IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship

jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."

Comments

not a "child porn" image

[commodoresloat]

Let's get it right; the IWF didn't say the page was porn; they said it was "potential illegal child sexual abuse." Most people seem to have assumed this was because the album cover artwork on the Wikipedia page included an image of a naked girl, but the reality is that IWF only wanted to protect children from the horrors of having to listen to anything released by the Scorpions.

I tried to look up the pictures on the web...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...but they were all underdeveloped.

Great Firewall of Britain?

[wcrowe]

"The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain...

Wouldn't that be "Hadrian's Firewall" in this case?

Re:Great Firewall of Britain?

[anaesthetica]

No, that would be an Italian firewall used to censor Scottish content.

Britain cutting itself off from the rest of the world is better represented by the Channel Fogwall.

best irony ever

[Shadukar]

Today from work (instead of working) I decided to check out the IWF website.

Turns out Getbusi content filtering proxy is blocking their site as "porn"