- By Mayukh Debnath
- Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:27 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Wikipedia on Monday told the Delhi High Court it was willing to submit in a sealed cover the basic subscriber information (BSI) details of users who wrote and/or edited the platform's page about leading news agency ANI, legal news outlet Bar and Bench reported. This came as a division bench of Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela heard Wikipedia's appeal against an order issued by a single-judge bench of the high court in a defamation case filed by ANI.
The impugned order requires Wikipedia to disclose the identity of contributors who allegedly made defamatory edits to ANI's Wikipedia page. Wikipedia's counsel volunteered before the division bench to serve notices to the users in question. He said that the service of notice would also be intimidated to ANI.
The details about the users' identities will, however, be omitted in the intimation, Wikipedia's counsel proposed, while suggesting that an unredacted version of an affidavit to show service of notice can only be shared with the division bench.
"Based on information available to us, we can effect service. We can file an affidavit (to show steps have been taken to serve notice) ... We will share a copy with (ANI's counsel) although particulars will be redacted ... The unredacted one, we will place in a sealed cover so that the Court has that. So the Court has the access, no body else does, service is affected ... And we can proceed whichever way," Wikipedia's counsel Akhil Sibal was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench.