Wikipedia censorship backfires

Posted on 8 Dec 2008 at 14:02

The Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) decision to blacklist a Wikipedia page containing an image of a naked girl appears to have backfired, with the article now ranking among the most visited pages on the site.

About 95% of British internet users were blocked from visiting the Wikipedia page over the weekend, after the page containing the album cover of The Scorpions' Virgin Killer album was added to the IWF blacklist that is implemented by the majority of British ISPs. The album cover shows a picture of a provocatively posed naked girl.

However, the widely-reported ban has only served to drive more people towards the image, which Wikipedia's editors have so far declined to remove.

As of 2pm today, the Virgin Killer album page was the most popular article in the English language version of the site, with more than 22,000 hits in the past hour alone.

The Scorpions band article was the second most popular on the site, whilst thousands of misguided scandal seekers have undoubtedly contributed to pushing an entry on Scorpions - the eight-legged invertibrates - into sixth place.

Ban under review

Although, the image may be shielded from British eyes on Wikipedia, it can be easily found on sites such as Google Image search and Amazon.com.

A spokesperson for the IWF told PC Pro that the watchdog hasn't received reports regarding the image appearing on other sites.

However, the decision to ban the Wikipedia page is under review. "We have a complaints correction procedure," the spokesperson claimed. "We'll reassess the content and reassess whether it's actually illegal."

One unintentional side effect of the IWF ban is that many British visitors to Wikipedia are now unable to edit articles, as the proxy servers used by ISPs to filter the content make it appear that each visitor is using the same IP address.

The IWF spokesperson said the watchdog didn't take such consequences into account when deciding to ban the page containing the image. "The fact edits can't be done on other pages isn't something we considered. Wikipedia will need to find a way around."

The 10 most popular Wikipedia articles as of 2pm on 8 December:

1. Virgin Killer (22,167 hits in last hour)
2. Scorpions (band) (10,331)
3. Ivan Castro (soldier) (5,629)
4. The Beatles (4,360)
5. Wiki (3,525)
6. Scorpions (3,355)
7. YouTube (2,783)
8. Wikipedia (2,747)
9. Eid ul-Adha (2,301)
10. December 8 (2,262 hits)

Author: Barry Collins