Stories

A Drone and Castle

The Wikimedia Foundation received a request from the private owner of a castle in Europe to remove an aerial drone photograph of the castle from Wikipedia, as well as the castle’s geographical coordinates.

The photograph was not taken from private property in the vicinity of the castle, and it appeared that the freedom of panorama exception to copyright may apply. Freedom of panorama allows people to create works like photos, videos, or paintings of buildings (and other art) that are in or are visible from public spaces. However, freedom of panorama does not exist in this country. To publish images of significant places for commercial purposes, consent from the local Ministry of Arts & Cultural Heritage is required. But in this case, the images were not being used for any commercial purpose. Therefore, the publication of the photo was permissible.

The requester then chose to file an appeal under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), leading us to conduct an independent review by staff members who were not involved in the initial decision not to intervene. Per our second review, we determined that the photograph was free to publish, and that the castle constituted a major part of the country’s cultural heritage, having been documented extensively in relevant sources. Therefore, the public interest in maintaining access to this information was high, and we affirmed our decision not to intervene.

(Too Much) Energy Drink

The Wikimedia Foundation received a request from the distributor of an energy drink company, through their third-party brand protection service. At first glance, it seemed the company objected to Wikipedia’s use of their corporate logo or other trademarked IP.

However, they were actually objecting to the use of the drink’s IP on the Wikipedia articles about sports teams sponsored by the company on both English and Russian Wikipedia.

After a careful analysis of the brand protection service’s claims, the Foundation sent a reply explaining that the content was correctly labeled as trademarked on Wikipedia, and that IP ownership rights did not mean the company could control every use of that IP in every language. Their rights are limited to preventing competitors or other commercial users from using the word in a way that would deceive the public about the source or sponsorship of the relevant goods or services. If a company were able to exercise total control over its IP, the law would lead to absurd results, such as a company taking down bad reviews of its product because the product is mentioned by name in the review.

After a month with no reply from the protection service, the matter was closed.

Who is a Lawyer?

The lawyer of a political advisor wrote to the Wikimedia Foundation earlier this year and noted that in his client’s Wikipedia article, the client was inaccurately described as a lawyer or attorney, and a member of the bar in their jurisdiction. The lawyer alleged that this information was inaccurate and that including this information in the client’s article was an illegal form of misrepresentation or impersonation. In truth, the client had never advocated in a case and was disbarred.

The Foundation examined the requester’s message, the Wikipedia article, and the relevant European Union laws. After the analysis, the Foundation found that the community had already removed and supplemented the information in the article. Moreover, even if the community had not done so, there was nothing manifestly illegal about the content—the very high bar required for the Foundation to take moderation action on a Wikimedia project under the DSA. “Professional misrepresentation” or the “unauthorized practice of law” is only illegal if one claims to be an attorney with intent to deceive another person. It does not extend to third parties publishing information about that person. The Foundation decided not to act.

Search and Rescue

During the first half of this year, a European investigatory judge wrote to the Wikimedia Foundation, seeking information about Wikipedia users who had “used” a page about a prominent figure. No other information or constraints on the request were given. We had previously received other disproportionate requests about the same article subject, based on civil law. Unlike the judge’s criminal inquiry, the earlier requests were limited in scope and did not involve a court.

Some countries give aggrieved, well-resourced subjects or public figures another path to achieve their goals by allowing them to leverage the criminal legal system to suppress information. The Foundation often receives requests like these from jurisdictions that criminalize defamation. The requests are often used by people or companies to prosecute or harass people that have published reports about them and their previous activity.

In this case, the subject of the Wikipedia article was previously convicted of sexual misconduct, and we believe he, or persons close to him, were seeking to use the criminal legal system to target the users who added information about the conviction to his article. The Foundation replied to the judge’s inquiry, conveying that freedom of expression and access to information are human rights and core values for the Foundation. We emphasized that the request as-written implied investigating nearly 25,000 users who participated in the article. Because of the disproportionately broad scope of the request and the conflict with human rights principles and our core values, we refused to hand over the requested user data.

Wikimedia received no reply to the denial.