Wikipedia may be disabled in the UK

Lucy Crompton-Reid, head of Wikimedia UK, has warned that the online encyclopedia her organization maintains will not perform age verification

Wikipedia may be closed to UK Internet users under the Internet Safety Act, the charity that helps maintain the Internet encyclopedia has said.

Lucy Crompton-Reid, chief executive of Wikimedia UK, warned that text of the bill could force a website to introduce age verification.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which maintains the free encyclopedia, has said it will refuse to verify the age of UK readers.

Failure to comply with Internet safety law may result in the site being penalized or even completely blocked for UK users.

Ms Crompton-Reid told the BBC it was «certainly possible that one of the world's most visited websites — and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people — will not be available to UK readers.» .

The non-profit Wikipedia has 6.6 million articles on thousands of topics in hundreds of languages, the pages are edited and maintained by a network of volunteers.

The Internet Safety Bill, which is expected to come into force by 2024, Internet giants will have to protect users from malicious or illegal messages.

It will also oblige technology providers to prevent children from inappropriate content or content for adults, which may include adding age checks.

Ms. Crompton-Reid said that some educational articles on Wikipedia about sexuality or other adult topics could be misinterpreted as pornography.

Rebecca McKinnon of the Wikimedia Foundation told the BBC that collecting age data «would violate our obligation to collect minimum reader data» and added that Wikipedia «would not verify the age of UK readers or contributors.»

The bill also requires certain digital services to provide effective content moderation.

Wikipedia is concerned that this could affect its model of using volunteers to monitor and edit articles.

Ms Crompton-Reid told The Telegraph: “Between the excessive moderation that may be required by law and the other changes that the internet safety bill is trying to introduce, such as age and user verification, the result will be that it could lead to the collapse of the goodwill and community involvement that are essential to make Wikipedia resilient to vandalism and misinformation.

“We believe this will be a great loss to British society.”

House of Lords this week discussed an amendment to the bill proposed by Lord Moylan, a fellow Conservative, which aims to exempt digital encyclopedias such as Wikipedia from the new laws.

This was announced by a government spokesman. The BBC bill aimed to «strike a balance between eliminating harm without placing an unnecessary burden on low-risk technology companies».

The government does not consider it likely that Wikipedia will be considered a «category 1» ISP and will be required to comply with the strictest parts of the bill.