MOSCOW, August 6 (RIA Novosti) - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that Wikipedia belongs to, released its first-ever transparency report Wednesday, detailing thousands of requests from governments and organizations to erase data from Wikipedia.
“Transparency is a tenet of the Wikimedia movement. The transparency report we share today is in furtherance of our commitment to such openness,” the Wikimedia Foundation stated.
The transparency report contains information about the United States, Germany and Britain making requests to the foundation to remove sensitive information, all of which were denied.
“The Wikimedia Foundation is deeply committed to supporting an open and neutral space, where the users themselves decide what belongs on the Wikimedia projects,” the foundation posted on its blog.
However, the foundation declared that between July 2012 and June 2014, it granted 24 requests, or 41 percent of the 58 requests to remove content cited for copyright infringement that it deemed valid.
Time magazine commented that the report comes following reports of web giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google interacting with governments across the world.
