The court dismissed the claim on the basis that Wikimedia failed to demonstrate how legislative and administrative decisions to impose certain duties on sites like Wikipedia were “flawed.”
The court clarified how the UK government and enforcement agency Ofcom are responsible for protecting Wikipedia in certain ways. The ruling Justice wrote that the order “does not give Ofcom and the Secretary of State a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia’s operations.”
The court outlined how enforcement of the law would only be “justified as proportionate” to its reasonable aims in order to avoid violations of the right to freedom of expression, the right to respect for private and family life, and right to assembly and association found in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The OSA delegates regulatory power to the UK’s Secretary of State, who is tasked with sorting online platforms into certain categories. Platforms incur different duties depending on their categorization. Following this scheme, the Secretary of State, with guidance from Ofcom, adopted certain category thresholds in “Regulation 3.”
The Wikimedia Foundation worried that it would incur weighty duties under its potential categorization and argued that such regulations impede its UK operations, limit UK-users access to information, and pose privacy and safety risks. The foundation specifically challenged the potential imposition of Category 1 duties on Wikipedia, which, in addition to age verification filters, would require the site to “offer adult users tools which [may] give them greater control over the kinds of content they see and who they engage with online.”
The regulation would also place a duty on Wikipedia to create tools that help “reduce the likelihood that [users] will encounter…content that…encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm or eating disorders,” as well as “racist, antisemitic, homophobic, or misogynist” content.
WF argued that such regulations, namely age verification, “endanger Wikipedia and the global community of volunteer contributors who create the information on the site.” Wikimedia lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg commented on the potential risks:
There are many OSA Category 1 duties. Each one could impact Wikipedia in different ways, ranging from extraordinary operational burdens to serious human rights risk… This new duty would be exceptionally burdensome (especially for users with no easy access to digital ID). Worse still, it could expose users to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.
The foundation also argued that age verification checks will open the door to “vandalism” and “manipulation” of information, as the website operates on contributions from users to ensure accuracy and objectivity. Limiting the amount of users would arguably impact the quality of content on the site.
Wikimedia clarified that it supports the legislation but solely disagreed with Ofcom potentially labelling Wikipedia as a Category 1 site.
Wikimedia said that categorization decisions are expected soon and that it will “continue to seek solutions to protect Wikipedia and the rights of its users” as the OSA continues to take effect.
OSA came into force in July with the goal of protecting children from harmful online content through robust age verification checks. Ofcom’s Enforcement Programme monitors online platforms’ compliance with OSA. According to the agency, many platforms, including Bluesky, Reddit, and X, have begun implementing these checks.
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