Wikipedia is censored
Is the internet censored in the UK? Well, no, most of us would say - you can get to any site you want, as long as it isn't breaking the law - and even then, the authorities are unlikely to intervene.
But now customers of several big internet service providers are finding that they cannot access one page of a website. And it's not just any website - it's Wikipedia. The page that they cannot view is about a relatively obscure 70s heavy metal band, Scorpions, and it has been blocked because it includes an image of a controversial album cover. That cover shows a naked child, and even back in the 70s it proved too distasteful for many, and was withdrawn in a number of countries.
Now the Internet Watch Foundation - which has been Britain's leading online child abuse watchdog for the past 12 years - has put that Wikipedia page on its banned list. The result is that those internet service providers which are members of IWF have blocked their users from accessing that page.
A host of Wikipedians is on the warpath, suggesting that this is censorship by a self-appointed body which has no right to decide what we can look at on the web. I caught up with one of them, David Gerard. He acts as a spokesman for Wikipedia volunteers in the UK - though he is not employed by the Wikimedia Foundation, the online encyclopaedia's governing body (which has issued a press release). I asked him why he was so angry when most people would probably support any body which is trying to stamp out child abuse images on the web.
First of all, he stressed that he was not saying that he found the image in question acceptable. "I personally find it distasteful," he said. "But is it illegal?"
He went on to explain that there were two reasons that Wikipedians felt angry: firstly, that IWF could decide on its own that something was illegal; secondly, that its actions had blocked the text on the page as well as the image itself.
Mr Gerard claimed that there was no evidence that any court had ruled that the image was illegal - indeed it was in books that were stored in libraries. "Are the police going to go into those libraries and rip out the offending page?" he asked.
He went on to explain that it would have been relatively simple for the IWF to block the image but to leave the accompanying text alone. But he said that nobody had contacted anyone from Wikipedia - the watchdog had just gone ahead and laid down the law.
This issue is the subject of feverish debate on Wikipedia mailing lists and forums, and there is already a Facebook group to call for a boycott of ISPs which censor Wikipedia. Some are suggesting that this makes the UK little better than China in terms of internet censorship, though other Wikipedia users are not quite so sure that this is the right issue for an anti-censorship campaign.
So what does the Internet Watch Foundation have to say? A spokeswoman explained that the image had been referred to them by a member of the public. After examination - and consultation with the police - it was assessed as "a potentially illegal image" and put on the banned list that is given to internet service providers, who then block the URL. She went on to explain that this is a routine procedure which is used for all sorts of images that are reported to the IWF - it just so happened that this involved one of the internet's most famous sites.
I've also spoken to one of the ISPs which is blocking the Wikipedia page. A spokesman made it clear that the process was automatic - the ISP just takes the list and implements its own blocking procedures. He said that his company would certainly not be criticising the watchdog: "The Internet Watch Foundation has a tough job and an important role in protecting our children. We just have to support them - we can't pick and choose."
So: a fascinating case which sheds light on the debate about freedom of speech on the internet. On the one side, a body which has been fighting to free the web of child abuse images, waging a war which has the support of the vast majority of web users. On the other, the digital libertarians who believe that once we let a group of unelected regulators decide what is fit for us to see on the web, we are on the road to Orwellian thought control. Who is in the right? You decide.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~20~RS~)
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I've no objection to illegal images being blocked, and I can't see how any right-minded person would.
However the main mistakes the IWF have made here are (1) appointing themselves as judge and jury by deciding, arbitrarily, that this image is "potentially illegal"; (2) not engaging Wikipedia in dialogue before blocking the image, and (3) blocking the entire page rather than just the "offending" image.
Of course, the resultant publicity has only served to raise awareness of the picture which I'm willing to bet had very little interest until this misguided action by IWF.
I'm also concerned that my ISP (Virgin) chooses to offer me a "page cannot be displayed" message, rather than being honest and informing me of their co-operation with IWF.
IWF have made a mistake and should unblock the image immediately, then turn their attention to ridding the internet of genuinely illegal content.
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This action makes us in Britain seem like Orwellian people. How can we criticise the Chinese when our ISPs are behaving like this?
What next thought control? Who watches the watchers? I may find the image distasteful (I've not seen it), but if the police haven't ruled it illegal, then the IWF have no right to.
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The image wouldn't be illegal or it wouldn't have been released as an album cover - it was withdrawn because the band decided it was a mistake.
I suspect the IWF simply has workers who visit a large number of sites and click "ok, ok, ok, not ok, ok ok ok etc." without really thinking that hard about the legal context of an image.
Personally I'm against the blocking of these images anyway because if they're blocked you can't see them, but they're still there. The sites should be shut down, not blocked to the majority.
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Presumably all images of Nirvana's album "Nevermind" will also be getting censored? It does after all present the image of a naked child getting paid.
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Freedom without limits only leads to anarchy.
Maybe the process needs to be changed somewhat to take account of the fact that anyone can make a mistake, however the goal of the IWF is correct.
Comparing the ethical and correct (!) censorship of images the police have advised as illegal, to the Chinese system whereby all non-conformist thought is censored, is extremely misleading.
I agree the process that the IWF utilises needs to be adjusted, but so does the attitude of most of the doomsayers.
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How long before the IWF decide they don't like this blog criticising them and block this page from the internet?
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The problem isn't simply that the IWF are judge and jury here: it's that the only consultation it conducts over the potential illegality of an image is with the police, specifically the Met's child porn unit. It's perfectly understandable that any image of a naked child will, in their eyes, be potentially illegal.
However, a view that something is potentially illegal from the police is not the same thing as there being any likelihood of a prosecution being successful. The police, necessarily and generally rightly, err on the side of caution - but let's not mistake that natural caution as being a definitive judgement that an image is illegal.
In effect, the police are acting as both judge and jury in this case - something which, in any other sphere of law, would be rejected by the majority of people in this country.
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I have an original copy of the Scorpions LP in question somewhere in my old vinyl collection. It features the 'offending' cover - and I recall that no particular fuss was made about it back in 1976 when the album was released. It was just regarded as a 'Berlin' thing, with an element of mild shock attached, and little more.
It was a pretty good album, actually.
However, with all the fuss over the Wikipedia article, does this mean that the collector's value of said LP is now on the rise? I must dig it out and post it on eBay (with the cover image suitably 'Photoshopped' for decency's sake, naturally) and see how much it could earn me.
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@ morias (5): I believe in this country it is the courts that decide what is and is not illegal, not the police.
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As a Demon subscriber I see the image as a thumbnail on the main wiki page for the Virgin Killer album. I only get the notification that the IWF object and block the image on the image page itself, ie by clicking the image.
So I imagine this means that the IWF are no longer blocking the text on the page or that demon is being more selective in its blocking.
It also means, that for demon subscribers at least, the image as a thumbnail isn't blocked.
And for those of a nervous disposition that think their door will be knocked down and computer taken away for having looked at the image demon at least don't log attempts to view blocked images.
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Regardless of the actual image itself, there's nothing new either in the way this has been handled (heavy handedly) in effectively removing access to the surrounding text about the album to the (stated) majority of the UK populace and even, in effect, removing access to /discuss/ this on the relevant wikipedia talk page. Thankfully I'm not with one of those majority ISPs so I can at least still post/discuss there!
This is far from the only album cover likely to be included "within scope", so it'll be interesting to see where this goes next...
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Firstly:
"Potentially illegal" I would say is the key-phrase here. The image has been around for some considerable time and not been deemed illegal by the law-makers of the UK.
If the IWF want to change this, maybe they should pursue the matter through the UK courts. That way they are either vindicated or defeated. If they are defeated, then they must accept defeat.
I suspect that the IWF hasn't done it's homework either: Have they bothered to find out the age of the model when the photograph was taken?
Secondly:
Also I find it highly offensive that the ISPs involved automatically take what the IWF say as gospell. I suspect that they haven't done their homework either.
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I very much doubt the legality or morality of the censorship. I do not necessarily condone the image in question, but our very freedom is a stake here - first, distasteful images are blocked. Next, alternative political views may be blocked. Where does it end?
But on the internet, any of us can see whatever we want if we browse through a proxy server. A simple web search will bring up many on-line proxy servers. So ultimately the IWF is completely powerless to stop people visiting whatever web page they wish.
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It might be a fascinating case indeed, but it's not going to shed any light on anything if you treat it as a black and white two sided issue. It is not the "tireless child protectors vs the paranoid amoral libertarians" as your final paragraph seems to imply.
Blocking an entire article on a band because one of their album covers is distasteful? That's common sense? That's going to protect children, is it?
