ISPs slammed for 'Wikipaedophilia' censor

 

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Posted on 8 Dec 2008 at 15:55

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has sparked a storm of controversy after urging UK ISPs to block a page from Wikipedia that featured images of a naked child from a German rock band's album cover.

The UK web watchdog, which describes itself as a "hotline" for reporting potentially illegal online content, said it advised British ISPs to block access to the cover art on the Scorpions' album Virgin Killer in line with its policy of stamping out websites peddling indecent images of children. The album was released in 1976.

"A Wikipedia web page, was reported through the IWF's online reporting mechanism in December 2008," IWF said in a written 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 watchdog explained that the specific URL was then added to the list provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector, in order to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child.

The IWF said that it does not issue takedown notices to ISPs or hosting companies outside the UK, but in this case it advised local internet monitoring authorities and law enforcement agencies of its assessment.

UK media reports claim that up to 95 per cent of British surfers are banned from accessing the Wikipedia page. This lock out was greeted with disgust on many online forums. Furthermore, it seems the IWF's decision to blacklist the page has backfired, as the article now ranks among the most visited pages on the site.

Users of the chat room Informed Consent were among many who are up in arms over the move, with one member, Jensis stating: "This is without court action, without trial without chance to stand up and say wait a second. This is oppression and the IWF has the ability to turn into a dictatorship online for people in the UK."

These sentiments were echoed by fellow Informed Consent user Degenerate, who posted: "It is a very worrying trend! It's like being in China!"

At the time of going to press the original Wikipedia link is still down, but a new posting on the Wikipedia Administrators' Notice Board reports that one of the sites admins, Fish & Karate, has edited the post to remove the offensive image.

Clive Longbottom, service director of analyst group Quocirca told Computer Shopper that the main difficulty in blocking access to obscene online material was determining exactly what should be acceptable and what should be proscribed.

"At one level this move seems surprising as anyone can go into Google and search on images to find pretty much whatever material they may want. So it could be seen as strange that of all of the millions of images that are out there that can cause offence, this one on Wikipedia has been picked out" Longbottom said.

"ISP should be allowed to block spam and viruses and obscene content as this would make the internet much faster and safer. But the problem is that it is virtually impossible to define a black and white for ISPs of what is acceptable and what is not. Who decides what is acceptable?"