ANI defamation suit: HC judge recused self from considering Wikipedia appeal

Delhi high court judge Navin Chawla on Monday recused himself from considering Wikipedia’s appeal against a single judge’s order directing the online encyclopedia to remove allegedly defamatory statements about news agency ANI.

“List before a bench of which one of us is not a member, subject to the orders from the Chief Justice,” a bench of justices Chawla and Renu Bhatnagar said while directing the listing of the appeal on Tuesday.

In July last year, Justice Chawla issued a summons to Wikipedia in the ANI’s defamation suit that accused the encyclopedia of falsely describing the news agency as the government’s propaganda tool. He slammed the encyclopedia two months later for its failure to comply with the order directing Wikipedia to disclose information about the subscribers who edited the page about ANI, which sought the removal of defamatory references and an order barring further such content.

Justice Chawla threatened to order the government to close Wikipedia’s business transactions in India after its counsel submitted that it took them time to appear before the court as the encyclopedia was based abroad.

The matter was assigned to Justice Subramonium Prasad after a roster change. Justice Prasad on April 2 also directed Wikipedia to remove the protection status on ANI’s Wikipedia page to allow necessary edits. The protection status previously restricted modifications to only administrators. The court restrained users from posting defamatory content regarding ANI as it disposed of the news agency’s application.

The encyclopedia approached the division bench against Justice Prasad’s order, which said an intermediary such as Wikipedia has fiduciary responsibilities and obligations to prevent acts of defamation and cannot evade accountability by merely claiming it hosts third-party content.

Justice Prasad said that Wikipedia, as an intermediary under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, has certain obligations when defamatory content is hosted on its platform. He rejected Wikipedia’s contention that it merely provides an open-source, user-generated platform and should not be held responsible for its content: “...[Wikipedia]...cannot completely wash its hands of the contents of the [ANI] article on the grounds that it is only an intermediary and cannot be held responsible for the statement that is published on its platform.”

The court said Wikipedia presents itself as an encyclopaedia, and as such, people are likely to perceive the information on its pages as factual and reliable. It underlined Wikipedia’s higher responsibility.