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Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia

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Users attempting to access the Virgin Killer article were often met with 404 errors or other messages.

On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation, a British watchdog group, added the free online encyclopedia English Wikipedia's article Virgin Killer to a blacklist of websites it deems "potentially illegal". This was due to the presence of the controversial cover art for the Scorpions's 1976 album of that name, which depicts a girl posing naked, with a glass shatter blocking her genitalia. The image page depicting the cover art was also blacklisted. The album art was deemed controversial at the time of its release, and was replaced in some markets by an alternate cover image featuring a photo of the band members.

The IWF described the image as "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18".[1] Users of major ISPs, including BT Group, Vodafone, Virgin Media/Tesco.net, Be/O2, EasyNet/UK Online/Sky Broadband, Demon, and TalkTalk (Opal Telecom), were unable to access the content, despite the album cover being available unfiltered on other major sites including Amazon.co.uk,[1] and available for sale in the UK.[2]

IWF blacklist


This file may be deleted after Tuesday, 16 December 2008.

On 5 December 2008 the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based non-government organization, added the Wikipedia URLs for the Virgin Killer article and the image depicting the album cover to its blacklist.[3] Sarah Robertson, director of communications for the IWF, said that the image was rated "1 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the least offensive". She described the picture as "erotic posing with no sexual activity".[3] While the image itself has not been flagged as "illegal", IWF determined it to be a "potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18."[4] The image features a young girl fully nude with a "smashed glass" effect covering her genitalia.[5]

The IWF said they were first notified of the Wikipedia URL on Thursday, 4 December 2008. This followed the May 2008 reporting of the cover image on Wikipedia by US-based social conservative site WorldNetDaily to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An officer of the Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian advocacy group, commented, "By allowing that image to remain posted, Wikipedia is helping to further facilitate perversion and pedophilia."[6][4] EContent magazine subsequently reported that the discussion page associated with the article declared "Prior discussion has determined by broad consensus that the Virgin Killer cover will not be removed", and asserted that Wikipedia contributors "favour inclusion in all but the most extreme cases".[7] However, according to The Guardian "the IWF doesn't talk to people outside of the UK they weren't able to appreciate what was going on." Internet security expert Richard Clayton explained that "We see this borderline stuff all the time; it's a no-win," before adding that the decision seems to have been based on taking the image out of context, particularly "given that you can go into HMV and buy a copy on the high street".[8]

Effects on Wikipedia

Usually most Internet users have a unique IP address visible to websites. However, as a result of ISPs using the IWF blacklist, traffic to Wikipedia via those affected ISPs was then routed through a small number of proxy servers.[9] This caused problems for users of the site. Since Wikipedia allows users to anonymously edit its encyclopedia articles, these individuals are identified only through their IP addresses, which are used to selectively block users who vandalise the site or otherwise break its rules. The proxy filtering makes it impossible to uniquely distinguish users, and to prevent vandalism Wikipedia "instituted a blanket ban on anonymous edits from the six ISPs, which account for 95 per cent of British residential internet users".[10]

As a possible solution, the MediaWiki software that Wikipedia runs on can interpret X-Forwarded-For (XFF) headers, allowing Wikipedia to identify the real IP address rather than the proxy IP address, said Wikimedia Foundation communications committee member Mathias Schindler. This requires the ISPs to implement the X-Forwarded-For header when forwarding page requests through the proxies. This would again allow site administrators to block clients individually, while avoiding the need to block the whole proxy due to the actions of a single vandal.[9]

Response by Wikimedia

On the 9 December, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia told the UK's Channel4 News that they considered legal action: [11] }}"My first thoughts when I was told that the Internet Watch Foundation had blocked the Wikipedia page was that we should take them to court. But because they're not a statutory body, I've been told we can't necessarily challenge their decision.

"The Internet Watch Foundation were clearly over reaching their remit when they blocked the text page on Wikipedia - there's nothing illegal about the description of the album. I'd also question their wisdom about trying to block the image itself."

