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Wikipedia won't be age-gating its services no matter what final form the UK's Online Safety Bill takes, two senior folks from nonprofit steward the Wikimedia Foundation said this morning.

The bill, for those who need a reminder, styles itself as world-leading legislation which aims to make the UK "the safest place in the world to be online" and has come under fire not only for its calls for age verification but also for wording that implies breaking encryption, asking providers to make content available for perusal by law enforcement, either before encryption or somehow, magically, during.

The new legislation asks that platforms control risks for underage visitors, prompting the foundation to come out to say it won't age-restrict its entries.

In a statement to national UK broadcaster the BBC this morning, Rebecca MacKinnon, vice president of Global Advocacy at Wikimedia, said that to perform such verification would "violate our commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors."

Wikimedia UK chief Lucy Crompton-Reid told the Beeb it was "definitely possible that one of the most visited websites in the world - and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people - won't be accessible to UK readers (let alone UK-based contributors)."

The bill is currently in the committee stage at the House, where the peers are considering a "full package of amendments [that] defines and sets out the rules of the road for age assurance, including the timing of its introduction, and the definition of terms such as age verification and age assurance."

Though one can't predict how that will go, back in February, more than one of the Lords were disappointed that an earlier version of the Bill didn't stop children from accessing pornography, explicitly calling for age verification to be written into the face of the Bill to prevent this.

The Earl of Erroll, who is the Parliamentary Chair of the Digital Safety Tech Group, spoke of the "the sadness of the constitutional impropriety when the Executive refused to implement the will of Parliament," when UK ministers tried to push age verification in the Digital Economy Act 2017 - suggesting some factions are ready for round 2 of the DEA.

As Jo Joyce, senior counsel in Taylor Wessing's commercial tech & data team, told us at the time, when the OSB returned to Parliament: "The protection of children and vulnerable people online is perceived as a vote winner for the government and dropping the Bill entirely was unlikely to be an option, despite the concerns of free speech advocates and pressure from tech businesses."

Internet age verification in the DEA was killed off in 2019, with Reg readers, and security and privacy experts alike concerned about the collation of private data necessitated by making such checks. Among the proposals was signing up with one's credit card a deeply unpopular idea and allowing certain firms to work as information collectors / age verification service providers, creating huge jackpot targets of citizen data. The Lords, however, said they felt that "anonymous age verification is possible."

We asked the Wikimedia Foundation if it had been approached by the governmentabout the so-called "Encyclopaedia exception," which would allow certain platforms to escape the effect of the relevant clauses. We also asked about the geographic distributionof Wikipediaeditorsas it relates to the UK. The most recent statistic we could find was that 13 percent of Wikipedians are based in the UK, although that data was from 2013. Given its stance on user data collation, we doubt the org has these numbers.

Tech orgs have been increasingly stepping up to voice their concerns over the Online Safety Bill for weeks, with end-to-end-encrypted communication platforms Element, Session, Signal, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp and Wire urging the government to reconsider.

In an open letter earlier this month, the companies above branded the bill an "unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world." They said the move would embolden "hostile governments who may seek to draft copy-cat laws."

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Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia - The Register

A Russian court has fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, after claiming it failed to delete banned content to do with the Russian military.

The article in question reportedly had classified military information about its equipment and location, with information that Russia claims related to its special military operation in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The company previously defended the article by saying it adhered to Wikipedia standards and was well-sourced.

Wikimedias fine, which cost the company Rbs2m ($24,510), is the seventh penalty by the Russian court in 2023 for not removing banned information.

Wikimedias fines now sit at a whopping Rbs8.4m ($103,000).

Leighanna Mixter, Wikimedias senior legal manager, previously said: These orders are part of an ongoing effort by the Russian government to limit the spread of reliable, well-sourced information in the country.

Wikipedia is one of the last independent sources of information in Russia since the Russian government cracked down on online content following its invasion of Ukraine.

Maksut Shadaev, Russias digital affairs minister, stated last week that there were no plans to block Wikipedia yet.

GlobalData is the parent company of Verdict and its sister publication

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Russian court fines Wikipedia over Ukraine invasion article - Verdict

While he didn't exactly pull a rabbit out of his hat, general manager Howie Roseman just pulled off one of the best Eagles drafts in recent memory.

How good was it? According to Wikipedia, Harry Houdini couldnt have done any better.

If you typed Rosemans name into the popular online encyclopedia recently, you may have learned that Roseman was born in Brooklyn, is a part-time magician and a master of all the draft.

Those last two things have since been deleted, but not before the team could post the entry on their social media account. The problem with Wikipedia is that anyone can anonymously edit its content without permission. It would have been just as easy to say that Roseman had a horrible 2023 NFL Draft, but too many are on the record saying otherwise.

ESPNs Mel Kiper gave the Eagles draft an A. He thinks Roseman "crushed it" by filling clear needs with Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith and the trade for DAndre Swift. Sportingnews.coms Vinny Iyer did Kiper one better and gave Phillys draft an A+. Iyer also liked the Swift trade and sees Alabama OT Tyler Steen as a great future stash for a veteran offensive line.

