The Internet Watch Foundation has objected to the cover of a 1976 Scorpions album (which is, as far as I know, still legally on sale here, with that cover) and their collaborator ISPs have blocked access to Wikipedia. They claim that it covers 95% of British Residential ISPs but I could get through. Can you?
Read more formal reports from AP via Google (claims 95% of users, which I think might be an error), BBC, Wikimedia Foundation News Release or The Guardian report (which chickens out of showing the whole cover image).
Inspired by a short message from the owner of Cockspiracy, I’ve asked the Phone Coop election candidates for their views on it (note: I expect the question URL to change soon, so beware if you link to it), comparing it to our phorm promise.
Did this affect you? Do you care? Have IWF just scuttled their ship?
iwf have now been proven to be the eqivalent of the great firewall of china. Welcome to 1984 – the two minutes hate starts now.
I’ve noticed that all five UK mobile phone network providers are IWF members, so I’ve contacted the two which I’m a customer of (I’ve got two thanks to Ofcom inadequate service regulation!) and asked if they’ll leave IWF over this. They probably won’t, but I think it’s worth asking.
Just heard the IWF story on NationWales.com as I’m writing this – they’re also hiding behind the “potentially illegal” weasel words. How can something be “potentially illegal”? Either it is or it isn’t – that image isn’t illegal in the UK (even if I don’t think it’s great art).
Heard this on the wireless this morning. Glad to have found your link, and clicked it just to test my ISP (plusnet, now BT), to find out what the fuss was about. Happy to say, nothing censored.
But … I don’t get it. Isn’t porn supposed to be erotic? How do you make that picture into anything that might stimulate or arouse a viewer? It looks pretty-much unsexed to me.
@niq — “erotic” is entirely subjective. Besides, the law in question states “involved in sexual activity or posed so as to be sexually provocative”, or thereabouts — the intention of the creator of the image counts more than the reaction of the viewer.
The article is okay for me, but not the full-size version of the image (404). I’m with Sky.
Just spotted this over amongst the Wikipedia coverage: Wikipedia child image censored, and User:David Gerard will be appearing from 7pm UTC on 2008-12-08’s editions of Channel 4 News and More4 News. (M4News is 8pm)
Commentary from the pundit himself at http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2008/12/08/today-show-transcript/ (and hello again TRS-80! LTNS)
“Pundit”? Good Lord 😉
@David Gerard – heh, sorry. I’m running out of words today. Not a bad c4 slot I just saw (on Astra 28 degrees east). I was worried that IWF were getting the final word, but their guy didn’t use it well. So, “potentially illegal” means “reported by a member of the public and IWF staff agrees”.
Also, I posted this article to Amnesty International’s http://irrepressible.info/news (which seems a good thing to support for all compulsary censorship problems – Protect The Human) and I note that someone else started
I could get to the image using a direct link, but couldn’t get onto the page with the article itself.
Really, they’ve just drawn a heck of a lot of attention to some naked now-not-a-girl.
Welldone censorship, great prevention and such.
[…] Much ado about … what? Posted on December 8, 2008 by niq Heard on the wireless this morning, some latter-day Mary Whitehouse calling itself the Internet Watch Foundation has decreed that a Wikipedia page should be banned. It seems the page in question includes a picture of a (child) girl in a state of undress, bringing it into witch-hunt territory. It’s about what turns out to be some old (1976 ferchrissake) pop record, and the picture is of the album cover and is on sale perfectly legally in the shops. But I didn’t know any of that until I found the wikipedia page in question via MJR’s blog. […]
Just to correct my earlier comment, it seems my ISP has blocked some material. More in my blog at http://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/much-ado-about-what/
Hi MJ! This doesn’t affect me directly, but is excellent ammunition against Australia’s proposed internet filtering scheme.
[…] me a bit of amusement and warmth today after this sad news. It’s also serendipitious after yesterday’s wikipedia filtering caused a surge in interest in “Wind of Change” band Scorpions that Oliver […]
IWF have delisted Wikipedia – see http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm – I still think we should require ISPs to withdraw their support from IWF and change ISP if needed, as in http://www.pledgebank.com/boycottcensors – IWF’s compulsary conservative web page filtering is not going to stop any kiddy fiddlers and is a massive nuisance for ordinary web surfers. Their funding would be better spent hunting and closing kiddie-porn-spammers.
Also, there are various allegations of breach of contract and misdescription of goods by customers who thought they specifically ordered an unfiltered internet service but were misled by an IWF collaborator. If anyone manages to get compensation, let me know and I’ll post an update.
At home, UKFSN who resell Entanet works fine.
At work, with Virgin Media, Wikipedia was completely inaccessible for 2 days. Unclear if this was all Virgin Media’s fault, or that in part automated abuse protection may have triggered at Wikipedia, but clearly the filtering mechanism is inappropriate.
Filed support call early, saying the service was broken. The boss is the kind of person who’ll ask for a refund for loss of service. Demanding a refund for those that lost access to all of Wikipedia might be as effective as switching ISP.
Whilst I think the idea is ill conceived, the implementation is clearly inadequate. Not only censors, but incompetent censors. Didn’t look like the support desk knew what was happening either, or perhaps they were playing dumb rather than admit to customers we are deliberately blocking access to an encyclopedia.
[…] week I reported that 95% of British Residential ISPs Censor – but I think I’m OK, so I’d like to quickly update on what I’ve seen happen since […]