Lame duck US PresidentDonald Trump created more puzzlement on Wednesday with hisveto of theUnited States defense appropriations act, which had passed Congress with a "veto-proof majority". His stated reasons were the inclusion in the bill of a process that could be used to renamemilitary bases that are named for Confederate military leaders, and the lack of a repeal ofSection 230 in the bill.His veto message states that "Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online".
Voting on a veto override is expected to take place on Monday, December 28, a day after publication of this issue ofThe Signpost. If successful, it would be thefirst veto override of his presidency.
Section 230 provides immunity to theWikimedia Foundation, and social media sites in general, from lawsuits arising from most user generated content. In 2017 the WMF said"The Wikipedia we know today simply would not exist without Section 230." On December 15, WMFannounced that "to ensure that laws support vibrant online communities such as Wikipedia", it had joinedInternet.Works, a newly formed coalition aiming to defend Section 230. Members includeAutomattic,eBay,Reddit,Pinterest,Medium and other internet platforms (but none of theBig Tech companies).
A simple repeal of the section, which would have to be written into a new bill, and then passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, would likely be very difficult. Failure to override the veto woulddelay $740 billion in defense appropriations, so would also be very difficult.
While Trump's current challenge to Section 230 may seem unlikely to succeed, two other legal year-end surprises are set to become law that will affect Internet users and platforms. On December 21, Congress approved theConsolidated Appropriations Act, which combines $900 billion in COVID-19 stimulus aid with a $1.4 trillionomnibus spending bill for the 2021 fiscal year. At 5,593 pages, it is the longest bill ever passed by Congress. Besides details on the actual appropriations, it contains around "3,000 pages [of] totally unrelated bills that Congress couldn't pass through the rest of the year" (assummarized byTechdirt). These include two controversial copyright bills which were only publicly confirmed to be part of the act on the day of the vote:
Ironically, during the last few days the remaining obstacle for both provisions to become law was the threat ofanother Trump veto to the entire Consolidated Appropriations Act (over his objections to the $600 relief amount). However, as we go to press on Sunday, December 27,The New York Times has reported thatTrump just signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act into law.–S &H
On December 15, the European Commission unveiled its long awaited proposals for theDigital Services Act (DSA) andDigital Markets Act (DMA). In aspecial edition of its monthly "EU Policy Monitoring Report", the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU reacted with "very rough first notes", expressing appreciation that the DSA reflects "the idea of safeguarding fundamental rights and freedom of speech even within online services", but warning that "Communities/community-driven moderation and platforms are not really thought of anywhere, which leads to a few risks." (The group consists of European Wikimedia chapters and community members, and is also known as theEU Policy group.) The Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy team followed up a few days later with"early impressions" on the DSA. The two groups highlighted different aspects within the same two areas of concern in theproposal text.
Firstly, Article 12-2 requires online services to "act in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner in applying and enforcing the restrictions" of theirterms and conditions, "with due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of all parties involved, including the applicable fundamental rights of the recipients of the service". The EU Policy group is concerned "that people claiming rights in bad faith might try to alter Wikipedia articles by going over a legal process supposed to force platform operators to defend fundamental rights." The Foundation said:
[We worry] that 'diligent, objective and proportionate' can mean very different things depending on who you ask, and that community-governed platforms would be hurt by unclear standards and a lack of discretion. Terms of use (like the Foundation’sTerms, or even theUniversal Code of Conduct) frequently include provisions prohibiting clearly harmful but often hard-to-define and even platform-specific things like harassment, disruptive behavior, or trolling. At what point would a regulator or a litigious user think that a certain volume of trolling meant that a service wasn't being 'diligent' in enforcing its 'don’t troll other users' rule? Or what happens when someone whose posts are moderated, or who thinks someone else's behavior should be moderated, decides that the moderators aren’t being 'objective?'
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Teamvia Medium
Secondly, the EU Policy group argues that "in Articles 14-19 (basically the content moderation systems) we need stronger safeguards and rights for communities and individual users ('counter-notices' within theNotice & Action system being one basic example)." The Wikimedia Foundation is worried that it will become subject to undue burden caused by a vague wording in Article 14:
[The article] says that an online provider will be presumed to know about illegal content — and thus be liable for it — once it gets a notice from anyone that that illegal content exists. There’s a number of different ways that ambiguities in this section can create problems [...]. For example, if the Foundation got a notice from someone alleging they had been defamed on one article, what would the Foundation be responsible for, if the alleged defamation was referenced in or spread across multiple articles, or talk pages, that the user may not have specified?
