Sections of Wikipedia's article on the African National Congress (ANC) were temporarily blacked-out after the majority of MPs voted in favour of the Protection of Information Bill (POIB) on Tuesday.
For a brief period after the voting, parts of the article criticising the ruling party were “censored”. According to reports, the Bill was passed with 229 votes in its favour. There were two abstentions, while 107 MPs voted against the law.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says the changes were the result of vandalism and were corrected “within moments”. He described the incident as “nothing interesting”.
Visual satire, wonderful irony
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says defacing the article graphically demonstrates how information that is in the public domain could be censored “to protect ANC members from scrutiny”, if the Bill comes into effect.
“The power of the protest lies in the graphical approach to what is normally a text-based site where graphics are peripheral,” Goldstuck says. “Here, the text became the graphic, and was, in effect, a piece of visual political satire.”
New media lawyer, Paul Jacobson, describes the vandalism as “wonderful irony”. “Whoever edited the page is drawing attention to the Bill and our potential new censorship era.”
Uncivilised censorship
ANC spokesman Keith Khoza says the ANC condemns the blacking out of the page because it is not “in keeping with civilised society”. Khoza says the actions undermine the need to communicate, as well as the freedom to communicate.
He stresses that the ANC would deal with the incident by restoring the information. Khoza adds that the party is in the process of verifying what else has been tampered with.
Khoza denies the blacking out of the article is similar to the effect of the Protection of Information Bill. He notes that the Bill does not seek to black out information, but to “protect it”. He adds that the Promotion of Access to Information Act is still in place and has not been changed.
Monster unleashed
Goldstuck says the changes to the Wikipedia site were made in the same vein as changes to the ANC Youth League's (ANCYL's) Web site over the past year. However, he points out that while the ANCYL Web site had to be hacked in order to make the changes, anyone can edit pages on Wikipedia. “It's the kind of social protest that doesn't need an organised group, and is in fact best carried out by individuals.”
According to Goldstuck, the context in which the Bill was drafted, and the manner in which it was passed, “created an army of willing hackers and wannabe satirists” who would eagerly carry out the vandalism.
“The ANC has knowingly created a monster with the POIB, but also unwittingly unleashed a monster of public opinion against it.”
He also points out that the public is more connected and “tech-savvy” than ever before. “In this context, the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks - which the SA government sees as the enemy - is likely to be the least of their problems in the future.”
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