Why we must all support policy that keeps the internet open and accessible

This week, the Wikimedia Foundation was invited to provide opening remarks for the third annual Global Conference of the Internet Jurisdiction and Policy Network in Berlin, Germany. This conference represents a place for civil society, platforms, elected representatives, policymakers, and other stakeholders to come together and discuss how we can manage tensions between competing national….

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Wikimedia Foundation announces tenth transparency report

The Wikimedia Foundation has supported free access to the sum of all knowledge for nearly sixteen 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….

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Wikimedia Foundation urges Chinese authorities to lift block of Wikipedia in China

The Wikimedia Foundation has determined that Wikipedia is no longer accessible in the People’s Republic of China—impacting more than 1.3 billion readers, students, professionals, researchers, and more who can no longer access this resource or share their knowledge and achievements with the world. We have not received notice or any indication as to why this….

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A German court forced us to remove part of a Wikipedia article’s ‘history.’ Here’s what that means.

Three months ago, a German court ruled that part of a Wikipedia article—found to be defamatory in a previous court decision—had to be removed from both the article and its associated revision tracker, known as a “history” page. (History pages allow anyone to see how a Wikipedia article has developed since they were created, in….

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Four things European legislators can do to not break the internet (again)

The European Union (EU) Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online runs the risk of repeating many of the mistakes written into the copyright directive, envisioning technological solutions to a complex problem that could bring significant damage to user rights. The proposal includes a number of prescriptive rules that….

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European Parliament limits internet freedom in controversial copyright vote

Today, the European Parliament voted 348–274 to pass a new copyright directive that includes problematic rules that will harm free knowledge. They did so after years of discussions, revisions, and more recently street protests. We believe that this is a disappointing outcome, the impacts of which will certainly be felt for years to come. As….

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Four Wikipedias to ‘black out’ over EU Copyright Directive

Update, 25 March: The Italian, Galician, Asturian, and Catalan Wikipedias have blacked themselves out today to protest the EU Copyright Directive. Other language versions of Wikipedia have chosen to show site banners above their content. Wikipedia’s volunteer editing communities make decisions like this independently. More on that, and our unaltered original post, is below. •….

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We do not support the EU Copyright Directive in its current form. Here’s why you shouldn’t either.

After a long legislative process, the final text of the EU Copyright Directive was cemented last week as trilogue negotiations between the EU Commision, Parliament, and Council came to a close. Now that the final text has been made available, with only a yes-no vote in Parliament standing in the way of its implementation, Wikimedia….

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Problems remain with the EU’s copyright reform

It was almost exactly five years ago that a reform of EU copyright was included in the European Commission’s list of priorities. The setting of that priority was followed by several public consultations, countless public events, and many face-to-face meetings. In 2016, the Commission made a proposal for what this reform would look like. Since….

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Our favorite weird and the wonderful images from the grand re-opening of the public domain

It’s been just over three weeks since the public domain started growing again in the United States, and works from 1923 became available for anyone to freely share, remix, and enjoy.[1] Since January, hundreds of files from 1923 have been uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons, including books, images, movies, and music. It would be impossible to showcase….

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