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MintSorcerer

Listed below are comments made by MintSorcerer between Wednesday, 1st October 2008 and Monday, 8th December 2008.

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Wikipedia is censored 10:38am on 08 Dec 2008 This is an extremely stupid and ill thought out action by the IWF.

They blocked the page containing the encyclopaedia article, but the same page can be viewed using an alternative url formation where article title is passed to the website's main php script.

The page can also still be viewed by clicking on the Google's (and presumably other search engine's) cache of the page.

The same image can also be seen by going to the Amazon website and plenty of other retails and sites about albums and album covers.

Simply typing the album title into Google's image search will bring up hundreds of copies of the image, many at a much higher resolution than the Wikipedia page.

The album with the offending cover art has has been on sale in the UK for the last 32 years and the cover has not been declared illegal in any Western European, or North American jurisdiction during that time.

The banning of the Wikipedia article and the necessary filtering that ISPs now have to impose on access to the Wikipedia has caused nothing but disruption to all concerned. The publicity generated from the action has has the effect of causing a spike in visits to the offending page by those still able to access it normally and by those who have found ways to access it via proxies or other methods.

The offensiveness of the image itself is a matter of debate. I think declaring this cover offensive would raise issues about the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind, Blind Faith's Blind Faith and Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.

Wikipedia prides itself on not censoring legal content. They still host the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the face of demands for censorship from various parties. Its pretty clear from their press release that they find the blocking of this page baffling and will not back-down to censorship issues.

I hope that the IWF see their error quickly enough to realise that their actions have backfired.
Debate expectations 02:56am on 01 Oct 2008 Ugh.

Sorry about the typos. Its late.
Debate expectations 02:29am on 01 Oct 2008 I wasn't sure where I was allowed to post You tube links. Like the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkWebP2Q0Y regarding Palin on newespagers.
Debate expectations 02:19am on 01 Oct 2008 Sarah Palin reveals her severe lack of intellectual curiosity once again. In another exchange with Couric, Palin is unable to name single newspaper that she has read.

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

COURIC: Like what ones specifically?

PALIN: Umm… all of them. Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news…

Wow.

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