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UK ISPs Are Censoring Wikipedia
Concerned Wikipedian writes "Starting December 4th, Wikipedia administrators noticed a surge of edits from certain IP addresses. These IPs turned out to be the proxies for the content filters of at least 6 major UK ISPs. After some research by Wikipedians, it appears that the image of the 1970s LP cover art of the Scorpions' 'Virgin Killer' album has been blocked because it was judged to be 'child pornography,' and all other attempts to access Wikimedia foundation sites from these ISPs are being proxied to only a few IP addresses. This is causing many problems for Wikipedia administrators, because much of the UK vandalism now comes from a single IP, which, when blocked, affects potentially hundreds of thousands of anonymous users who intend no harm and are utterly confused as to why they are no longer able to edit. The image was flagged by the the Internet Watch Foundation, which is funded by the EU and the UK government, and has the support of many ISPs and online institutions in the UK. The filter is fairly easy to circumvent simply by viewing the article in some other languages, or by logging in on the secure version of Wikipedia."
Facebook group against this
Pledgebank ISP boycott
Wikinews story
The technical press are swarming. Dunno if the national press are too as yet.
The IWF apparently sought the advice of police before blocking. Now, the police in the UK are notorious for trying it on with censorship cases, so that doesn't mean the image is illegal.
The album was released in 1976; child porn was illegalised in the UK in 1978. If the album was distributed in the UK since 1978 with that cover, it's probably legal.
The album cover has been reprinted in many books. Most of those books are in the Briitsh Library. Are those now obscene?
Question for all: Has this precise image ever come to court? In the UK, in the world?
The IWF had it pointed out that they were censoring encyclopedia text, which was clearly not illegal. The IWF responded that they needed to block the page to block the image effectively. This is of course utterly ludicrous bollocks, but apparently that's the advice the IWF have received.
They were also asked if they'd be censoring Amazon as well. They said they'd have to get back on that one.
It's the clbuttic error, but this time on a top-10 site for everyone.
Disclaimer: I do press for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the UK as a volunteer (and I've been on my email and phone all last night to about 2am and today since 9am). However, I am not a WMF employee and cannot legally claim to speak for them, only as a volunteer editor.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I have tested a proxy from UK. The article returned an empty page, but the image could be accessed directly without any problem. Other report problems with the image and the article, costumers of one provider get an actual error message with an explanation why a page was blocked.
UK users, please tell us what you can see.
Under UK law, an image of a naked child is usually considered child pornography; context is irrelevant. Garda (the Irish police) reported that, between 2000-2004, 44% of "child pornography" cases in Ireland involved images which depicted no sexual activity whatsoever*. Child pornography laws in Ireland are very similar to those of the UK.
In a strict legal sense, this censorship is justified; the problem is the law itself, which should not define nudity as "pornography". The frequently used term "child abuse images" is used to invoke strong emotions and discredit those who disagree with the current laws. Don't forget that if the IWF fail to maintain outrage over child pornography, they'll lose their funding.
I have written a detailed summary of UK child pornography laws, here
* The content of indecent images
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
They are a registered charity in UK. SO, it only need UK citizens to make the move to have that status removed! As a charity they are entitled to several TONS of fiscal advantages... That you pay with your taxes. If there is anything I'm against is ANY kind of censorship... And filtering content is just a camouflaged way to do it. ;)
p.s.- This message is protected by free speech and free opinion laws. Also the opinions are mine and mine alone and don't carry anything more then my opinions and facts that are of public knowledge. All judicial complains about this post have to be settled in an arbitration court in Lisbon/Portugal.
... and not IP/domain based, can you guys in the UK use this HTTPS page?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page
You can also substitute "wikipedia" in the above URL for Wikimedia Foundation's other projects to access them using SSL. e.g. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/wiki/Main_Page for Wikisource. To use them in other languages, simple replace "en" with another language code (e.g. "de" or "ja").
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Now I am wondering which ISP to move to. Obviously anyone with Phorm is right out (BT, for instance), as is anyone with a strict download cap. Any suggestions?
How strict is strict?
I've found the UK Free Software Network, UKFSN, to be pretty good provided you can mostly sort your own techy problems out. Plus they're specifically anti-Phorm and all profits go towards funding Free Software, if you like that sort of thing.
I thank all the gods for the Slashdot link location notifier.
May the Maths Be with you!
Amazon has the same image, and will even sell you the record: http://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Killer-Scorpions/dp/B0000073NL/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1228665999&sr=8-2
Are they now CP distributers?
U+F8FF
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation" - quote from Mein Kampf.....
From what I found on the net, that's not from "Mein Kampf" - except for the first sentence, but that was used in an entirely different (racist) context.
I would be interested if someone knows the origin of that quote to be sure that it's real (looks useful against "think of the children" propaganda).
So far Google found someone random giving "Hitler, 1943" as a source, but that's pretty weak..
UKFSN (or any other Enta.net powered ISP) doesn't filter, supports IPv6, is anti-phorm and much more besides!
people have been arrested (I don't know if convicted) over family photos of kids at bathtime etc.
The newsreader Julia Somerville was arrested over pictures of her 7-year-old daughter in the bath.
She was interrogated for three days, I think I recall, before she was released. I wondered at the time if she would have got off so easily if she wasn't a public figure.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951105/ai_n14016171
Paid Q&A/Research
Wikipedia child image censored
A decision by a number of UK internet providers to block a Wikipedia page showing an image of a naked girl has angered users of the popular site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7770456.stm
thegodmovie.com - watch it