USA Todays Nate Davis also gave the Eagles an A+ and believes Roseman had the best draft of any general manager. He was particularly impressed with getting Smith with the 30th pick and sees the Eagles as favorites to reach Super Bowl LVIII.

All make valid points, but Rosemans greatest trick might be winning over Philadelphias demanding fanbase. No one seems to remember when Roseman used a first-round pick to draft a 26-year-old firefighter named Danny Watkins in 2011, or the time he passed on LSUs Justin Jefferson to take TCUs Jalen Reagor.

None of that matters anymore. All Eagles fans know now is that Roseman just added some of the drafts best talent to one of the NFLs deepest rosters.

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Wikipedia names Howie Roseman 'master of all the draft' - Yardbarker

CHENNAI: Flagging the perils of relying on information available in crowd-sourced websites like Wikipedia, Madras high court has quashed an NIA court's order refusing to discharge a person charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.The special court for NIA cases had extracted description of a banned organisation from Wikipedia and rejected the plea of Ziyavudeen Baqavi, who had been accused of sharing posts from a social media account of a 'fundamentalist' organisation.He was charged for sedition under the IPC and for offences under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Challenging the same, he moved the special court for discharge from the case.His plea was rejected by the special court which relied on contents shared in Wikipedia to conclude the 'aim and objective' of the alleged fundamentalist organisation.However, a division bench of Justice M Sundar and Justice M Nirmal Kumar disapproved of the special court's conclusion and observed that courts must refrain from relying on crowd-sourced websites like Wikipedia in legal dispute resolution.Concurring with the submissions of Baqavi, the bench said, "the special court explicitly relied on Wikipedia for description of the entity. This apart, the special court order was silent with respect to the case laws cited by the petitioner and had merely brushed aside the same without any discussion on the case laws."The bench then set aside the order and remanded back the matter to the special court for fresh consideration.

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Don't rely on sites like Wikipedia to write verdicts: Madras HC - Times of India

Not to be outdone by the UK's copycat DMCC bill yesterday, European regulators have let the world know about the first few tech giants to make their super strictly monitored hitlist under its own antitrust regs, aimed at curtailing the power of Big Tech.

In an announcement, the European Commission unveiled the first few companies designated as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) under its e-commerce law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The VLOPs listed include many of the usual suspects, although Wikipedia was something of a surprise its transparency reports will be an interesting read and who knew online retailer Zalando was that big?

The Commission said it was "bolstering its expertise with in-house and external multidisciplinary knowledge" including the recently launched European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency among other things companies on the list will need to look at how algorithm use affect their interfaces and "recommender systems", with the EC especially interested in the latter. It has also asked the the platforms to allow better "data access" for researchers so they can assess systemic risks and create a "publicly available repository of advertisements."

As we explained last week, the companies must detail how their algorithms work, and be transparent about how their software allows advertisers to target users or recommend content. The new rules are expected to apply from January 1, 2024.

There's a full list in the box, but the VLOSEs are a mere two: Google (which had a 93 percent share last time we checked) and (quiet at the back) Bing. If you go by Statcounter's numbers, Microsoft's search engine has only 2.88 percent of the market (down from 3.1 percent in March 2022), but that's still the second biggest search engine in the world. Moreover, it reaches at least 45 million monthly active users established in or located in the EU that was the metric the Commission used for everybody on the list, VLOSEs and VLOPs alike.

Microsoft's Bing search engine actually passed the 100 million daily active users milestone not long after launching its AI-powered Bing Chat feature, which it said was drawing in new users, although it was "fully aware we remain a small, low, single digit share player." Good old DuckDuckGo didn't get a look-in.

Following their designation, companies on these lists will have to comply within four months with the full set of new obligations under the DSA. These include watching out for systemic risks ranging from how illegal content and disinformation can be amplified on their services, to protection of minors online and their mental health. They will also be expected to have plain language Ts&Cs, and give users "clear information on why they are recommended certain information." Users must also be able to "opt out from recommendation systems based on profiling" and the services must label all ads and inform users on who is promoting them.

Their first annual risk assessment reports need to be submitted to the Commission by the end of August.

The list does not appear to be complete: VLOPS and VLOSEs aren't the full extent of the "gatekeepers" the EU's designations for the massive systemic players which eat up the internet and touch almost everyone with a computer across the globe, no matter how hard they are trying to run open source OSes on homegrown hardware.

If you'd noticed that none of the cloud platforms were listed (Azure, GCP, AWS), that's because they'll be dealt with by the DSA's "sister legislation", the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA will take aim at "core platform services" including cloud gatekeepers potentially doling out hefty fines or even requiring companies to offload assets or cease operating within EU borders. This can be a powerful tool, especially when one considers the situation Apple got into when it was last year forced to ditch its Lightning port or be forced to lose the $95.12 billion the European single market is worth to Apple.

Margrethe Vestager, exec vice-president for EC Digital, commented: "The whole logic of our rules is to ensure that technology serves people and the societies that we live in not the other way around. The Digital Services Act will bring about meaningful transparency and accountability of platforms and search engines and give consumers more control over their online life. The designations made today are a huge step forward to making that happen."

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Amazon, Bing, Wikipedia make EU's list of 'Very Large' platforms - The Register