The Supreme Court has cautioned Courts, Tribunals against the use of free information available on Wikipedia for Legal Dispute resolution.

The Division Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Vikram Nath while reckoning that internet does provide free knowledge, also asked the Courts and Tribunals to impress upon Counsels to avoid using Wikipedia and alike sources and rather opt for more authentic ones. 

Noting that Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia is a crowd-sourced one with user-generated edits, the Court took exception to reliance placed by Commissioner of Customs (Appeal) and the Mumbai Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) on it.

It said that Wikipedia is a treasure trove of knowledge but because of its modelling, not fully reliable.

"While we expressly acknowledge the utility of these platforms which provide free access to knowledge across the globe, but we must also sound a note of caution against using such sources for legal dispute resolution. We say so for the reason that these sources, despite being a treasure trove of knowledge, are based on a crowd­sourced and user ­generated editing model that is not completely dependable in terms of academic veracity and can promote misleading information as has been noted by this court on previous occasions also."

The Court accordinlgy set-aside the impugned order.

 

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