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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
Congratulations on trying to shape Internet access. Just imagine if something actually IMPORTANT came along the UK didn't want you to see!
To the administrators of Wikipedia:
Play hardball. Block those 6 IPs from any access whatsoever, explain why, stick to your guns.
The worst thing that will happen is, people in the UK will become stupider, while those who are not participating in this censorship will be advantaged, so your enemies will diminish themselves by their own hand and your friends will become more powerful allies by virtue of the gift you have given them.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
BTW, the offending image is viewable in Amazon.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
I'm so glad. This is clearly a step that will relieve many children from suffering. I think we should stop talking about child abuse now and move on to the next big problem. Let's now censor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism and thus end and finally win the war on terror. It's about time because I can't stand hearing the phrase anymore.
I could see it... I am not being filtered. Frankly, I don't see child porn... I can see where some might think so, however. For something to be porn, it has to inspire me to touch myself... this does not. A female has to have that shape of a woman which this child does not. And of course the "naughty bit" must be showing. It's not. But I suppose people who actually like that sort of thing would find alternative sources of access to this art. Close one door and there will be hundreds more available.
Totally agree. I'm on one of these ISPs, and I'm appalled by this censorship. I'd like to take it a step further though. Organise a DNSRBL along the lines of SpamHaus that contains a list of IPs on ISPs that perform censorship. Redirect any port 80 requests from people in that IP range to a page explaining that, their ISP is only allowing them access to some arbitrary subest of the Internet, rather than the whole Internet, they are now allowed to view your page. Make it easy for other organisations to use. When you have a choice between Virgin Media at £25/month for a small subset of the Internet, or a small ISP at £30/month but with access to Wikipedia and all of the other sites that value freedom then it's not such an easy choice as when price is the only issue.
Profit making sites probably can't afford to join in (unless they have a left-leaning demographic and use 'we oppose censorship' as a marketing gimmick), but there are lots of non-commercial sites on the 'net that would.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I read about the cover in a Cracked magazine list of the worst album covers ever. The image, or a censored version of it, appears in the article there. At any rate, within 5 minutes I had found my way over to Wikinews (on a completely different surfing tangent) and discovered the UK censorship story. Now curious, I headed over to Mininova to find that, sure enough, Scorpions torrents were suddenly hot stuff (lots of new torrents, tons of activity on older torrents). I'm not sure how this will reflect on album sales but it may just be that the stupid idea of putting a naked little girl on the cover has worked out to be a pretty damn good way of selling albums...even if it took over 20 years to start working.
If you read the article, you will find that the depicted girl had no problem with the image, when asked 15 years after publication. And by the way, I disagree that this should be classified as child porn. It's not porn. It's nudity. This is akin to Berlusconi ordering to repaint a 300-year old painting because it depicted a naked breast and happened to be hanging in his office.
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.
It's on the register at least
...which by the way, you can find quite easily if you just make a search on google. Yet another example of something dumb that affects people who have nothing to do with child pornography, and does absolutely nothing for people that are interested in it.
I do hope it hits mainstream media like the BBC, checked it just now but no mention of it.
Makes me remember the quote that was posted in this thread:
"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.....
Seriously though, do they actually believe that pedophiles are sitting and watching that one image on wikipedia?
Worked just fine for me (BBB, Sweden), so now I've found out they had a small nude girl on their cover and have spread the URL. Also it made me kind of naughty feeling and penis-tingeling ....
Streisand-effect indeed.
What? So it's really a service called virgin media which block virgin media? That sucks :/
Good idea.
I've already complained from their contacts page. 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?
Like everyone else here, it's not that I want to look at child porn, but rather that I object on principle to censorship. I didn't realise I was helping to fund this sort of thing with my broadband subscription
Extreme example I know, but today it's "criminally obscene content" and "incitement to racial hatred", and tomorrow it's the British equivalents of "Tianamen Square" and "Democracy". If I have a choice, I'm not funding that.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
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.
I know that the girl didn't mind. It doesn't matter these days - remember, these days, we (the society) convict children for producing and distributing child porn when they make and share nude pictures of themselves!
To remind: I'm not saying that the censors are morally right here. I'm saying that they are legally right. Singling this one case of stupidity is good, but we should really point out the root of the problem, which is the laws on the books. We should fix those, rather then fighting the symptoms.
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,'
Actually, reading the wikipedia article on Virgin Killer, it seems that it is bonafide child pornography. Or, regardless of your definition of "pornography", there's a naked, under-age* girl on the cover.