It seems these days that if you want to do something ill-thought out and dumb all you have to do is say "it's for the children" and anyone who disagrees with your idiotic plan will be branded a pervert.
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I am in favour of removing this image, it is distateful and I don't think it's necessary to show it.
However if I am understanding this rightly (and I may not be) it seems that the IWF is a self appointed, self-regulating group. Unelected and outside of government. Who are they to make such decisions on behalf of the entire population?
The slippery slope is the problem here:
Today - unacceptable album covers. Tomorrow - Fatty foods and anything non-christian. Who knows?
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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.
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This does smack of burning books and pulling the wool over peoples eyes. Its all well and good saying "thing of the children" but this is a catch-all argument, you could say pretty much anything because of this. The fact that this system exists at all terrifys me, as its not accountable and most people dont even know it exists it could be easily used to silence a political party or rights movement.
Add to this the fact that the Wikipedia article is not porn and exists only to inform about the album and its controvicy. Surley this would become farcical if it said "there was this thing on the cover but were not allowed to discuss it but people said it was really bad"
Oh and you can still buy the album (that versions no longer in print as far as i know but its curculated by collectors) legally in the UK
Nanny Orwell anyone?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Tip of the iceberg which leads down the innevitable road to the Thought Police. No unelected body has the right to tell me what is and is not illegal, full stop.
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Censorship is a crime against humanity. It is no better than what the catholic church did to Galileo and Coppernicus. It matters not whether the information/knowledge being censored is illegal or legal, what matters is that information/knowledge is being withheld from the human race by a select few that feel they should be the moral guardians for the entire population.
We need to stamp out this horrific crime against humanity.
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OK, let's censor the rest of the net then:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B0000073NK/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0
anyone want to ring Amazon? Or google?
What a feeble piece of crap this decision is. If this proves one thing, it's that censoring any area of the net is pointless as the content will be found elsewhere.
How about the wayback engine?
http://web.archive.org/web/20071101043048/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer
Pathetic. Try to spend time making sure people don't turn into paedophiles, stop condescending to all of us by censoring material in this manner.
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I'm in China right now. I can view the page concerned. I'm a BT Internet subscriber.
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Rory, a while ago you asked who polices the internet and I was so tempted to write back a witty comment along the lines of 'Er, the police police the internet' and I think that is something that holds true here.
Firstly, let me make it clear that protecting children is all good and well, but this is NOT the right way to go about it.
As previous commenter have already mentioned, the image in question depicting a naked pre-pubescent girl, is 'potential illegal'. I, as a human, am 'potentially' a murderer. Should some self appointed organization lock me up or prevent me from being around loving things for the potential of me murdering someone? I think not!
Laws are in place to prevent wrongdoing, I don't need the IWF 'protecting me'. It is a slippery slope. What's next? Physics resources banned for fear of someone making a dirty bomb.
Policing the internet is the responsibility of the police, not some self-appointed body. And even then, this country does not need branches of the Information Police opening up shop all over the place.
In other news, my good for nothing ISP appears to not be in bed with the IWF. So I'm free from transparent content filtering for the moment...
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What about Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy"? Both of those albums have naked children on the cover.
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The image in question is of a naked teenage girl in a sort of slightly reclined kneeling pose with the genital area obscured by a cracked glass effect. It will be all over the internet now and is on the Scorpions own website so the IWF have shot themselves in the foot by promoting viewing of it.
At worst this image would be classified as Level 1 under UK sentencing guidelines "Images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity" - penalty for possession of small quantities for personal use Fine or conditional discharge.
It is the Law Courts that decide what is within or without the law in the UK, and the CPS that decide what to prosecute. The IWF is a quango with no legal powers and the Police are not empowered to decide what is legal and what is not - they can only decide to take something to the CPS.
This week it is a 30 year old picture of a naked girl, next week it might be the BNP website or who knows what else that they or a "member of the public" deem offensive and censor.
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Already the articles on Wikipedia for both band and album have been updated to include this controversy.
I feel they could put a warning on the page (as they do with film and game spoilers) that some viewers may find the picture offensive.
At least the page is back online now, albeit without the picture.
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It is pity that the Wiki Admin reply has been downgraded to a hyperlink, which is not equitable treatment of the subject by the BBC.
The evidence that this is Big Brother acting ham-fistedly is that Wikipedia can be edited by the users, which includes the IWF, and has a disputes procedure intended to resolve such controversies. The IWF's action disregards their procedures, which is in itself offensive, and although I tend to agree that provocative and irresponsible material should not be promoted, especially if it encourages those with regretable affinities, none the less the IWF seems to have gone about this the wrong way - they should have deleted the image in question themselves, posted the police advice on the discussion page behind as justification, and notified the Wiki admin of their stance. Any reversion could then be blocked and the page put on watch to ensure editors of a controversial nature are discouraged.
Instead, the Wiki Admin report suggests the entire Wiki has been frozen, which is highly irresponsible behaviour on the part of the IWF as it blocks the work of serious academics who have no interest whatsoever in punk and paedophilia. Their action is disproportionate and besmirches their reputation.
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I think the IWF is acting illegally and have therefore blocked their site from our system.
I know it wont get us anywhere but you've got to think of the lawyers.
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Michelangelo depicts a naked David, in his famous sculpture, at the time he defeated Goliath. There is no certainty to his age at this time, with estimates ranging between 14 and 18. How long before a body like the IWF start deeming art like this as 'potentially illegal'?
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The image in question is all over the internet, as it almost invariably tops every list of "Worst album covers ever". It is bad taste on a legendary scale, but illegal child porn? I don't believe so. Besides if the Scorpions are guilty, then so are messers Clapton, Winwood et al for the similarly distasteful cover for the Blind Faith album, but of course, they are respected pillars of the British rock aristocracy and not a Teutonic heavy metal band...
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I can view the page [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]from CHINA !!! This is what the UK has become - more censorious than China.
Maybe the picture wouldn't be so offensive if the album wasn't entitled "Virgin Killer".
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The IWF action breaches Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights:
Article 10 ? Freedom of expression1
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
It would serve the IWF right for Wiki to ask for them to be closed, on the basis of their illegal action. They are not a judicial body, and so have acted without authority in breach of a constitutional law. End of story.
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Very good point about the Nevermind cover, will any pictures of it also be banned? What about paintings of cherubs?
PC brigade gone mad again
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but the point is, the wikipedia page for the scorpions has a link to an external site, which contains a link to the 'banned' image. which no doubt thousands of people will now be accessing to see what all the fuss is about.
Hmmm...
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I agree that this particular image should be censored. In an age when hard-core porn can be accessed so very easily, having an image like that in the public domain sends out confusing signals...
I wonder how the (alleged) 11 year old girl concerned would feel now about the cover?
While we are at it, they should remove the Blind Faith album cover (still on Wiki) and there's the gatefold centre of the Sex Pistols' Great Rock N Roll Swindle album - all showing similar images.
Likewise, there's a number of works by the painter Balthus could be considered just as 'worrying'.
But quite where this revisionist air-brushing-of-history ends, I don't know. If it helps stem the ever-growing 'normalization' of strong pornography, then it's a good thing. I think.
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Although the www is immediate and gives access to a wealth of knowledge hitherto unavailable to the person in the street, it should not be treated differently from any other medium of information.
Thus if we have banned an image (or page) on the internet, but can be found in other locations (libraies, shops etc) then these should be banned also.
The vast majority of people want the world to be a safe place for children and adults but to arbitrarily block pages is not necessarily the way to achieve this.
If the IWF ban information then they should be accountable. All Child Protection agencies are accountable so why not the IWF? Which part of government do they belong and who has the final say?
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The Wikipedia entry on the Internet Watch Foundation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation
"A staff of 7 people are responsible for this work..."
"The IWF makes available to supporting ISPs a blocklist of URLs which must be blocked, as part of the contract to obtain the list, the blocklist must not be reviewed by any human being, posing questions regarding accuracy and transparency."
So a group of 7 people make a decision between themselves - a decision that cannot be questioned or reviewed - or even the most basic of checks made.
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This kind of censorship is the thin end of the wedge, what will it be next?
I wonder if the Blind Faith album cover is also on the IWF's list...
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mileshayler: "I feel they could put a warning on the page (as they do with film and game spoilers) that some viewers may find the picture offensive."
They already do - because they have that disclaimer linked from every page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer .
(Whilst at first it may seem better to only include this for pages that might be "offensive", the problem is that this opens a can of worms in trying to decide whether someone somewhere might find something offensive - this case might be obvious, but other cases are not. Also due to the way Wikipedia is edited by anyone and continually updated, someone could insert something "offensive" at any time, so the disclaimer needs to be there for all articles.)
