In my judgement, this court case in Portugal and the willingness of WMF
to comply are attacks on democracy, peace and prosperity.
That's not mere hyperbole: It's based on substantial research, including
the following:
1. ATTACKING DEMOCRACY
I've claimed that "Wikipedia is the most democratic force on earth",
because almost anyone can change almost anything on Wikipedia, and what
stays tends to be written from a neutral point of view citing credible
sources. It is the only major forum I know where humans with very
different perspectives have (mostly) civil discussions about what can be
said based on the available evidence.[3]
WMF may not have had a choice, but this attack on democracy should not
be accepted quietly.
2. ATTACKING PEACE
It has been said that the first casualty of war is truth. I disagree: I
claim that
* Truth dies long before the first blow is struck in anger.
For example, both Jews and Palestinians, to name only one example, have
well-founded fears of being attacked by the other. The major media
preferred by supporters of each side make it close to impossible to
understand how their actions have contributed to the actions of the
other.[4]
3. ATTACKING PROSPERITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
3.1. Acemoglu and Robinson, who shared last year's Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economics with Simon Johnson, claimed that the Industrial Revolution
began in Great Britain, because the English were the first to
sufficiently restrict the power of the King and veto groups to block
innovation.[5] Banerjee and Duflo, who shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economics with Michael Kremer, disagreed, insiting that no one
knows how to make an economy grow.[6]
3.2. My own research suggests that poorer countries can grow by copying
from wealthier countries, but the leading economies grow primarily from
the limiting the ability of elites and veto groups to block innovation
they don't like, as described by Acemoglu and Robinson. Moreover, my
research suggests that the primary restraint elites and others blocking
innovation is accountability journalism, which threaten to expose
attacks on the public welfare by businesses and government. My "Great
American Paradox" provides documentation suggesting that the leadership
position of the US in the international economy today is substantially
due to the US Postal Service Act of 1792, which provided substantial
subsidies for newspapers. McChesney and Nichols estimated that around
1840, these subsidies amounted to roughly 0.21 percent of GDP: They
encouraged literacy and limited political corruption, both of which help
the US grow to its current dominant position of the international
political economy.[7]
3.3. The research report I've found most compelling on this point is
Usher and Kim-Leffingwell (2022), who found that US federal court
jurisdictions with a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN)
had on average 1.4 more prosecutions for political corruption than
jurisdictions without a member of INN between 2003 and 2019. The also
found no impact on such prosecutions attributable to the number of
journalists, even though the number of journalists fell by a factor of 3
during that period. MOST IMPORTANT: Virtually everyone benefits from the
presence of a member of INN, whether or not they consume the news
produced by INN.[8]
Comments? Thanks for your contributions to the WMF project. Spencer Graves.
[3] I made a presentation 2024-02-18 on "Wikipedia: The most democratic
force on earth" at All Souls Forum, supported by All Souls UU Church in
Kansas City:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqXhZaqXeps
[4] See the section on "Media and war" in the Wikiversity article on
"Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve
government":
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Information_is_a_public_good:_Designing_experiments_to_improve_government#Media_and_war
See also pwkc.org/talk, which redirects to:
https://peaceworkskc.org/we-have-to-talk/
[5] See the section on "My nations fail" in the Wikipedia article on
"Daron Acemoglu":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daron_Acemoglu#Why_Nations_Fail
[6] Banerjee and Duflo (2019) Good Economics for Hard Times
(PublicAffairs, esp. p. 151)
[7] Wikiversity, "Great American Paradox"
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/The_Great_American_Paradox
Richard John has documented that during the first half of the nineteenth
century, the US had more independent newspaper publishers per million
population than at any other time or place in human history. See Richard
R. John (1995), Spreading the News: The American Postal System from
Franklin to Morse (Harvard University Press), cited in the Wikiversity
article on "Media concentration per Columbia History Professor Richard
John":
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Media_concentration_per_Columbia_History_Professor_Richard_John#Bibliography
[8] This is discussed in my
On 8/6/25 04:38, Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
Hello,
I wonder what the Wikimedia Public Policy Group has to say on the recent
WMF decision of censoring parts of a Wikipedia article, and specially
giving away private data of 8 Wikipedia editors, including email and IP
addresses used by the accounts, to the Portuguese courts, with the
stated objective of being given to Cesar do Paço and individually sued
by him [1].
And the reasons why the WMF decided to enforce that court decision in a
country where they have no assets or representatives.
And the position all this leaves all of us who are editing from
Portugal, who wouldn't be able to trust the WMF anymore to keep safe our
private data.
And eventually also the data of who is editing from the US and other
places, since now we know that the WMF will for sure deliver what they
see fit about us to the courts, even when nothing visible indicates they
actually need to do that, as happened in this case.
Also alarming is the reason why the last appeal was promptly dismissed
by the court, according to the press:
"/In Ruling no. 282/2025, with Justice Rui Guerra da Fonseca as the
reporting judge, it is considered clear that the issue of
constitutionality *was not raised in a procedurally appropriate manner*
by the Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore, the Constitutional Court decides
to dismiss the complaint, not to take cognizance of the subject matter
of the appeal, and to order the claimant to pay the legal costs of the
proceedings./"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Office_action:_Removals_on_the_article_Caesar_DePa%C3%A7o <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Office_action:_Removals_on_the_article_Caesar_DePa%C3%A7o>
[2] https://www.dn.pt/pol%C3%ADtica/tribunal-constitucional-recusa-
recurso-da-wikipedia-contra-c%C3%A9sar-do-pa%C3%A7o-2 <https://
www.dn.pt/pol%C3%ADtica/tribunal-constitucional-recusa-recurso-da-
wikipedia-contra-c%C3%A9sar-do-pa%C3%A7o-2>
Best,
Paulo
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