"As a result of their actions, the image is actually being seen by more people, it's appearing on thousands of blogs today. It will continue to be passed on. What are they going to do? Are they going to block all of the web if it continues to be spread?"

On 7 December, the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation which supports the English Wikipedia, issued a press release about the blacklisting of their sites by the IWF:

“We have no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world,” said the Wikimedia Foundation's General Counsel, Mike Godwin. “We believe it's worth noting that the image is currently visible on Amazon, where the album can be freely purchased by UK residents. It is available on thousands of websites that are accessible to the UK public.”

“The IWF didn't just block the image; it blocked access to the article itself, which discusses the image in a neutral, encyclopedic fashion,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “The IWF says its goal is to protect UK citizens, but I can't see how this action helps to achieve that – and meanwhile, it deprives UK internet users of the ability to access information which should be freely available to everyone. I urge the IWF to remove Wikipedia from its blacklist.”

The Wikimedia Foundation is proud of the work done by its volunteer editors, who have created an encyclopedia which external studies repeatedly validate as equal or better in quality compared with conventional encyclopedias. Wikipedia's editors take care to ensure the quality of the content of the encyclopedia, and to safeguard the core community values of freedom, independence, and neutrality.

The Wikimedia Foundation will continue its discussions with IWF to resolve this matter.[12]

Consequences

File:Virgin Killer most popular BBC.png
A montage of screenshots of BBC News Online's most popular story statistics, showing the story being the most popular on the entire site over 7 hours of the morning of December 8th.

The IWF has said that it "might yet add Amazon US to its list of 'blocked' sites for hosting the picture", which could cause major disruption to the site just before the festive season.[3] This incident has also had an effect on Australian internet censoring plans. In the wake of this event Telstra and Internode said they will no longer participate in the trials. Electronic Frontiers Australia vice-chairman Colin Jacobs said that "yesterday's incident in Britain, in which virtually the entire country was unable to edit Wikipedia because the country's Internet Watch Foundation had blacklisted a single image on the site, illustrated the pitfalls of mandatory ISP filtering".[13] The Sydney Morning Herald has commented that "Ironically, the banning of the image has only made it visible to more people as news sites publicise the issue and the image spreads across sites other than Wikipedia."[10] This is known as the Streisand effect.

The incident has also been widely reported in mainstream news, with press sources such as BBC News Online, Guardian.co.uk, Associated Press, LiveNews, the Sydney Morning Herald, Sky News, the Daily Mail, Metro, the Daily Telegraph, the South Africa Times, NME, The Independent, Digital Spy, the Washington Post, The Glasgow Herald, Channel 4 News, Wired and the Huffington Post all taking an interest.

[14]

See also

Template:Wikinewspar2

References

  1. ^ a b Schofield, Jack (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography'". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  2. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia falls foul of British censors". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  3. ^ a b c Arthur, Charles (8 December 2008). "Internet watchdog considers censoring Amazon US over Scorpions image". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
  4. ^ a b Raphael, JR (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia Censorship Sparks Free Speech Debate". The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  5. ^ {{broken ref |prefix=Cite error: The named reference {
    Unexpected use of template {{1}} - see Template:1 for details. (see the help page).
  6. ^ Schilling, Chelsea (7 May 2008). "FBI investigates 'Wikipedophilia'". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved 9 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ Dye, Jessica (1 July 2008). "Wikipedia Weighs Information Against Indecency". EContent. Retrieved 9 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  8. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (9 December 2008). "Wikipedia censor mess 'a no-win'". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  9. ^ a b Kirk, Jeremy (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia Article Censored in UK for the First Time". PC World. IDG. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
  10. ^ a b Moses, Asher (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia added to child pornography blacklist". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
  11. ^ article (9 December 2008). "Censorship of WP in the UK Dec 2008". London, UK: Channel4 News. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  12. ^ Press release (7 December 2008). "Censorship of WP in the UK Dec 2008". San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
  13. ^ Moses, Asher (9 December 2008). "Labor plan to censor internet in shreds". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  14. ^ Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/2008 IWF action#Media coverage
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