"At least the page is back online now, albeit without the picture." - which ISP is that? It's still blocked for me on Virgin Media.
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Is that the relatively obscure band that has sold over 75 million albums worldwide and had a double platinum album in the USA...?
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I am quite simply amazed. Well, that's not strictly true... if I am honest, I am not entirely surprised, just massively disappointed.
We preach about how much better we are than countries such as China, but I cannot fail to notice that they are:
- storming away economically whilst we collapse
- able to organise events to be proud of, such as the Olympics
- able to step up to be no1 in the world in sports at will
- not the ones declaring wars on any country that happens to have the wrong colour of skin
- supporting torture of prisoners (ahem, sorry 'enemy combatants')
- not overun with scandals about political funding, leaks, etc
And whilst they may censor - well, how many times has the BBC been gagged. Anyone remember as incident with a 'suicide' in the woods?
It's about time we stop considering ourselves above everyone else and look at the facts. We are just as oppressive or corrupt as anywhere else. The difference is that we try and tell ourselves we are not - which makes us possibly the worst of the lot.
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Re: Richard Starkey
How do you mean normilisation of pornography? Genuine question not intended to cause arguement btw. And also what do you view as strong?
Has there not been art for hundreds of years depicting the naked body? Statues, paintings etc?
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I can see the image, and I'm in a school.
I have no problem with the idea of blocking images of child pornography, but as an encyclopedia, the album art is what it is. Its from a 32 year old album. If it wasn't that big an issue in 1976 why is it now? Why are we creating more revisionist history?
We shouldn't censor history, and the IWF are suddenly this Orwellian organisation that tell us what is an isn't acceptable?
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My concern here goes beyond the actions of the Internet Watch Foundation. I am very concerned that there are different rules that appear to be applied to the internet verses print media.
Consider this in the context of the extreme pornography laws that come into force this year. Under these laws the possetion of an electronic copy on a computer of the Scorpions album cover would be sufficient to place the owner of that computer on the sex offenders register as a paedophile, whereas there is no legal issue with owning the same image on an album cover.
Another huge concern is that the user would not even had to intentionally download the image; most web browsers prefetch images and text from sites visited; this means that when the act comes into law at the end of this month, anyone who visited Wikipedia could be conviceted of having ilegal images on their computer.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I suspect my previous comment was far too full-on. (#21) I rather hastily posted links which was an oversight.
There are loads of other sites which still carry this image, including the internet wayback engine and (good lord) amazon.
The point is, it's point_less_ to try to censor a part of the internet - it's not a TV station, there are too many ways to quickly access the same information through publicly available search engines. The real risk is that if the IWF realise this, they'll start censoring the search engines, at which point you start having trouble getting useful information out of the internet (which is hard enough anyway)
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Reposting because my earlier comment was removed - I can only guess that it was because I linked to a stats page, which implicitly gave away the name away. Come on now - I can understand being wary about not linking to the article, but are the chilling effects so bad that we can't even mention the name? That in itself is a worry. But then hang on, how come other commenters have been allowed to do so? Reposting with URLs removed:
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I am in full agreement with the points made by David Gerard, and the point about how ISPs should be honest about the block rather than faking error messages. The BBC's Bill Thompson raised these issues years ago.
Another problem is that all accesses to Wikipedia (i.e., for any page) are being redirected by ISPs through a single IP address. This means that Wikipedia cannot distinguish between different users when it comes to detecting abusive edits, so they have had to block all edits from those who are not logged in (existing registered users can still edit).
From January, a new law will come into force criminalising possession of "extreme" pornography (also reported by the BBC here) - including acts between consenting adults (even staged/fictional acts, and screenshots from legal films). Government guidance has suggested that the IWF will also be handling this new law. This new law is far vaguer and broader than child porn law, so how many sites will be blocked because there is something the IWF think may "potentially" be "extreme"? Images that may potentially fall under the law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites, and whilst a prosecution for such sites may be unlikely, this shows that the IWF are not afraid to censor major websites, even if the context is clearly not abusive or pornographic.
Shouldn't it be up to the courts to decide what is legal or not? The IWF has no accountability, and offers no way to appeal incorrectly blocked material.
I'm glad that one mainstream UK media source has the balls to not only tell us the article, but link to the article in question. Consider, if this was really child porn, would any mainstream media source touch it with a bargepole? Would hundreds of thousands of people be rushing to see the image? Does anyone who claims this image is "child porn" really think anyone who's looked at it now deserves time in prison for possession?
The IWF claim that they go after "Child sexual abuse content". Is this an image of child sexual abuse? If a child was really abused, then why not go after the record company or band for producing this image? That they are in another country does not matter, due to international consensus on these laws. It's not like this is some unknown image - the source is clearly known. But if no crime was committed in the production, then it should not be censored.
@morias: "Comparing the ethical and correct (!) censorship of images the police have advised as illegal, to the Chinese system whereby all non-conformist thought is censored, is extremely misleading."
Who says it's correct? And isn't it the job of the courts to decide what's illegal, not the police? I'm sure that the police in China say that those things are illegal, too...
@theSliver: It appears that Demon are being more sensible, in that they don't block the main article page, and inform users why the image page is blocked. The other ISPs (I can confirm Virgin Media, at least) are not.
@-RobW-: I am in full agreement - the BBC is setting up a false dichotomy. It's possible to have freedom of speech, without giving up the fight against images of child abuse. Is this an image of child abuse?
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Regardless of whether the image should be censored, the mechanism used was seriously flawed. The resulting collateral damage has drawn a great deal of attention to a previously obscure image.
I hope that the ISPs concerned are making urgent efforts to ensure that their proxies do not continue to hide the original IP addresses of users.
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Hey IWF - you might want to get Google Images on that list.
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This is a really interesting debate. It comes down to taking the law into your own hands I guess. I have seen the image and agree that it is at the very least distasteful, but who makes the law in this country and who enforces it. The image in question has never been deemed "illegal" and the IWF are effectively acting without authority, and without any mandate to decide what should or should not be deemed unacceptable. I don't have an answer but worry that as a precedent it allows organisations to take the initiative and decide censorship on our behalf.
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@38 Ginger_Lizard
Ah, but at this moment in time it reads:
"The IWF compiles and maintains a blacklist, mainly of child pornography URLs, from which 90% of commercial Internet customers in the UK are filtered. A staff of 7 people are responsible for this work, and the director of the service has claimed that the analysts are capable of adding an average of 65-80 new URLs to the list each week, and act on reports received from the public rather than pursuing investigative research."
"Act on reports....rather than pursuing invesitgative research."???????
So, I'll take your word that it's "potentially illegal", and shan't check out its actual validity.
My god! if the police and courts acted in this manner, most of the population of the UK would be locked up!
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Oh and I expect blocks on "Nevermind" by Nirvana "Blind Faith" by Blind Faith and "House of the Holy" by Led Zeppelin to be forthcoming, as well as the arrests of Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood, Dave Grohl, Chris Novoselic, and the millions of people who brought these albums.
Oh and while we are at it, why don't we block any references to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita... and while we are there lets ban Death In Venice and Notes on A Scandal... and arrest Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. We may as well go as hysterical as the IWF over this one.
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The question is not about child pornography but about indecent images of children. By my personal standards I would agree that the image is an indecent one of a child, but who should judge which art is indecent and should be censored?
I think the IWF shouldn't be allowed to pass judgment on decency and should stick to the real issue of blocking child pornography. There are lots of reasons why an image or web page might be illegal: copyright violation, libel, the obscene publications act and so on. Do we also want the IWF blocking other *potential* violations of the law on our behalf?
I looked at their FAQ and apparently they maintain lists of other objectionable sites including racial hatred texts and sexual cartoon images. I'm shocked and disgusted to find that our Internet access is regulated on moral grounds in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese.
How can we judge their great firewall if they too have an unelected body that blocks sites found morally objectionable and in violation of their laws? Shocking.
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The question should be why did this band choose this image in 1976, not why are people posting online now, 32 years later!!!
They're censoring history!
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"Another huge concern is that the user would not even had to intentionally download the image; most web browsers prefetch images and text from sites visited; this means that when the act comes into law at the end of this month, anyone who visited Wikipedia could be conviceted of having ilegal images on their computer."
An absolutely massive point. There's a fandamental disconnect between lawmakers and the rapid pace of technology here. While I appreciate there would be grounds for appeal on this point at a trial, the point would be that a case like that should never go to trial in the first place: you think the CPS would view a defence of image cacheing and plausible? I don't.
