​Right to know: on the Wikimedia case, key rights

The Supreme Court of India order on May 9, setting aside the Delhi High Court order directing the Wikimedia Foundation to take down a page on its Wikipedia Internet encyclopaedia, is notable for several reasons. In October 2024, a single judge of the High Court had issued the interim order after Wikipedia users floated a new page detailing the defamation case and a discussion forum in which some users commented adversely on the single judge’s order, construing these actions to be in contempt. After a Division Bench upheld the order, the Foundation moved the Court. Subsequently, the Bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan observed that “[e]very important issue needs to be vigorously debated by the people and the press, even if the issue of debate is sub judice before a court” and that the High Court had overreacted to adverse comments of its take-down order in the forum. The Bench’s order was limited to the Foundation’s appeal over the legality of the take-down order, following on from a similar one in April to set aside an order to remove allegedly defamatory edits on ANI’s Wikipedia page. Yet the order is also clear that the right to know is a basic right under Articles 19(1)(a) and 21, casting the case against the Foundation in a light that may have eluded the High Court. While discussing the presumption of contempt, Justices Oka and Bhuyan noted that the right to know controls the people’s ability to participate in public development and to access justice.

Since ANI’s suit continues, the High Court may consider applying the value of the right to know to the question of the Foundation’s intermediary status under the Information Technology Act. The Foundation only avails the technical infrastructure to Wikipedia users, who then operate according to a set of guidelines to maintain the encyclopaedia. The setup allows users to act independently even as the guidelines are clear that Wikipedia will only collect and organise information from other sources, and not develop new theses of its own. Thus, the Foundation caters to the people’s right to know by protecting users against reprisals by the aggrieved powerful and by enhancing the quality of their contributions through the platform’s democratic apparatus. The right to know and the right to freedom of expression should be upheld before the Supreme Court is involved in each case. As the Justices invoked former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud quoting Jeremy Bentham to say: “publicity about courtroom proceedings … keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial.”