*Not all countries have the same under-age pornography laws
I predicted it! Just yesterday I said it's only a matter of time until wikipedia get filtered by the Australian. Well I was off by about 10,000 miles but I was right that SOME government would eventually filter wikipedia & suppress freedom of knowledge.
And I agree with the parent poster. If the UK Government is going to stupidly censor the internet, then block the whole damn country until the UK citizens rise-up and demand "freedom" and "liberty" from their Parliamentarian Oligarchs.
BTW here's the picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg
Wow. It's a naked girl. Contrary to being insulted, I think it's beautiful. The naked human body is a testament to the Creator's majesty and perfection, not a sin, and I see no reason why we should cover-up a naked human anymore than we cover-up a naked deer or naked bear or naked seal. There is *nothing* shameful here. "Because God created it, the human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendor and its beauty." - Pope John Paul II.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
... 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.
The naked human body is a testament to the Creator's majesty and perfection, not a sin, and I see no reason why we should cover-up a naked human anymore than we cover-up a naked deer or naked bear or naked seal.
You forgot naked beaver.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I have beavers in my backyard.
They are completely naked and despite the protests of my Bible-thumping neighbors, the beavers are welcome to remain on my property & be as naked as a jaybird if that's what they desire.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Well, are pictures of kids in non-sexual settings child porn? Plenty of parents still take pics of their kids in the tub...etc.
Now...granted...this album cover, well, could be taken as a bit more suggestive that those type of pics, but, she is not in any sexual situation, so is it child porn? Or, these days, does any nude picture of someone under (age in you area) constitute child porn?
At any rate..I'm guessing they will have a problem with:
Houses of the Holywith the kids climbing up the rocks
And Blind Faith's album.
Sigh...are we going backwards or what? These albums have been out forever, and are classic....why are people having such a fit now?
Then again....on the classic rock station the other day...I was shocked to hear them censor Pink Floyd's "Money", The Who's "Who Are You", Steve Miller Band "Jet Airliner"....and a couple of others. These songs have been played since I was a kid....why are they censoring them NOW?!?!?
OH well...time for juice and coffee....and You kids get off my lawn!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's erotica. Porn = explicit SEX, or naked people in a way designed to arouse you sexually. Erotica= just naked people, can be art.
That picture is more art than porn, even though it has an underage naked girl in it.
--Coder
Whether or not that image should be considered child porn should be up to the courts to decide.
And from January, according to Government guidance, it seems the IWF are going to be handling reports of "extreme pornography" (that criminalises possession of adult images considered "extreme" and "disgusting", even those involving consenting adults, staged acts, and screenshots from legal films), which is broader and far vaguer than child porn law - so if they start blocking anything that might "potentially" be extreme, I worry that this could mean a lot more sites being blocked.
This also shows that they are willing to blacklist mainstream sites - well, at least they get points for being consistent I suppose (there`s nothing worse than selective enforcement) - but the point is that images that might "potentially" come under the extreme porn law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites. Now even if it may be the case that such a site would never be prosecuted, this shows that the IWF may happily censor any site that has a potentially extreme image on it, no matter what site it is on, or for what purpose it is there for.
It is also misleading that the site returns a fake 404 message - Virgin Media do this, although apparently Demon do not. Is this something decided on a per-ISP level, and something worth complaining to them about?
It's not like Wikipedia is hosted in some lawless country - it's hosted in the US, which has similar laws on child porn, and if it was really a problem it would be easy to cooperate with the US to remove the images.
Amazon also has these images, which are not blocked.
If somebody, anybody, finds it sexually stimulating then it can be pornography.
Now that's just asking for trouble. Should we chop off everyone's feet because someone out there has a foot fetish?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
David Hamilton's The Age of Innocence would agree with you.
Nudity != Sex
Naked Pictures != Porn
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Can you point me to the court ruling where this image was found to be child porn? Or has the UK done away with the hassle of trials, instead preferring just to go by what it thinks might be illegal?
I thank all the gods for the Slashdot link location notifier.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Because God created it, the human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendor and its beauty." - Pope John Paul II.
Speak for yourself. I for one do not want to see the nude bodies of 80% of my fellow citizens (or 99.9% of all slashdotters).
Indeed, if I saw that cover without the tag "child pornography" as input in my mind I would have not thought of anything to do with child pornography in the first place, rather some deeper meaning, maybe what could have been the actual intention of the band. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer)
Well done UK, you screwed our heads now!
I personally would of liked to see the CPS bring charges against Wikipedia. ... I'd prosecute the publishers (Wikipedia)
Why? Whilst you might argue that the record company profited from this image, how can this be said of a free encyclopedia that is using the image solely to document an encyclopedic article on the album? If anyone should be prosecuted by your argument, it should be the record company - though I wonder why they haven't done so in 30 years of child porn being illegal in the UK...