And this applies in other areas too: malware - what about trojans acting as mail gateways? What if your PC is acting as a spam gateway for a bot net? You could be mailing thousands of pornographic images out per day? Combine that with a national database of email transactions and suddenly the finger starts to point at you.
This IWF business makes me very worried.
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This article has missed out a major effect of the censorship - the effect on editing.
A major feature of the Wiki is that it is built by anonymous editors from around the world, thus providing a true indication of what people think about a topic. This obviously leaves Wiki articles open to vandalism, so the Wiki team operate a vandal ban based on the IP addresses of submitters, which stops the few spoilers ruining the whole encyclopedia.
The IWF censorship works by directing all calls to the wiki through a single censoring point - this means that all editors will have the same IP address. So the Wiki vandal ban now applies to ALL the UK. Try to edit a wiki page, and you will be rejected.
I was contributing to a discussion on T H Lawrence on Friday night, when I suddenly lost the page I was editing. Nice one, IWF!
This record cover is NOT child porn. It may be indecent and tasteless, depending on your taste, but it is obviously nothing to do with child abuse. The unelected and unanswerable IWF have made a huge mistake here.
If we can make enough of a protest about this maybe we can slow down the inevitable collapse of our culture into an opressive state-directed tyranny....
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@47 Tony Byers:
Ok, so she looks, 12-14 - what is her actual age? Many pornography sites have images of women who look under 18 and are dressed in school uniform (oh and not censored by IWF), but are indeed 18+
If the image does in fact break the law, then yes censor it. No-one has challenged this in a bona-fide law-court.
I wonder what the woman (as she is now) thinks of all this? Maybe we should send Rory to do an interview........
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I don`t think the freedom of speech means there should never be limits placed on what can be accessed, and those enforced if necessary. Those contesting this by asking `has it been found illegal?` are being placed in the position of defending child pornography and pedophilia.
From memory of Scorpion album covers (they tended towards the sensational), the picture was of a naked child in a pose we associate with adult glamour magazines. Attitudes have changed a lot since the 1970s, back then there was still disbelief that child abuse could happen or that pedophiles existed. Today we know differently.
The argument `has it been found illegal?` doesn`t stand. Child sexual abuse, pedophilia, downloading child pornography etc clearly are illegal and this has the support of the vast majority. When someone is convicted of downloading the court doesn`t make its decision on the basis of whether individual images have been previously been found `illegal` or not.
Nor can a thin end of the wedge argument be used, claiming for example that this would lead to the banning of, say, Botticelli`s cherubs from the web, as there is a clear difference in depiction and intent that would be understood by both public and jury.
The IWF has been set up as a watchdog for reasons the vast majority of the public agree with; its remit is to make decisions; I`m quite happy to let it make those decisions; in this instance I think it was right.
I suspect the IWF and ISPs have a set course of action they take to block pages and simply applied this to the Wiki page.
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I'll also note that the image is freely available to view at the American and Japanese Amazon.
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Who decides which books we should burn ?
A very dangerous precedent.
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@peej
While we're at it, lets not forget The Blue Lagoon. Not only does it show naked pre-teen youngsters in some scenes, but it depicts pre-age-of-consent sex between teenagers, quite graphically.
Btw, for those saying 'this image needs to be banned', remember that intent is in the eye of the beholder, if you see the image of a naked person and see pornography, it's probably because the image is sexually arousing you.
Those of us that are NOT paedophiles are perfectly capable of looking at a photograph of a baby or pre-pubescant and NOT be sexual aroused, and not need the image to be 'banned' or labelled 'pornography' so that our delicate mental states can be maintained.
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To me, it seems absurd that the IWF feels the fight against child pornography starts with Wikipedia - an encyclopaedia whose job is not to decide what is and is not appropriate for the public to see, but provide objective information - instead of the multiple websites out there which are so easily accessible, or even the band itself for making the image in the first place. It's an organisation which has been in action for 12 years, and it still only stops less than 1% of cases? That stat alone speaks volumes about how hopelessly ineffective the organisation is at its job, and how much it needs reform.
This is aimed at media sensationalism to give itself some sort of publicity, while gaining a cheap shot at the libertarians.
As others have said, where does this stop? There are more obvious album covers out there - Nirvana's "Nevermind" is far more obscene than this artwork, yet it's one of the most well-known album covers of all time! Don't forget the infanticidal antics by the beloved Beatles on "Yesterday and Today"!
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Until this controversy I had never heard of the Scorpions or gone to their website.
Now I have and seen the image.
It's a bit tasteless by modern standards but there is much worse easily accessible anywhere on the internet.
More worrying is that IWF seem to be able to act as judge and jury without any accountability or legimacy.
By targeting the inoffensive Wikipedia rather than commercial sites which have the same image they look like bullies and cowards.
I fear that all they have done is raised the profile of this band; annoyed lots of people; and made the task of protecting people from real child pornography more difficult.
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I'd forgotten all about Virgin Killer, at worst it is kiddy porn and at best it is a distasteful piece of art.
What is the legal point on it?
I gather it has been deemed to contravene the obscene publications act?-
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What I find most amusing is that the BBC Newsarticle on this gives a link to the Scorpions website, which contains the image in question (with the usual disclaimer that the BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites). Before the IWF action hardly anyone apart from fans of the band would have seen this cover, now it is going to get millions of hits.
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Well I've just done a Google Image Search with the Strict Safe Search filter on. Strict... The highest level Google offers on search term filtering...
First 21 images
That album cover appears 8 times, including a lovely version from Valleywag with Jimmy Wales appearing in it.
I've spoke to Jimmy a few times, and he'll be very angry at this. I hope he speaks out about it.
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I suspect that they have not banned the cached page on Google. This is a hamfisted stupid censorship that simply brings the picture to the attention of people who would otherwise not have known about it.
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All seems a bit silly when you just have to pop along to amazon.com and see the album cover - and I'm sure it wlll be elsewhere too. Still, good publicity for The Scorpions although none of their albums will be on my Xmas list.
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TonyByers: "The simplest solution to get the Wikipedia page back is to put the re-released cover on there which is a picture of the five members of the band."
You're missing the point - Wikipedia have no obligation to change the image in response to the IWF, anymore than they would for some organisation in any other country. The image is a part of an article - it is notable as part of the controversy. Just imagine saying "The original article was rather controversial, but we can't show it to you because it was too controversial and got banned in another country"!
If the picture in question is obviously child porn, then the US authorities should deal with it. Come to that, prosecute the record companies in the first place for making it. At the least, the IWF shouldn't block clearly legal text, and they should be consistent with sites such as Amazon (not to mention what about all the books with this image, or the fact that you can legally buy the CD from UK stores).
jayfurneaux: "The argument `has it been found illegal?` doesn`t stand. Child sexual abuse, pedophilia, downloading child pornography etc clearly are illegal and this has the support of the vast majority."
That those things are illegal are not in dispute. The point of debate is whether this image constitutes "child sexual abuse", thus the argument that a court has not ruled it illegal, in 30 years of child porn law, is perfectly valid (not to mention that even if this image should be banned, there are plenty of other points that people have raised too).
"as there is a clear difference in depiction and intent that would be understood by both public and jury." I'm glad we don't need to bother with the courts anymore, we can just guess what they'll think! What's your opinion about the Nevermind cover, or Blind Faith?
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I remembered the Scorpions from my school days and think one or two of my friends may even have had this album but couldn't remember the cover. So, being curious - I thought I'd see if the wikipedia page was blocked for me and it was. It was, however, very easy to view both the page and the album cover for anyone who knows their way around the internet. I did find the image somewhat offensive (although the article certainly isn't), but certainly not worthy of a ban. The experience then made me realise that thousands of people will have done what I did this morning - decided to find out what the fuss was about. The net result is that thousands more people will have seen the picture today who otherwise would not have!
Seems to me that the do-gooders just shot themselves in the foot!
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Reposting in chunks because it I cannot fathom out why I keep getting blocked - apologies.
I am in full agreement with the points made by David Gerard, and the point about how ISPs should be honest about the block rather than faking error messages. The BBC's Bill Thompson raised these issues years ago.
Another problem is that all accesses to Wikipedia (i.e., for any page) are being redirected by ISPs through a single IP address. This means that Wikipedia cannot distinguish between different users when it comes to detecting abusive edits, so they have had to block all edits from those who are not logged in (existing registered users can still edit).
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@59 Rainbowfire.
I thought the law stated that it is illegal if the person appears to be underage (though I may be wrong). I admit that there is a contradiction between this and porn site with women dressed up as school girls. Where the boundary between the two cases is I don't know. Art and porn very closely linked.
