Brits blocked from Wikipedia over child porn photo

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 8 Dec 2008 at 08:00

Leading British ISPs are blocking access to parts of Wikipedia that are deemed to be showing images of child pornography.

The Wikipedia entry on the Virgin Killer album from rock band The Scorpions has been added to the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) blacklist, because the album cover contains a provocatively posed photo of a naked girl.

A post on Wikipedia's Administrators noticeboard claims that "several large internet service providers (ISPs) that cooperate with the IWF subsequently blocked [the Virgin Killers article] from being viewed, affecting an estimated 95% of residential Internet users in the UK."

However, the ban on the Virgin Killers page has wider repercussions for users from the affected ISPs.

"Due to the way the block was created (via transparent proxies), users from the affected ISPs now share a small number of IP addresses," the Wikipedia post claims.

"This means that a user committing vandalism cannot be distinguished from all the other people on the same ISP. Unfortunately, the effect of this is that all users from the affected ISPs are temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia. Simply viewing the site is not affected, aside from the blocked article and image."

Internet censorship?

The decision to block access to the Virgin Killers album has inevitably sparked a row over internet censorship among the Wikipedia admins.

"Somehow we seem to think that because this is the UK and not China, Sudan or Iran, this is OK," writes one contributor. "It isn't. We build an encylopaedia. Nothing else."

"If I had that album in my music collection, would I be breaking the law? Presumably not," says another editor. "So I don't see that having the ability to access it on Wikipedia is any different."

"So the risk of a number of editors, including minors, being put on the UK Sex Offenders Register is worth taking, however small, for the sake of retaining a non-free image?" asks another contributor to the site.

The Internet Watch Foundation insists the image is potentially illegal under UK law. "A Wikipedia web page, was reported through the IWF's online reporting mechanism in December 2008," the watchdog claims in a statement.

"As with all child sexual abuse reports received by our Hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council.

"The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, but hosted outside the UK.

"The IWF does not issue takedown notices to ISPs or hosting companies outside the UK, but we did advise one of our partner Hotlines abroad and our law enforcement partner agency of our assessment.

"The specific URL (individual webpage) was then added to the list provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child."