Lets be real clear here... this is an image that is of a minor in a sexually provocative pose being used for profit (marketing). It is child pornography. That's not in a grey area
Really? Well thanks for clearing it up. Whenever we are unclear of whether a particular nude image is "indecent" or not, we can just go ask Numen on Slashdot, as he obviously knows.
Or ... rather than debating on forums, we could get some legal experts to argue the case, in front of, oh I don't know, some randomly selected members of the public who could then make a decision, having heard arguments from both sides?
I have a burka fetish. Take that, Saudi Arabia!
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
Actually, reading the wikipedia article on Virgin Killer, it seems that it is bonafide child pornography. Or, regardless of your definition of "pornography", there's a naked, under-age* girl on the cover.
Well, so does Nirvana's Nevermind, except it's a boy instead of a girl. So maybe, just maybe, you may want to rethink your definition of "child pornography".
Personally, I think the picture in question is in really bad taste, but I dread the prospect of it being censored and/or made illegal even more, so put me in the "fuck you, UK!" camp.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
"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..
I have beavers in my backyard.
Beavers are OK. It's shaved beavers that will cause you to run afoul of the law. And possibly incur the wrath of various PETA groups.
Look buddy. You either start screaming during the Two Minutes Hate, or people are going to start asking questions. OK?
May the Maths Be with you!
You totally forgot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind
Entered into the IWF website, in the description field of the link above:
I have not visited this link myself, as it allegedly contains an image that the IWF has already flagged as indecent and censored (through UK ISPs). Someone else posted this link on an online discussion forum where the original image was being debated. On that same forum it was highlighted that this image is also available on Google's image cache, on the Amazon.com website and on many other music and shopping sites across the world.
Can you please treat all instances of this image identically. If it is truly indecent (I don't know, because I haven't viewed it) then ban it everywhere. If it has been banned by mistake (or stupidity) then obviously unban it from the source currently banned (i.e. Wikipedia).
The IWF is vulnerable to public opinion, and this instance is likely to cause poor publicity. Please act promptly and with absolute certainty as to the correct legal interpretation of this image.
If you do decide it isn't indecent after all, do let me know - I'm curious to know what all the fuss is about. It's clearly either an edge case, or something's gone wrong with your internal controls, and as a user of the Internet in the UK I'm keen to find out that it's the former.
Even if it seems silly to a lot of us, since certain individual might look at it as porn and not art, it seems legit to at least discuss what is ok.
And what if it's porn for someone and not for someone else? A picture of a horse with an erect penis is porn for some, but I sure hope that someone don't start to claim that we should censor all images of that just because animal sex is illegal. What about other fetishes, for example people who are turned on by uniforms or latex.
I wonder why so many people are so bothered with what other people like and don't like.
c++;
Yes, it does work perfectly, because it works perfectly against the 99% of the population that the censors care about. The fact that you or I can get around it with trivial ease is irrelevant. Ask the Chinese.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So why aren't the UK record stores being prosecuted for selling this "child pornography"?
KeS
I agree. It is child porn. This cover is disgusting.
I have very mixed feelings about this. I was expecting a cut-and-dry case of unwarranted censorship as overcompensation by prudish government officials for their hidden pedophilic tendencies. But it's not that simple, and, as you note, the cover is not entirely innocent.
But I say that my feelings are "mixed" because going so far as to call it "child porn" somehow seems excessive. Society has decided that the production of child pornography is among the worst, most despicable crimes. Yet somehow this album cover does not seem to fit this characterization. It's borderline to be sure, but would it be appropriate to put, say, the band members or their photographer on a sex offender registry? I don't think so. Somehow, despite the fact that there is some sexualization of the girl in the image, the intent does not seem entirely pornographic.
As for the image itself:
On the one hand, the cover does have the girl in a pose that implies, through a degree or two of association, sex. It's not explicitly sexual; she's not engaging in or pantomiming any sex-act. But the image is also not of a girl who "just happens" to be nude. This brings me to my first question: What about the girl's pose evokes sex? Is it that the pelvis is tilted up, and is closer to the camera than the rest of the body? Is it that she is posed to provide an entirely unoccluded view of the (beginnings of) breasts, and to place them in the center of the image? I'm having a hard time saying what, in concrete terms, makes this pose sexualizing. Part of the reason I ask is that classical and Renaissance art adopted a number of stylized poses which, if we're honest, were partially erotic in intent. But this pose is slightly different. So I'm wondering what the important distinction is -- or if there is one.
