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Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing theProblems With Digital Colonialism

March 23, 2016 // 08:00 AM ESTWRITTEN BY JASON KOEBLER (/AUTHOR/JASONKOEBLER)

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to

the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies

and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups,

creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile

internet data is extremely expensive.

It’s an undeniably creative use of two services that were designed to give people in

the developing world some access to the internet. But now that Angolans are causing

headaches for Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, no one is sure what

to do about it.

Update: Wikipedia Doesn't Realize it's the Developing World's Internet Gatekeeper

(http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-zero-rating-facebook-free-basics-is-

censoring-developing-world-internet)

In 2014, Wikimedia partnered with

(https://bomdiaangolaen.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/angolan-operator-unitel-joins-

wikipedia-zero-project-to-provide-free-information/) Angolan telecom provider Unitel

to offer Wikipedia Zero to its customers. Wikipedia Zero is a somewhat-controversial

program that “zero rates” Wikipedia and other Wikimedia properties (such as image

and video database Wikimedia Commons) on mobile phones in developing countries,

meaning customers don’t have to pay for any data use on the Unitel network, as long

as the data use is associated with a Wikimedia domain.

Motherboard Radio Motherboard ­ Episode #47 ­ Free B... Share

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The Radio Motherboard podcast explored the issue of zero rating earlier this year. Radio Motherboard is available on all podcast apps

and on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-motherboard/id946704646?mt=2).

The argument in favor of zero rating is that it gives people access to information who

would otherwise not be able to afford it (Unitel normally charges

(http://www.unitel.ao/servlet/web/Pa_BIG_NET#tab-1435054050796) $2.50 for 50mb

of mobile data; the median Angolan salary is $720 annually

(https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/FOTN%202015_Angola.pdf),

according to Freedom House). The argument against zero rating

(http://motherboard.vice.com/read/indias-new-open-internet-law-is-stronger-than-

the-united-states) is that by providing people with a closed ecosystem, you’re creating

a tiered internet system—people who can afford it get the “real internet,” people who

can’t are stuck with Facebook, Wikipedia, and a couple other services, and may never

get the chance to upgrade to the full, open internet. Facebook’s program, called “Free

Basics,” has come under fire—and was banned in India—because some see it as a

user grab technique for Facebook, but Wikipedia Zero has gotten less flak because

Wikimedia’s a nonprofit organization and its sites often skew to be purely informative.

If the developing world wants to use our internet, they must play byour rules, the thinking goes

The controversy usually ends with those two arguments—rarely does anyone ever

consider what happens if creative people find loopholes in these zero rated services.

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That brings us to what’s going on in Angola. Enterprising Angolans have used two free

services—Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero—to share pirated movies, music,

television shows, anime, and games on Wikipedia. And no one knows what to do

about it.

Because the data is completely free, Angolans are hiding large files in Wikipedia

articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia site (Angola is a former Portuguese colony)—

sometimes concealing movies in JPEG or PDF files. They’re then using a Facebook

group to direct people to those files, creating a robust, completely free file sharing

network. A description for a Facebook group with 2,700 members reads

(https://www.facebook.com/groups/1553180724893584/): “created with the objective

of sharing music, movies, pictures, and ANIMES via Wikimedia.” I was not admitted

into the Facebook group and none of its administrators responded to my messages

for an interview.

Wikipedia’s old guard, however, are concerned with this development. Wikipedia has

very strict copyright guidelines and some editors of the site say they’re tired of playing

whack-a-mole.

“I am reporting a possible misuse of Wikimedia projects and Wikipedia Zero to violate

copyright,” one editor wrote on a Wiki discussion forum

(https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Wikimedia_Forum&oldid=12835750#Wikipedia_Zero_being_used_to_violate_copyright).

“I am not sure if users are doing it in bad faith, but they have been warned and keep

(/EN_US?TRK_SOURCE=HEADER-LOGO)

doing it. I don't think that Wikipedia Zero should stop existing there of course, but

maybe something could be done, like preventing them from uploading large files or

by previously instructing them in local language about what they can or [can] not do.”

In several cases, wide swaths of IP addresses suspected to belong to Angolans using

Wikipedia Zero have been banned from editing stories on Wikipedia, which has had

the side effect of blocking Angolans who are using Wikipedia Zero to contribute to

Wikipedia in a more traditional way. (In one case, IPs were unblocked because a

Portuguese Wikipedia editor decided that an Angolan amateur photographer’s photos

were “of immense value (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?

title=User_talk:Steinsplitter&oldid=190598884#Unblock).”)

In an email thread on the Wikimedia-L listserv and on Wikipedia talk pages

(https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Wikimedia_Forum&oldid=12835750#Wikipedia_Zero_being_used_to_violate_copyright),

users in the developed world are trying to find a compromise.

Screengrab: FB

Few seem to agree that actively blocking Angolans from editing Wikipedia articles is a

good solution, but other editors say they are sick of manually deleting pirated content

from Wikipedia articles and suggested that those using Wikipedia Zero should only be

allowed to read Wikipedia, not edit it or upload files.

Adele Vrana, head of the Wikimedia Zero program, told me in a phone interview that

the foundation has been aware of the situation since at least last summer, and said

that blanket bans or alterations of the Wikipedia Zero are “not on the table.” She

wrote in an email to the listserv that the Wikimedia Foundation is as stumped as its

editors.