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From January, a new law will come into force criminalising possession of "extreme" pornography (also reported by the BBC here) - including acts between consenting adults (even staged/fictional acts, and screenshots from legal films). Government guidance has suggested that the IWF will also be handling this new law. This new law is far vaguer and broader than child porn law, so how many sites will be blocked because there is something the IWF think may "potentially" be "extreme"? Images that may potentially fall under the law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites, and whilst a prosecution for such sites may be unlikely, this shows that the IWF are not afraid to censor major websites, even if the context is clearly not abusive or pornographic.
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Whilst I have no problem with the IWF or removing illegal websites from the public domain, this has overstepped the mark.
It seems ridiculous that with "moderate safe search" on you can access at least 20 pictures of the offending album cover on google, uncensored.
Why the IWF saw fit to remove the whole article is beyond me. An organisation acting Judge, jury and executioner in this day and age is unacceptable.
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Shouldn't it be up to the courts to decide what is legal or not? The IWF has no accountability, and offers no way to appeal incorrectly blocked material.
I'm glad that one mainstream UK media source has the balls to not only tell us the article, but link to the article in question. Consider, if this was really child porn, would any mainstream media source touch it with a bargepole? Would hundreds of thousands of people be rushing to see the image? Does anyone who claims this image is "child porn" really think anyone who's looked at it now deserves time in prison for possession?
The IWF claim that they go after "Child sexual abuse content". Is this an image of child sexual abuse? If a child was really abused, then why not go after the record company or band for producing this image? That they are in another country does not matter, due to international consensus on these laws. It's not like this is some unknown image - the source is clearly known. But if no crime was committed in the production, then it should not be censored.
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@morias: "Comparing the ethical and correct (!) censorship of images the police have advised as illegal, to the Chinese system whereby all non-conformist thought is censored, is extremely misleading."
Who says it's correct? And isn't it the job of the courts to decide what's illegal, not the police? I'm sure that the police in China say that those things are illegal, too...
@theSliver: It appears that Demon are being more sensible, in that they don't block the main article page, and inform users why the image page is blocked. The other ISPs (I can confirm Virgin Media, at least) are not.
@-RobW-: I am in full agreement - the BBC is setting up a false dichotomy. It's possible to have freedom of speech, without giving up the fight against images of child abuse. Is this an image of child abuse?
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China have their Great Firewall of China. We have Hadrians Firewall!
http://www.hadriansfirewall.co.uk
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It would be better if the whole of WP was blocked; it's just garbage that clogs up almost every Google search with lame articles written by unemployed kooks and cranks.
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We are born naked, and to proscribe images of children in their natural state is absurd. The problem here is with over-prescriptive legislation that makes this quite innocent image illegal, even though it did not involve any exploitation or abuse, according to its subject, and even has a "fig leaf". To censor this image is absurd, but it is an illegal image under New Labour, and the IWF is just doing its job.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin:
"He who gives up freedom for security deserves neither."
A principle which the present UK government has repeatedly legislated against, obliterating British traditions of personal freedom and responsibility.
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Reply to jdkoke273 (no.44)
What I mean about the normalization of porn is how 'strong' porn (ie showing actual sex) can be accessed so easily these days - it's no longer just the 'randy' Benny Hill-style page3 approach to titillation that I grew up with in the 70s, it's full-on hard-core porn (quite often with an emphasis on humiliation) that is becoming more and more mainstream, and that's the kind of stuff kids are growing up with now.
So if that sort of thing is getting 'normalized' (ie accepted as mainstream) then, presumably, so will pictures of nude children.
True, art is full of nude children - but I can't think of a single painting with a title along the lines of 'Virgin Killer'.
Scorpians? Art? I don't think so.
It's FINE to revise things, we move on, we learn, we improve as a society.
Think how much condemnation Bill Wyman would have got if his affair with a 13 year old had surfaced now - he'd get the Gary Glitter treatment for sure. Times change.
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Let me see. 'Virgin Killer' was release in the 1970s, roughly 30 years ago.
It was considered 'distasteful' in some countries and the sleeve was swapped.
All of a sudden, the IWF get upset, having found the image on Wikipedia, even though its available via Google images.
So, why block one page when the image is everywhere? Since the image has been visible for three decades, the actions of the IWF only serve to show them as self-appointed, intefering busy-bodies, which I very much doubt is how they'd rather be shown.
Get a grip, will you.
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"Accepting the need" for *anything* is a dangerous first step down a road to perdition.
If they *have* to censor us (and I'm not convinced of the need) perhaps using the grey matter first would help.
An album cover, however objectionable, is produced by the thousand and, in the case of "Nevermind" by Nirvana, in the millions.
By extension, does owning either of the albums consitute possession of child pornography? If it DOES then I am guilty as charged. If it doesn't, then why block the image at all.
Once again, messed up thinking. It's a trait we Brits are actually pretty good at.
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Firstly I used to have a copy of this Scorpions album whose cover depicts a (broken) glass covered picture of a naked young girl. The girl's modesty is preserved by a strategically placed crack in the broken glass.
In this age of Orwellian political correctness, it might not be in the best taste but the cover was made years ago when this degree of witch hunt about child images did not exist. There is no way that this image could possibly be rated as CP even by the strictest standards otherwise you might as well say that ALL pictures of naked children are banned even when you cannot see their genitals. What utter tosh from the IWF who are just seeking to force their political views onto other people. I am a father of two primary school children and fear for their safety more from the Orwellian State that the UK is becoming than from Internet predators.
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Blind Faith's debut album cover contains a similar image, however, it can still be viewed. At least be consistent.
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The offending cover is still on the Japanese version - which I bought in HMV in Tokyo last year. I guess they'll be blocking album covers by Blind Faith and Led Zeppelin too.
The Scorpions cover (unlike the Blind Faith one with its budding boobs) obscures the genitalia of the girl with a strategically placed cracked glass effect. Most of their covers are risque so where is the censorship going to start and stop?
I thought we had a nanny state, and enacted legislation for such things and didn't rely on ISPs to be our moral guardians.
And the Scorpions are hardly obscure or a 70s act. Very much alive and current, still selling out all over the world. At their commercial height in the 80s actually. Selling a great deal more records that obscure acts like Take That and Cliff Richard worldwide.
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I am mostly intrigued that either Orange isn't a member of the IWF, or the fact that this image is no longer on the Wikipedia page for the band. Though it is still on the Wikipedia page for the album, neither of which I dare link to but which are still perfectly accessible.
If paedophiles had really been forced to resort to scouring wikipedia for album images I think we could all feel slightly happier unfortunately, I doubt this is that case, and more I feel a piece of idiotic censoring. Given the band weren't arrested at any point in the last 30 yearsf or it, I assume that the IWFs argument that it needed to be blocked until the legality of the imagecould be checked is a little bit fanciful.
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The Internet Watch Foundation is typical of many organisations of its ilk, in that it was to feel like it's doing something, even if what it does serves absolutely no useful purpose. What does censoring the mainstream web achieve? Every new report that we read about a paedophile ring being busted tells us that they use increasingly sophisticated encryption technologies in order to remain undetected. The reason: any real paedophile who tries to use the mainstream web to find and download child pornography is going to be detected and arrested rather quickly.
Which suggests that the true purpose of the IWF is to censor the internet for the majority of us who have absolutely no prurient interest in such pictures. The IWF is not censoring to avoid the images falling into the hands of the minority who are child-abusers, the are censoring the internet for the majority who aren't. This is a form of censorship that I cannot support: a self-appointed body with no legal jurisdiction deciding what I can and cannot see. I do not need them "protecting" me from the images and my viewing any images does no more damage to the subject than the censors at the IWF viewing it. I see little justification for the actions of the IWF, as I am quite capable of deciding for myself what is distasteful and what isn't.
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@71 _mdwh_
Take this to the extreme; what if someone has posted pictures of child porn - not just borderline cases like this? I'm sure most would hope that it would be blocked or taken down.
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Well, the page and image are in the Google cache.
I don't find the image particularly bad, although it's not my cup of tea at all. It's somewhat tasteless and that's all.
Of more concern is organisations like the IWF. Personally, I'd ban such unelected bodies from having any say in the matter. The trouble is that these days we are being dictated to by a minority of "child minders" in the likes of the IWF, NSPCC, etc. They've helped more in creating a sense of paranoia in society than actually doing anything useful about real child exploitation.
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The legality of an image must be decided by the courts.
NOT a self-appointed internet Nanny that uses the threat of "potential illegality" to scare ISP into doing what they want (whilst leaving the same image on Amazon alone, because Amazon have big scary lawyers to look after them).
