Global InformationInternet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia information
On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British watchdog group, blacklisted content on the English Wikipedia related to Scorpions' 1976 studio album Virgin Killer, due to the presence of its controversial cover artwork, depicting a young girl posing nude, with a faux shattered-glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was deemed to be "potentially illegal content" under English law which forbids the possession or creation of indecent photographs of children. The IWF's blacklist are used in web filtering systems such as Cleanfeed.
The URL to the image's description page, which depicts the cover art, was also blacklisted; however thumbnails and the image itself remained accessible. The album cover had been deemed controversial at the time of its release,[1] and was replaced in some markets with an alternate cover image featuring a photo of the band members.[1] The IWF described the image as "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18".[2] Wikipedia's policies state that it does not censor content "that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, even exceedingly so", although it does remove content that is "obviously inappropriate", violates other Wikipedia policies, or is illegal in the United States.[3]
As well as the direct consequence of censoring the article and image for UK-based readers of the English Wikipedia through the affected ISPs (a censoring that could be circumvented),[4] and that the album cover was being made available unfiltered on other major sites including Amazon.co.uk[2] (from which it was later removed), and available for sale in the UK,[5] the action also had some indirect effects on Wikipedia, namely temporarily preventing all editors using said ISPs in the UK from contributing to any page of the encyclopedia,[6] and preventing anonymous edits from these ISPs while the URL remained on the blacklist. This was described by the IWF as unintended "collateral damage".[7] This was due to the proxies used to access Wikipedia, as Wikipedia implements a blocking policy whereby contributors can be blocked if they vandalise the encyclopedia. Therefore, all vandalism coming from one ISP would be directed through one proxy—hence one IP—and all of the ISP's customers using that proxy would be barred from editing.
After invoking its appeals procedure and reviewing the situation, the IWF reversed their blacklisting of the page on 9 December 2008,[8][9] and announced that they would not blacklist other copies of the image hosted outside the UK.[10]
- ^ a b Berelian, Essi (2003). Buckley, Peter; Buckley Jonathan (eds.). The Rough Guide to Rock. London: Rough Guides. p. 909. ISBN 1-84353-105-4.
- ^ a b Schofield, Jack (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography'". The Guardian. UK. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
- ^ "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not". Wikipedia. 1 November 2014. Archived from the original on 26 January 2016. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
- ^ Investigation by several UK based Wikipedians revealed that the page/image was still available using direct addressing URL parameters, or by using the Wikipedia secure server, as detailed in an internal discussion "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/2008 IWF action - Wikipedia". Archived from the original on 11 May 2017. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) of the issue at the Administrator's Noticeboard at the time - ^ Johnson, Bobbie (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia falls foul of British censors". The Guardian. UK. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
- ^ Jennifer LeClaire (8 December 2008). "UK Agency Blocks Wikipedia Image, Editing of Site". Yahoo News. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
On its Web site, Wikipedia said several large ISPs that cooperate with the IWF subsequently blocked the image, affecting an estimated 95 percent of residential Internet users in the UK ... ". Due to the way the block was created (via transparent proxies), users from the affected ISPs now share a small number of IP addresses. This means that a user committing vandalism cannot be distinguished from all the other people on the same ISP," Wikipedia said ... ". 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."
[dead link] - ^ Raphael G. Satter (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia article blocked in UK over child photo". The Independent. UK. Archived from the original on 9 December 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2009.
"It appears that there's a large number of editors — I can't say all — who appear to have access issues," [Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation] said. [Sarah Robertson, Internet Watch Foundation] said she could not explain reports that other parts of the site were difficult to navigate as a result of the block. "There shouldn't have been any collateral damage," she said.
- ^ Arthur, Charles (9 December 2008). "Internet Watch Foundation reconsiders Wikipedia censorship". The Guardian. UK. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 10 December 2008.
- ^ "U.K. Wikipedia Blacklisting Dropped". CIO. 9 December 2008. Archived from the original on 19 September 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2008.
- ^ "IWF statement regarding Wikipedia webpage". Internet Watch Foundation. 9 December 2008. Archived from the original on 1 January 2011. Retrieved 2 August 2011.