given priority status by the court, just two months after the case was filed with the court. Priority status is….

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European Court of Human Rights has decided to expedite case on online censorship brought against the government of Turkey for blocking Wikipedia

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has decided to expedite a case brought by the Wikimedia Foundation against the government of Turkey for blocking Wikipedia in the country. The case contends that the longstanding ban amounts to impermissible censorship and limits peoples’ fundamental rights to free expression and access to knowledge. The ban was….

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Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi, Vikipedi Engelinden Ötürü Türk hükûmetine karşı açılan Çevrimiçi Sansür Davasını Hızlandırmaya Karar Verdi.

Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi (AİHM), Wikimedia Vakfı’nın ülkedeki Vikipedi’ye erişim engelinden ötürü Türk hükûmetine karşı açtığı bir davayı hızlandırmaya karar verdi. Davada, uzun zamandır devam eden yasağın kabul edilemez bir sansür boyutuna ulaştığı ve insanların ifade özgürlüğü ve bilgiye erişim temel haklarının sınırlandığı ileri sürülmekte. Erişim engeli Türk hükümeti tarafından Nisan 2017’de yürürlüğe kondu. Vikipedi’yi….

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What would your life be like #WithoutWikipedia?

For more than two years, the people of Turkey have been unable to access or participate on Wikipedia—what Ege, a high school student in the country, calls the “source of the sources.” And they’re not the only ones affected. Without Wikipedia, the rest of the world is missing the voices, perspectives, and knowledge of Turkey’s….

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We’re back in court opposing the NSA’s mass surveillance

On Thursday, 30 May, Wikimedia Foundation lawyers were in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, to watch oral arguments in our ongoing case against the United States government’s mass surveillance practices. As our counsel from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) rose to stand before the Judge, we rehearsed in our heads the arguments we knew….

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