This is a very dangerous path.
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It is a very slippery slope, when a body that doesn't have any real accountability starts blocking sites and images on the whim of a single user and the half-hearted statement by the police, then you may as well switch off the internet.
Nobody wants depravity on the net, but on the other hand, I can buy DVD box sets of old TV series from the 70's that even despite Mary Whitehouse's best efforts compared to today's TV was quite hard hitting.
These "bodies" need to be open to a lot more scrutiny, as if it wasn't bad enough that you're being filmed 24/7 in the UK these days, but even the internet is being censored.
I'm glad I'm out of it.
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Unless the IWF intend to trott out their censorship/dictatorship across the entire internet, you can still find this on a google search by images as I have just found out. Pretty useless action really.
Like other contributor's, my thoughts are on where will the line be drawn?
Bow Wow Wow's Annabelle Lewin naked on the front of their album - she was 15 at the time if I remember correctly.
Nirvana's Nevermind as already mentioned a couple of times.
There are others I'm sure.
Another self-important group of pious do-gooders is the last thing this country needs.
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@77
Yes, it should be up to the courts - not the IWF, not the ISPs, and certainly not some flat footed copper that the IWF happens to call and say 'is this kiddie porn? yeah? ok'.
Even further to that, it should be up to the courts ON EACH CASE. Censorship doesn't solve anything, 'we're banning this so you can't break the law' is not a valid argument in any way or shape.
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Rory,
Maybe it's worth checking if the Radio One record library has a copy of this album. We wouldn't want Auntie caught in possession of illegal images, eh? Just imagine the BBC, Amazon, Google and all the other services that host this image getting busted.
IWF = WTF
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Hi
As has been stated in previous messages here, this image has not been declaired illegal in any westen country, yet the IWF deem to add this page to the list of blocked sites, I find this to be totally unacceptible that the IWF should do this to an image that has not been declired illgeal and is also availble in other published formats round the world, seem very heavy handed.
Another user has said what next the banning of the BNP website, this could happen under the IWF remit thay can add sites to the list if thay are hosted in the UK and publish rasist material, so if the site of the BNP was to put any such matrial on there site either delibritaly or maliscously, the IWF could indeed add them to the banned list, so any member ISP's would as thay have done with the wikki page block access to the site.
I dont object to the work of the IWF in produceing the list of banned sites where the site is blatantly peddling child porn as this would stop me or any one else accidently accessing the site(S).
But i think in this case the reaction of the IWF has been over the top and will ultimately do more harm to there reputaion than good.
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IWF have a job to do, fair enough. But it should be open and transparent - to the extent that ISPs should admit this goes on, though I imagine there might be reasons for returning a fake error message, so that more sophisticated computer users are not encouraged to bypass that route to get to the porn.
OTOH, I understand that most paedophiles have moved on and use p2p to spread their images. How likely is it that a simple, open website is going to show child porn to a casual browser?
The image in question is distasteful, certainly, as is the Blind Faith cover, but times have changed since then, and it's unlikely such images would be used again. I think they're images that should be available, but contextualised - the debate should be had about them, and why they are distasteful.
Does this mean that anyone who owns the original cover art is now a paedophile who owns child porn? Are those of us who nipped off to see what the fuss is about, and who have prefetch images on our computer now in possession of child porn? Are in fact makers of child porn, as downloading is making for legal purposes?
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haveing a"nonegovernmental" GESTAPO is worse than appointed henchmen. Thought police is the beginning of the end ,as discribed by George Orwell.
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Dear jdkoke273 at no. 44
Well, I tried to reply to your question. I was convinced I even had a reasonably balanced argument going.
But it seems I got censored (no. 88). How ironic.
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@74 Tony Byers
"Art and porn very closely linked."
Absolutely!
So Nirvana's Nevermind: Art or Porn?
Michelangelo's David: Art or Porn?
Why do we seem to take it that the male form is art and the female form is porn?
I believe that porn is for sexual arousal and art is, erm, for art's sake.
I have been involved in a case where some photographs of a female were recovered from a computer (I work in IT). An investigation started by Social Services ended when it was found that, whilst appearing to be underage, it was discovered that the woman was in fact 19. Proceedings were dropped. She was one of nature's "smaller" women and had good makeup.
You can't prosecute someone for looking younger than they actually are...... it would but L'Oreal and Olay out of business.
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"a potentially illegal image" is NOT sufficient justification.
That's not how the legal system works.
There's an awful lot of difference between "I think it might be illegal" and "It is illegal".
We have laws and a legal system to determine the legality or otherwise of things - and the principle that should be applied is that that which is not illegal is, by default, legal.
Determination of legality is not the job of the police services, nor self appointed watchdogs.
We have a Parliament to make these decisions and frame the necessary laws and definitions.
Personally I don't find the image in question offensive, or attractive. It's just an image. Questionable taste, maybe, but hardly worthy of such arbitrary action!
Indeed, it's more likely the action taken thus far is in fact illegal...
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All the (somewhat self-important) commentators on the role and remit of the IWF would do well to actually read a bit before jumping upon their high horses. The IWF does exactly what it says on their tin, and it does it within the remit of a Memorandum of Understanding" with the (elected, I believe..) government pursuant to the Sexual Offences act. They assess suspected child abuse image content that they are made aware of (by whatever means), with appropriate processes, training and advice from lawyers and the police. (incidentally the term "child pornography" is a flawed one, in my opinion - an image of a child in a sexual context is an image of abuse taking place, not pornography proper). If they believe that it is likely to be illegal they make ISPs aware of it so that they (the ISPs) can choose to prevent access to it. This may be seen as preventing "active" access by people desiring access to the content, or as preventing accidental access by ISP customers who would rather not run the risk of (being likely to) break the law by "making or possessing an image" (the crime in question).
The original album cover was investigated and considered likely to be illegal in the UK (in 1976) so was replaced with an alternative before the full release. The image in question is definitely one involving sexualising a child and as such is indeed probably illegal to possess or "make", I would suspect.
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@90
If someone had posted full-blown child porn images...
Then the laws should be enacted that apply to the person doing the distribution. Censorship is still not the answer, the images don't go away magically because you stop (some) people from seeing them.
Treat the distributor to the full penalty of the law, remove them from being hosted, but censoring the web is not the answer.
As I have said before, censorship is a crime against humanity, wherease child pornopraphy is a crime against individual(s).
Censorship is ALWAYS the greater evil.
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What does this furore and incompetent action taken by IWF tell us?
First, that an unelected and apparently unaccountable body, advised by the Met, can without judicial oversight attempt incompetently to censor what might be seen online. Without success! The offending image is but 2 clicks away from the BBC news article, and all over the internet.
Second, ISPs (mine included) are encouraged to lie to their customers by displaying false 404 Error pages rather than be truthful.
Third, and like it or not, we really are heading towards a Police State. Next they'll be taking lessons from China!
I'd never heard of The Scorpions before today, but thanks to IWF, I've now seen that picture and IF that's "child abuse" then I'm a monkey's uncle It's Nanny Statism taken to the extreme!!!
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This case illustrates why censorship of the internet is wrong without checks and balances. Eliminating criminal activity is not the same thing as applying blanket thought crime rules. It appears that in this case the information is in the form of a 30 year old album cover image which has been censored by blocking a non-commercial encyclopedia web site whilst at the same time the album cover is visible and the contents still for sale on Amazon. This brings the whole idea of censorship as a method of eliminating criminality into disrepute. I for one will continue to reject censorship whilst it is being applied so stupidly. Given the opportunity I would sack the people responsible.
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A lot of people have a mistaken understanding of this whole situation.
The IWF do not block content. You can therefore not have any complaint about the IWF stopping you from viewing anything. They merely maintain a blocklist which ISPs may choose to use to filter traffic they do not deem appropriate to travel across their network.
Which brings us to the ISPs - you choose to use their service, which is a private service. You are permitted to use it, in accordance with the rules they set because you pay a fee. They are free to set whatever rules they feel like - the market will decide what restrictions people will bear/demand.
If you have an issue with the blocklist then take it up with your ISP. They choose to use it, and you are a paying customer. You can choose to pay somebody else, and if a large enough number of customers actually do this (rather than just spout hot air about it) they may change their stance in some way.
If you just want to whine about something on the internet however, then you are free to do so, but don't expect anything to change.
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I agree that the image is distasteful but at the time it was considered acceptable and the album is still available so it cannot be an illegal image. Surly there is a more organised way of dealing with this type of issue/nonissue. Where do we draw the line on historical censorship? My ISP (Virgin) has blocked the image on Wiki but not on Amazon.