Angola’s pirates are furthering Wikipedia’s mission of spreadinginformation in a real and substantial way

“We would prefer to catch it much earlier or simply prevent it outright (without

significant limits being placed on good faith editors). Last fall, we had internal

discussions on finding technical solutions for this problem,” she wrote. “We

understand that it’s challenging for our existing editing community to handle a

sudden influx of new editors. This seems to be a crucial and important conversation

for the movement at large to have. I hope we can figure out a way to turn this

moment in Angola into an opportunity to learn how to deal with new readers and

editors.”

Image: Benoit Rousseau/Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LuandaJuin2005-1-br.jpg)

I spoke with experts at three different digital rights groups that have all weighed in on

international zero rating in one way or another. None of them were willing to say on

the record whether they thought what’s going on with Angola and Wikipedia Zero was

a good or a bad thing. But one line of reasoning came up in one of the conversations

that made a lot of sense: In many ways, this debate is about what Wikimedia—a

community and organization that prides itself on the free transfer of information—

fundamentally wants to be.

Vrana told me that Wikimedia is “looking into the legal aspects and understanding

local legislation and how copyright might work in Angola,” but Juliet Barbara, a

spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that for the time being Wikimedia

will use the community-developed framework to remove copyrighted material.

“With the existing framework, what we have to go on are policies developed by

volunteers about the information that appears on Wikipedia,” Barbara said. “Those

are pretty specific about the information being knowledge oriented information

rather than personal. I’m not saying that’s always going to be how it is, that’s just the

restriction we’re working with.”

Many on the listserv are framing Angola’s Wikipedia pirates as bad actors who need to

be dealt with in some way so that more responsible editors aren’t punished for their

actions. This line of thinking inherently assumes that what Angola’s pirates are doing

is bad for Wikipedia and that they must be assimilated to the already regulated norms

of Wikipedia’s community. If the developing world wants to use our internet, they must

play by our rules, the thinking goes.

But people in developing countries have always had to be more creative than those

for whom access to information has always been a given. In Cuba, for instance,

movies, music, news, and games are traded on USB drives

(http://motherboard.vice.com/read/cubas-black-market-is-a-website-that-exists-

primarily-offline) that are smuggled into the country every week. A 20-year-old

developer in Paraguay found a vulnerability in Facebook Messenger

(http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-app-lets-you-piggyback-facebooks-free-

internet-to-access-any-site) that allowed people to use Free Basics to tunnel through

to the “real” internet. Legal questions aside (Angola has more lax copyright laws than

much of the world (https://www.copyright-watch.org/files/Angola.pdf)), Angola’s

pirates are furthering Wikipedia’s mission of spreading information in a real and

substantial way.

"In general, it’s better to allow people more openness and freedomto use Internet tools because you never know what ends up being

useful"

“When users are faced with a choice of partial access to internet services but not to

the entire internet, they might come up with ways to use that partial internet in

creative ways that might negatively affect the entity giving it to them,” Josh Levy,

advocacy director at Access Now, told me. Facebook Free Basics was criticized widely,

but Access Now is one of the few groups that has said Wikipedia Zero is a bad idea

because it creates a tiered internet.

While the “misuse” of zero rated systems is a new problem, it closely mirrors ones that

have been going on in the wider internet for decades, and the smart money is on

allowing Angola’s burgeoning internet community to develop without our

interference, even if it means growing pains for Wikipedia. Proposed copyright

protection laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act

(http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-undead-sopa-is-hiding-inside-an-extremely-

boring-case-about-invisible-braces), which would have censored sites that hosted

pirated content, was widely believed to be one that could have fundamentally ruined

the internet; limiting how Angolans (or anyone else using Wikipedia Zero) access the

site could have detrimental impacts.

The Wikimedia Foundation, for its part, seems to have good intentions with its wait-

and-see approach. The foundation gives no money to Unitel as part of the program; a

good solution here, probably, would be cheaper or free access to the entire internet.

While Wikipedia editors in Portugual can simply go to another website to download or

share pirated files, Angolans don’t really have that option

TOPICS: digital divide (/tag/digital+divide), Zero Rating (/tag/Zero+Rating), Wikipedia(/tag/Wikipedia), angola (/tag/angola), Wikipedia Zero (/tag/Wikipedia+Zero), FreeBasics (/tag/Free+Basics), facebook (/tag/facebook), reports (/tag/reports)

Contact the author by email (mailto:jason.koebler@vice.com) orTwitter (https://twitter.com/jason_koebler).

You can reach us at letters@motherboard.tv(mailto:letters@motherboard.tv). Want to see other people talking aboutMotherboard? Check out our letters to the editor(http://motherboard.vice.com/tag/letters+to+the+editor).

--

“This is the type of thing that reflects larger battles that have gone on about the

internet overall,” Charles Duan, a copyright expert at Public Knowledge, told me. “In

general, it’s better to allow people more openness and freedom to use Internet tools

because you never know what ends up being useful.”

Angolan’s pirates are learning how to organize online, they’re learning how to cover

their tracks, they are learning how to direct people toward information and how to

hide and share files. Many of these skills are the same ones that would come in handy

for a dissident or a protestor or an activist. Considering that Angola has had an

autocratic leader (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/30/angola-jose-

eduardo-dos-santos) in power for more than 35 years, well, those are skills that might

come in handy one day.

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