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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."
I'm rather surprised personally that they even admitted that it was their efforts that created the opposite effect rather than trying to label those talking about it as being "part of the problem" like most groups do for these kinds of issues.
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.
omeone better start blocking this bit of smut from that den of molesters at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Raffael_030.jpg
Sick, I tell you, sick!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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."
They still didn't admit it was wrong, they said their plan didn't work.
They are also admitting that kiddie porn images can be copied and transferred all over the world with no effort.
Unfortunately, I bet they still think it's possible to censor thoughts out of existence.
No, it's pretty tasteless, and probably was at the time too. However, I don't consider it child porn, otherwise I think the band would have not been allowed to release it and several people would have been arrested.
This particular situation was so ridiculous, I'm glad they realized what fools they were making of themselves. I mean, if the image had been hurting anyone in any way at all, I would have a different opinion. But as we have heard, the girl in question has stated herself that she's fine with it, was fine with it back then, and her parents were fine with it back then. Plus the fact that it's been available since the 1970s, in my opinion, means that it is actually a culturally significant work of art. Etc. Censorship is such an old issue, you would think people would realize when these policing agencies are crossing the line.
...not in this instance anyway. These people were effectively forced to see the light and had to defend its indefensible actions. Finding that they could not and that, as the streissand effect goes, causes more attention to the matter than they were seeking.
I'm not sure what a better tag might be, but the image of cockroaches running away hiding from the light might be more apt in this case. These people seeking to censor too much find themselves in indefensible positions when light is shined on them.
...but they were all underdeveloped.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
What else have they censored that dont have the "name recognition" like Wiki or Amazon?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
...that an internet organisation that's been around since 1996 would understand the internet and would've realised the storm that censoring Wikipedia would cause and the resultant effect.
But frankly, to me there's a more important issue here- the IWF has accepted they're wrong which raises the question as to whether procedures need to be put in place to prevent mistakes happening again. The IWF is in a position of immense power and failures to perform their duties correctly need to have repercussions.
There have been various conspiracy theories as to whether the IWF was testing the water in light of Britain's new extreme porn law which makes BDSM and such illegal and hence whether the IWF was seeing what the response would be if they were to start filtering this out- particularly as scenes that could be deemed to be extreme porn exist in many common and publicly accesible places. To filter extreme porn as they do child porn they'd most certainly have to go after a lot more mainstream sites, it would no longer be a case of simply filtering out underground sites that only a small minority of people who are already classed as criminals visit.
Whatever the real aim of this was, whether it was simply a blunder or not, I hope for one thing- that the IWF now ensure they concentrate on what they're supposed to concentrate on, helping prevent child abuse and access to sites that really do gain money and so forth from such abuse and also that this has put to sleep any ideas of a power grab or increase in censorship to other, arguably harmless areas for the IWF.
but the reality is that IWF only wanted to protect children from the horrors of having to listen to anything released by the Scorpions.
Than and all they had to do is make a press release, and garner worldwide attention. Some of it negative, but think of all the increased support by religious types. This was just an elaborate marketing ploy on their behalf that is sure to increase donations to their coffers while providing free media coverage over such a nonstarter of a band, issue and picture.
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"The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain...
Wouldn't that be "Hadrian's Firewall" in this case?
Proverbs 21:19
IWF has decided to make an exception for this particular image, but the underlying attitude that led to its blocking remains the same. If not for the public scrutiny this particular decision has prompted, the image in question would still be blocked. I find that very disturbing.
The biggest problem I see with this sort of filtering is the fact that, at least for borderline cases, you rarely know whether the image being blocked is actually illegal. Usually it takes the due process of law to determine that a person producing an image has done something illegal, but with filtering all it takes to block an image is for the image to seem like child pornography. Whether it is or not is irrelevant. All that matters is the judgment of a private party.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
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.
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.
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"
Its almost like they were trying to do the right thing and realised they did the wrong thing.
The IWF never admitted to doing anything wrong. They merely realized that the knowledge and publicity of this event harmed their main goal and purpose of censorship, and in fact had the opposite effect of making this image more widely known and seen.
This example is one good reason to (at least) make the blacklist completely public and transparent. When a government (or in this case pseudo-government) and highly public agency want to hide things then corruption will inevitably follow. Transparency will always be better than sneakiness. If a public agency that effects the public does nothing wrong then they should have nothing to hide.
Why stop with the albums of decedant rock bands, Wikipedia is full of images of naked children.
Everybody seems to be focused on the Scorpions Album Cover and its not the cover thats important, it's the now proven fact that the internet for the UK is filtered monitored and blocked!
This event was a slip up, we were not supposed to know about the censorship and filtering going on. The big question in the UK is what else is being blocked and why? People outside the UK should know that the UK is being monitored and filtered (People in the UK should know too but probably the majority still don't). What is being blocked in your locale? It is highly unlikely that any of us are getting an unfiltered service.
How much of what we read is honest reporting and how much propaganda? what don't we get to read whats missing ?
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