The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that online sources like Wikipedia are based on ‘crowd source’ ie information received from different people and editing model created by users, which are not completely reliable. The court said that it can spread misleading information also.
A bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Vikram Nath said that it recognizes the utility of platforms that provide free access to knowledge across the world, But the people needs to be cautious in the use of such sources in the resolution of legal disputes.
The Supreme Court also observed that the reason we say this is that despite being a storehouse of knowledge, these sources are based on ‘crowd sourced’ and user-generated editing models. As such, it is not entirely reliable in terms of academic confirmation. It can spread misleading information as this court has seen many times in the past.
The Court made these observations while deciding a matter relating to proper classification of imported ‘All in One Integrated Desktop Computers’ under the First Schedule to the Central Excise Act, 1985.