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It's a good thing the affected site was Wikipedia.
The law of averages suggests that Wikipedia's Scorpions page is not the first innocent page to have had heavy handed treatment.
So this is an opportunity, Wikipedia's editors also fight illegal porn being posted on their site, perhaps Wikipedia and the IWF could get together and work out a procedure that protects freedom of speech and doesn't hurt innocent sites.
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"Relatively obscure"? The Scorpions were once one of the biggest rock bands in the world. I guarantee that pretty much anyone in the developed world will be able to recognise more than one of their tunes should it be played to them...
As for the fuss...it's been done to death I can see, but at what point do you stop? Blind Faith, Led Zeppelin, Amen, Michealangelo, Da Vinci. I always thought the alternative term for an album sleeve was "cover art". If it is art, who is anyone to censor it?
When does the bookburning start?
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The Idea of the internet when it was first dreamed up was to give freedom of information to all.
I.E. it should NOT be policed
There should only be one type of censorship and thats self censorship, you dont like it switch it off, go else where, dont listen.
I agree that illegal site i.e. childporn or scamming site should be closed when discovered but information is just that information.
I know of site that give info on making a nuclear bomb. but unless u r making one what is the problem with have this knowledge.
1984 coming to you soon.
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Guess what the most viewed page on Wikipedia is now :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Popular_pages
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@_mdwh_
I'm at work, don't know what ISP, sorry.
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Forgetting art for a moment and focusing on popular culture...
For example:
We never see It Ain't Half Hot Mum repeated anywhere on UK TV, not because it isn't funny anymore, but that it seems too racist by today's standards.
And there's a line in Fawlty Towers in which the Major uses a derogatory word for Indian people - that's been rubbed out from today's re-runs because it's again, too racist by today's standards, though presumably it was fine for broadcast 30 years ago.
Same with this LP cover.
Paul McCartney recently revised the Beatles Let It Be album, George Lucas remakes whole chunks of his Star Wars films... etc etc
What once seemed OK, no longer seems OK: change it, rework it, rub it out, forget it was ever there...
This is as much a debate about revising history as it is about censorship.
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Why just pick on wikipedia?
Why not Amazon, Google, Ebay, BBC and other major organisations?
Because they have the money to sue the IWF into digital oblivion where wikipedia does not.
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The biggest issue isn't that the offending image is blocked (or even the entire album's entry), but that now all users of those Internet Providers show as one of seven IP Addresses on Wikipedia as we're forced to access it through a system that monitors every page on wikipedia we view.
Yes, the government will now be able to go back and watch me try to get from Beans to Hiroshima in seven wiki-links or less. That's a huge loss of civil liberties snuck in under anti child porn legislation.
Block the offending image, sure. But there's no way wikipedia users as a whole are a great enough risk to warrent monitoring their wiki-use.
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The one of the worst features of this case is the silent manner in which the ISPs are censoring (and it is censorship, despite how much we wish to avoid the negative connotations) these pages. There are around 12,000 pages banned, but no transparency.
There is no publically available list. At least the catholic church's List of Prohibited Books was visible censorship. (And provided generations a good starting point from which to discover books that were worth reading.)
If this is being done, as the IWF has suggested, for "user's protection" surely we should be informed of the circumstances under which we are being 'protected', and be given an opportunity to opt-out of that protection?
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What you're saying here then is that the IWF have been doing this, acting self-appointedly a la Mary Whitehouse, for quite some time. Now the IWF has been shown to have made what is in my view an error of judgement which affects one of the most popular sites on the web.
If this image is indeed illegal then why haven't the music stores been taken to task? Others have mentioned the cover of Nirvana's Never Mind - surely that must also constitute "potentially illegal" material as well. Where is the consistency here?
ISPs who criticise the IWF will get branded as doing nothing to prevent child abuse so they're going to keep their mouths shut.
If the image has been ok since 1976 then why the sudden furore about it now?
Let's have a full and open discussion about the IWF, what it does, whether it has any accountability and why ISPs take the IWF's word for content being classed as illegal. Surely an organisation with such power to demand and get ISPs to censor should have some degree of accountability.
RJBrad doesn't seem to realise that the IWF is preventing people from accessing the image by placing it on their blacklist. They have a case to answer. The image might not be all that tasteful but it isn't child porn.
One thing is for sure: thanks to the IWF's handling of this, the image they sought to block is now the most popular one on the internet.
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This entire debate is absurd. I can't see how ANY image on Wikipedia can be "illegal" in this way.
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. This gives it a right to quote parts of text based "intellectual property" and low resolution thumbnails of image based "intellectual property" - the usual suspects in internet censorship.
It also has a right to publish brief summaries of legal disputes and trials - complying with the reasonable restrictions placed on a free press that guarantees fair treatment by the courts.
It does not have a right to reveal classified government information where there is no "need to know" or invasive personal information where there is no "public interest" information. But this is not what it has been charged with.
This image is ONLY an image already in the public domain. No mere image can in itself promote illegal acts e.g. child abuse. Even if it could be proved that the presentation of images de-facto condoned illegal acts, that is in itself not illegal.
A good example is the Bible or the Qu'ran. Few would justify the banning of either from the internet. Yet both texts condone slavery, genocide, and child rape. As well as "giving the appearance" of promoting them among their followers today. I would rather people read the Qu'ran for themselves than to have a "Grand Inquisitor" decide that, as it promotes the killing of Jews in Medina, only the Bible, which promotes the killing of Jebusites in Jerusalem, should be allowed.
I see no "protection" to children resulting from censorship of images associated with an encyclopaedia. All I see are self-appointed "Taliban" equating a knowledge of evil with a commission of evil.
It is also difficult to define just how children could be protected though censorship of images that "could be used" by the paedophile. You only need look at the "Taliban" mentality in Saudi Arabia, where women forbidden by the "morality police" from inducing lust in men are even more likely to be raped than the women of countries without a "morality police".
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Look at the number of comments on this topic compared to the number of comments on previous topics. This is an important and very emotive issue in this country today, and suggests to me that people feel that censorship in the UK is increasing very much against the wishes of their wishes. Prime Minister take note !
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To RJBrad
The problem is that ALL of the major ISPs and DNS hosts accessible from UK ISPs did this at once making a switch of ISP useless.
As a Linux user/system administrator/developer (Red Hat and Ubuntu) with a fairly good knowledge of web systems, I am quite capable or working around this proxy if I wanted to - but I should not have to. Anyone dealing with illicit material (whether dodgy images, bank details, drug dealing etc) will use encrypted links/anonymous or semi-anonymous proxys or even Freenet and be immune to this anyway.
Although the IWF cannot ban pages per se - they can in effect by the threat of government action if an ISP fails to implement one of their recommendations. As an unelected advisory body, the IWF should not be able to dictate what the general public say and do.
All this has done is draw attention to the Scorpions album cover and accomplish precisely the opposite of what the IWF intended (which serves them right for interfering when it was unnecessary).
As a response to TonyByers, the whole point of Wikipedia is that it can be edited by anybody and if a real CP image had been posted then it would have been censored by others who spotted it (which has already happened I believe). In addition, anyone who alters Wikipedia has their IP address logged - of course this now fails for the UK as everybody is going through one of two addresses. What utter crass stupidity (of the IWF - no offense intended to TonyByers).
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Whilst I appreciate the concerns Wikipedia has over the attempts to effectively censor content such as this album cover, I can't quite let slip from my mind my personal experience attempting to update Wikipedia articles myself - something I understood was fundamental to Wikipedia's ethos. Frequent attempts at updating articles has resulted in me being advised that I have been banned from updating pieces on the network and that I need to submit my application in writing so that someone somewhere can assess whether or not I am a valid contributor. Doesn't seem very web2.0 to me ..
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The sad thing about all this - is the way the ignorant masses are manipulated by insignificant entities like the band "scorpions" simply for their own PR benefit.
In this case the unthinking "state machine" (or IWF + Police) in pitched battle against all the "lefty liberal weeners" (most of the people on this blog + wiki techno geeks) are actually only giving a net result of extra PR for the band.
In the same way terrorists make millions of people sit up and take notice of their stupid petty little problems, this band is making millions of idiots read their name by creating a furore about nothing.. If only we all had better things to do in our lives, then we wouldn't care about rubbish like this, or end up with Radio presenters (like Johnathon Ross) getting suspended because 30,000 people manage to get on their high horses about something they should never even have known about as it was never intended for them..
CHILL OUT - and get back to your day jobs!
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Do we know if there are petitions against this. The IWF obviously do not represent the country and its beliefs.
