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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."
huh, a censorship organisation that's capable of acquiring new information, and using that to change their actions.
I didn't think that I'd live long enough to see the day where such a thing would happen.
Isn't there someplace in Revelations where they mention this?
"And yea, look ye unto the people running the anti-child porn organizations on the intertubes. For they shall learn the error of their ways (temporarily) and it shall be a sign that the end of all things is upon you."
Back in the 70s, everyone had a much more relaxed attitude to this sort of thing. According to wikipedia, there was even a spread of a naked 11-year-old girl in the Italian edition of Playboy in 1976. It is only in the last few years that activists have spread the idea that it is bad to look at pictures of naked children.
So, the picture was legal when it was first released, but may well be illegal now, at least in the UK.
I don't know what happens in the UK and the rest of Europe, but I know here in australia they have already passed an amendment to the freedom of information act to *exclude* the internet blacklist from any FOI requests.
http://www.efa.org.au/2008/11/15/filtering-pilot-and-acma-blacklist-not-just-illegal-material/
Yep, thats right. The AU govt is planning on increasing the blacklist of banned websites by an order of magnitude (that they will admit to, but now it will be difficult to tell), and they have taken steps to make sure there can be no oversight
We all know how well this works, don't we.
That scares me more than the actual censorship.
o That the people trying to censor net access in this country are not just idiots, they're incompetent idiots.
o That the "blocks" that the major ISPs have in place are effectively useless; either they're incompetent as well, or (more likely) are paying lip-service to the whole idea by saying "yes, we subscribe to the IWF block-list" while using mechanisms a five-year-old could bypass.
o That Chris Morris was right.
Sometimes (as in the case of dodgy 70s album covers), this seems just a bit of a joke; but sometimes it isn't. During the early 90s spokesmen for the political wings of the terrorist organisations in the North of Ireland had to be re-voiced by actors, making interviews essentially impossible. I remember one occasion, after a particular gruesome bombing (many innocent people killed) when the spokesman concerned was able to hide behind the actor to get his message across without answering WHY his organisation supported this indiscriminate slaughter - the "censorship" rules had the exact opposite effect to what was intended.
I emailed VirginMedia (my ISP) on Sunday about them censoring Wikipedia, and got a reply today. I asked why they showed a generic error page for the blocked URL instead of explaining they had blocked it, I asked them about the IWF, if they would provide an uncensored internet connection to those who asked, and if they provided a list of what else they were blocking.
They denied that they "actively" block anything (?), and then suggested the blocked Scorpions page was a fault with Wikipedia or with my computer settings. I'm looking for a new ISP.
Reply from VirginMedia:
Thank you for your e-mail dated 7 December 2008.
We're sorry to hear you feel we have censored our internet connection, we are a part of the Internet Watch Foundation and this is a common code of practise between many service providors, we do not activley block content and do not have a list of blocked content nor do we provide a censored or uncensored Broadband service. Sites with restricted content may be blocked for many reasons, these include the providor of the website or service, your internet security settings or if the site has been removed or disabled or is having technical issues.
If you have further queries regarding this matter or any other issue, please use the link provided below:
www.virginmedia.com/contact
Please note if you reply directly to this e-mail your response will not be received.
Kind regards
Customer Concern
E-Contact Team
Virgin Media