More problematically, the broken glass effect radiates out from between the legs. This is obviously intended to emphasize the (occluded) vagina; I don't think there's any denying this.
So does all this add up to porn? I don't know. It's borderline. But then, that itself is part of the purpose of art; in fact, I sense that it may have become art's primary purpose: to explore boundaries, to shock, to offend sensibilities.
All of which makes it very hard for me to make a judgment here. But this, I suspect, is itself a reason not to censor: I think it's probably reasonable to say that censorship, if it is ever appropriate, is only so when there isn't any doubt; i.e., the benefit of the doubt should go to free speech.
they should ban the Pulitzer winning image of that young girl from Vietnam running naked, screaming after being burnt by a napalm attack as well. I mean, she was NAKED! How horrible that people are allowed to view something like that. It's sick!
Is it that the pelvis is tilted up, and is closer to the camera than the rest of the body
Er, I think that the knees are much closer to the camera than the pelvis - therefore it MUST be pornography!
I'm having a hard time saying what, in concrete terms, makes this pose sexualizing.
I think that the phrase you are trying to say is 'Nothing'. Other than the title of the album it is simply a picture of a naked individual. If anyone finds it sexually arousing then perhaps there it is something wrong with them and not with the cover?
So does all this add up to porn? I don't know. It's borderline.
No, it isn't. This is more symptomatic of society's problem that it cannot accept that, although we are all born naked, we mustn't ever be seen that way again. If you go to many beaches in Europe (and I suspect elsewhere) you will see people of all ages completely naked and continuing with all the things that normal people do at the beach. Sunbathing, playing games, reading, eating, drinking, swimming. It doesn't signify the end of the world as we know it, nor is it something that attracts anything more than routine interest by almost everyone else. OK, you get the odd giggling schoolboy but that is probably more of a reflection of his upbringing than of anything else. We mocked the Victorians for their prudish views and now someone in the UK seems to think that we should regress back to such times. We will be draping tables with cloths soon so that sensitive ladies cannot view naked table legs!
As several others have already commented, we all take pictures of our children in various states of dress and undress - sometimes young girls play at dressing up and perhaps their parents let them try makeup. Not as a matter of routine but simply for the enjoyment of a moments play. It doesn't make the child any more sexually provocative then she was a few moments before but there are some who believe differently. I cannot agree with them, and they should seek help.
If it wasn't for the album's title it would have been a non-event. When it was released it caused the desired scandal but was still available in the shops. Why on earth it should be deemed to be even more scandalous today is beyond me.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
But then that could be used as evidence against him as well. After all, he went to the record store to view an image of a naked child. While the act was innocent, the intent was criminal, a thought crime. A non-paedophile wouldn't be guilty of anything looking at the album cover, but a paedophile would, just like a paedophile passing a park would clearly be there to peek on kids instead of just passing by, and a paedophile living near a school would only do so to have easy access to kids rather than because residential areas usually have schools built next to them. Oh, and any use of cryptography, such as Tor, is because he is trying to hide he's looking at child porn.
It kinda reminds me of a trial in a movie version of Ivanhoe I once saw. A woman was accused of witchcraft, and her accuser told the court how she had killed a dog and eaten pieces of it raw. The judge then asked if the accuser meant the entirely healthy dog which was sniffing around in the courtroom, to which the accuser answered that the witch had healed it with her magic powers, thus further proving that she was a witch.
If someone accuses you of being a paedophile, everything you do can be used as evidence of not only that but also of your intent to molest kids. It's just a modern-day witch hunt. Give it a few decades and the howling mob will go after the next target, just like they switched from hunting witches to communists to paedophiles. Not that it'll do any good to their victims, of course; but such is life, and a howling mob of self-righteous vigilantes on a witch hunt is really not all that different from child molesters: they take their enjoyment from whom they will, and the victim can go to hell for all they care.
It is depressing that we haven't gotten any better since the Dark Ages, but that too is life, I guess.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That link you gave is broken :)
"This site you have attempted to access is identified by the Internet Watch Foundation as a site containing
potentially illegal content. Access has been blocked.
Deliberate attempts to access this or related sites may result in you committing a serious criminal offence."
Vodafone UK.
Note the language though, emphasis mine.
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
It's more important than anything. Far more important than any freedom you might think you deserve. Dude - little children are dying while you whine about freedom.
Well, ok, they're not dying. It just sounds better than "little children are being naked."
Well, actually - they are dying, all over the world, from starvation, and disease, and neglect, and lots of other stuff. But nobody cares about that. Because there's no perverts involved in that.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
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