Wikimedia Loses UK Online Safety Challenge; EFF Warns of Similar US Legislation
London's High Court of Justice Monday tossed a challenge by nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation to provisions of the U.K. Online Safety Act (OSA) it claimed could jeopardize the privacy and safety of Wikipedia contributors, but stressed that contributors must be protected.
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Meanwhile, other OSA provisions continued to roil privacy advocates. On Aug. 8, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Americans to monitor Reddit's "chaotic UK age verification rollout" and prevent similar laws from being enacted in the U.S.
The Wikimedia case (AC-2025-LON-001365) centers on the OSA's categorization regulations. Wikipedia's operator, Wikimedia Foundation, argued that while Wikipedia could be classed as a Category 1 service under the OSA, it shouldn't be subject to the same rules as the internet's riskiest commercial sites (see 2507200001).
Category 1 classification would mean verifying the identity of many Wikipedia contributors who have remained anonymous. Identifying contributors could expose them to data breaches, stalking, lawsuits or imprisonment by authoritarian regimes, Wikimedia said.
Monday's court decision lacks the immediate legal protections for Wikipedia that the foundation hoped for, Wikimedia Foundation attorney Phil Bradley-Schmieg said in an emailed press release.
However, he noted, the judge recognized the "significant value" of Wikipedia, the importance of safety for users and the damages that wrongly-assigned OSA categorizations and duties could have on the human rights of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors. "The Court stressed that this ruling 'does not give [the Office of Communications] and the Secretary of State a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia's operations.'"
The court suggested that the U.K. Office of Communications Ofcom "may need to find a particularly flexible interpretation of the rules in question, or that the rules themselves may need amendment in Parliament," Bradley-Schmieg said. If the ruling stands, he added, Ofcom's first categorization decisions are expected this summer.
EFF noted that the OSA requires online platforms to check that all U.K.-based users are at least 18 before letting them access broad categories of "harmful" content that go beyond graphic sexual content. That risks eroding privacy, chilling speech and undermining children's safety, it said.
Now that the age-verification rules are in effect (see 2507310014), problems are beginning to appear, EFF added.
Under the OSA, U.K. Redditors were asked to submit a photo of their government ID and/or a live selfie for age verification, and it soon became clear that subreddits on LGBTQ+ identity and support, global journalism and conflict reporting and public health-related forums were shuttered to unverified users.
Reddit is overly censoring user-generated content to comply with the OSA, EFF said. It urged Americans to "take heed: it will happen here too." Nearly half of U.S. states have some form of online age restriction, it said. But Americans younger than 18 possess a First Amendment right to view content that's not sexually explicit.
Under the proposed Kids Online Safety Act, which last session passed the Senate with an enormous majority but didn't make it to the House, "we would likely see similar results here that we see in the UK under the OSA," EFF said. It urged opposition to KOSA and any other federal age-checking mandates.