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Teamvia Medium
On the other hand, the Foundation's Public Policy team applauded "that the DSA preserves [theintermediary liability provisions] of thee-Commerce Directive, which ensure that the Foundation can continue hosting the knowledge of countless editors and contributors" (similar to Section 230 in the United States, see also above).
In itsmonthly report, the EU Policy group clarifies that the other big new proposal unveiled by the EU Commission on December 15, for the Digital Markets Act, should not affect Wikimedia projects and organizations: "This basically is a list of 'dos and don’t' for very large platforms that have a so-called gatekeeper position on theinternal market. To be part of that club you need to have a turnover of over 6.5 billion euro, so Wikimedia is out."
But the report notes relevant recent developments on several other ongoing EU regulation efforts:
On January 1, 2021, works first published in 1925 in the USwill enter the public domain, according tothe Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University School of Law. The books affected include:
Films affected include:
Somemusical compositions are also affected, but not necessarily the performances of those works. Compositions affected includeSweet Georgia Brown and some works written byLovie Austin,Amy Beach,Sidney Bechet,Irving Berlin,Duke Ellington,George andIra Gershwin,W.C. Handy,Lorenz Hart andRichard Rodgers,Fletcher Henderson,Jelly Roll Morton,Ma Rainey,Bessie Smith,Sippie Wallace, andFats Waller.-S
The billionth edit to English Wikipedia made in the current Wikipedia database software will be made soon – according to analysis byThe Signpost staff, likely between 12 January and 16 January, just before or afterWikipedia's 20th birthday on 15 January. The current Wikipedia database was initiated on January 25–26, 2002, when Wikipedia usedphase II software. Before that date,UseModWiki was used to edit and edit counts are murky - perhaps there were a few hundred thousand edits using UseModWiki, some but not all of which have since been recovered and reloaded into the system as part of the thousand million edits. Some purists might wish to include the number of edits transferred fromNupedia to Wikipedia as well. While the "billionth edit" may be inexact, it does symbolize a remarkable achievement – an encyclopedia of over 6,215,569 articles built by at least 1,000,000,000 edits. Even if a hundred million or more of those were vandalism or spam.–B &S &W and–G
The Signpostnoted exactly one year ago that "the tally of active administrators...does not appear likely to rise above 500 again, unless there is a major change in trend." Well, we are ending the month (as of time of publication) with 504 active admin accounts onthe list, and it was over 520 earlier this year. At first blush, this looks like good news going forward?
However, withonly 243 new admins in the last ten years and only 17 new administrators this year, the long-term trend is still unsustainable: The average new admin would need to be active forthirty years for a supply of 17 new admins a year to maintain a cadre of 500 active admins. It isn't just that a large majority of our active admins were appointed over a decade ago. Only 50 of our current administratorsfirst created their accounts in the last ten years. We are not recruiting enough admins from among members of the community who joined us between 2011 and 2019. –B &W
Wikimedia Foundationannounced on December 7 that it had reached a fundraising milestone allowing it in turn to fund the planting of 400,000 trees. It is working with the Plant Your Change initiative which aims to plant 100 million trees in the next decade, as part of the foundation'scarbon footprint reduction strategy.-B
This is a rather positive end to the dumpster fire aka 2020. But I have a question: many people here are apparently worried that Trump's repeal of Section 230 will negatively affect Wikipedia. But if I recall correctly, Biden also wants to repeal Section 230. Is anyone worried that Biden may also negatively affect Wikipedia if he repeals the law?45.251.33.98 (talk)05:29, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I've justmade some tweaks to the billionth edit blurb. MediaWiki proper wasn't used until July 2002.Graham8706:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's looking more & more that instead of separate countries, or even finite groups of countries (such as the EU) establishing differing laws about free speech, we need an international treaty concerning copyright, defamation, & hate speech for online fora. This is approaching the unworkable situation described by one medieval commentator: one could have three people sharing the same room in an inn who are governed by three entirely different sets of laws. Too many online communities are international in nature, which inevitably causes problems for all involved. I don't know if this will result in a good thing -- by guaranteeing some minimum expectations of freedom of speech -- or a bad thing -- by enforcing the worst practices of any country upon all of the others. Nevertheless, the need for a level ground is clearly needed, & hopefully we average netizens can be involved & protect our natural rights before the corporations impose terms that benefit only them. --llywrch (talk)22:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.So, what now? ☆Bri (talk)02:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The article says "Failure to override the veto would delay $740 billion in defense appropriations, so would also be very difficult." Note that the bill that was vetoed is an authorizations bill, not an appropriations bill. The President signed the omnibus appropriations and COVID bill, including appropriations for the Department of Defense, on December 27, 2020. So the veto of the authorization bill does not delay the defense appropriations. —Salton Finneger (talk)16:30, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