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As someone who lives in the U.S. , I have access to the offending image (for now). The album is named "Virgin Killer" (1976) and has a picture of a young girl (8/9 years old) sitting against a black background propped up with her arms behind her in the nude. The artwork includes an area of broken glass over her crotch that obscures this area of the image. Conveying the theme of the albums title as well as self censoring the image.
Now the question is this; are other works, such as Peter Paul Rubens to suffer the same fate? I'm not saying that this album cover is high art by any means. However Balthasar Klossowski de Rolas work was just as revealing as this.
As for the Scorpions being an obscure band, I must assume that either the writer simply wasn't a fan or that they weren't nearly as popular in the U.K. as they were here.
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Who appointed the IWF as moral arbiter of my internet habits?
I have no interest in this image or the band "The Scorpions" anyway, so it's not the content that upsets me, it's that my ISP takes it upon themselves to use some moralistic third party to filter what I can and can't do over the connection I'm paying them for.
This has to stop.
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The UK.
No better than China. Its a sad day to say it... but now we are censoring like they do. Soon we'll be censoring against political opinion and will stymie free speech.
This country is getting more and more opressive, thank you Labour Government.
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This is how all Stalinist governments work.
First they choose to censor something that most people would find reasonable to censor, such as the image of a naked child.
Before you know it, all wikipedia pages relating to opposition politicians and opposition parties will also be unavailable.
I see IWF are 'supported' by both the Home Office and the Dept of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, enough said !
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when will the powers that be realise that censoring the internet is a waste of time as people have already pointed out on this blog there are always ways to get round it... all the IWF has done is ensure many more people have seen the site because of the publicity given.... the album cover is not pornographic, or illegal, are they going to start censoring famous paintings? the IWF only make themselves look foolish by such action.
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Post #8, I suspect if you were to offer the album for sale now it would be considered trading in CP and therefore you would be arrested, charged and put on the SOR, probably best to keep it in the loft for the time being and let the fuss die down a bit!
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Like most people, as a result of this story, I have now searched out and seen the image. I was quite shocked and I cannot see that today such an image would be tolerated on a new piece of work. However, it was 1976 when it was printed, at a time when we were not so hysterical about issues such as this.
As with most 'difficult' issues today, the actions of these bodies are determined mostly by people whose approach is not "what is reasonable in these circumstances?", but "how can I best cover my a*se?".
Our freedom of speech is mostly threatened by people who regulate our lives to protect their own.
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RJBrad @ 170: Surely it is YOU that is fundamentally missing the point here?
The IWF maintain the blocklist, so therefore why was this page on Wikipedia added to the list?
It shouldn't have been on the list to start with. It's an image that is over 30 years old and was replaced by The Scorpions themselves on subsequent releases. The page was about an album with a potentially contentious cover. Neither the IWF or the legal system in this country has the ability to determine whether 'Joe the Paedo' gets his (or indeed her) rocks off by looking at a young girl on an album on a global information website. No wonder Wikipedia are upset, it also casts doubts and aspertions on their own internal monitoring systems.
The real arugment here is about yet another group of self-appointed, pious, politically correct idiots who run around with their hands over their ears like children refusing to listen to reasoned argument, whilst continuing to spout "It's for your own good and safety", when in reality they don't know anywhere nearly enough about the subject or medium they are "policing" to actually be effective and sensible in what they do.
It's an ill-informed moral crusade too far and that's what has got everyone's gander up.
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I'm on Orange and can still see the image on the page for the album. Yay for ISPs that don't take the law into their own hands!
It's quite pathetic though that only a handful of ISPs have blocked this image - they're not achieving anything if other people on different ISPs can view it.
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Have any of you actually looked at the image? It is clearly intended as paedo-erotica and should therefore have been banned on publication and its publishers prosecuted.
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O2 are deleting threads on their customer forums if anybody mentions this subject.
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I suspect that the public at large either don't care or will just agree with the IWF's assessment and subsequent actions. Very few will analyse the motives or (lack of) thinking behind it.
This is not confined to the internet, but I think people are quite happy to let someone else act as moral (or ethical, social, etc) guardian and take responsibility, without asking too many questions.
And so another bad precedent is set.
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All that the IWF have achieved with their blundering action, aided and abetted it would seem by PC Plod of the Met is to generate huge interest in this image.
I realise that I'm not allowed to post the url here, but I've been looking at a Swedish site which has a tool for tracking the number of hits that any particular Wikipedia article gets. Until yesterday the "Virgin Killer" page was chugging along at about 500/600 hits per day. Yesterday, 7/12/2008, it got 130849 hits. Anyone care to take bets on the number of hits by the end of today?
I wonder why? Seems to me that the IWF must be responsible for potentially corrupting over an eighth of a million people by directing their attention to view what the IWF consider to be child abuse. Fools and incompetents!
All that the IWF have achieved is to demonstrate their utter uselessness, no matter how noble their aims might appear.
And for the record, I do not consider the image to be one of child abuse.
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It is absolutely clear that people who have the motivation to search for child pornography will be totally unaffected by this petty censorship of a legal internet site.
So the censors are making their judgments on behalf of the rest of us, who of course have no illegal interest in such images and can see them merely as an art form.
The problem would appear to be within the minds of these deviants, and the general blocking of images such as these will do little or nothing to dissuade their interest in them.
In the meantime I would prefer to make my own mind up as to what I can view and not have such a right denied to me.
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nellie @ 134: Yes I have and I don't think many people here are saying that it is in good taste.
The Scorpions did change it on re-releases admitting that it was a mistake.
Incidentally, the fictional album "Smell The Glove" by the equally fictional "Spinal Tap" sprang to mind.
Interestingly I've just tried searching for this on Google and all of the images slots are blanked out including the page about it on Wikipedia. Does this mean that satire (you know - as in NOT real but making fun of reality) has also been censored?
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What I find most worrying about all this is the total lack of any due process. "Potentially illegal" is one thing, but is it actually illegal? That, surely, is for a properly appointed court of law to decide, not some self-appointed body.
If it's illegal, it should be removed from Wikipedia (and I'm sure Wikipedia would be only too happy to do so if a court ruled it to be illegal). If it's not, what gives the IWF the right to decide whether people can see it or not?
At least there is a ray of sunshine in that not all ISPs use the IWF list. If enough people switch ISPs as a result of this, maybe they'll start to get the message.
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I find it quite interesting that while Wikipedia was blocked, the Amazon.com page for the album which has 3 copies of the original cover was not blocked.
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Part of the issue is in the defining of words like "offensive" or "indecent", and indeed what people choose to be offended by. The fact is that pretty much anything out there is going to offend someone.
Nakedness in itself is not offensive. It is, of course, perfectly natural. Children, who usually suffer from far less inhibition than adults, generally have no problem with it because it doesn't naturally enter their minds that there is anything wrong with it, per se. We have religion, to a large degree, to thank for fostering the notion of shamefulness where the naked human form is concerned.
Personally, I don't find the image offensive, nor even particularly provocative. What does concern me is the curtailment of freedom and freedom of expression. The Internet is undoubtedly our greatest achievement, thus far, in freedom - of information and ideas and the exchange thereof. It seems fair to say that it has enjoyed exponential growth that has, thus far, outstripped and outpaced attempts at control and regulation. This is not to say that control and regulation are not necessary. However, a self-appointed body dictating mandates of decency is little removed from religious institutions that rally against homosexuality under the guise of upholding moral propriety.
That we should protect our children is a given, but overly zealous, knee-jerk and blanket responses should be viewed extremely warily. In this particular case, I cannot help but be reminded of the semi-rabid (and comedic) response to certain situations, often by the wife of Rev Lovejoy, in The Simpsons: "Won't somebody please think of the children!" (and in one instance, the subsequent attempted tearing down of the historic Springfield Burlesque House).
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And yet, from the link to the bands own site that was in the BBC news report's sidebar, you can see the album cover. Odd isn't it?
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Oo-er! I bought this album when it came out, as I liked the Scorpions - I still do come to think of it.
My web provider has actaully deemed this one web page "Pornographic" and "Extreme", even though the provider will "allow" me to see the image elswhere.
Thanks IWF. Where to next Clarks, Brantano or Sketchers kids footwear websites then you can get the paedophiles and shoe fetishists in one hit.
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(nellie) I had a copy of the album so yes I have looked at the image. I did not buy the album for the cover - I bought it for the music (which I enjoyed and still do to a certain extent). The cover is intended to reflect the title of the album and to shock you which it obviously does although in a different way than the album designers originally intended I think.
What to you find offensive about it? Is the child herself offensive (of course not) or is it the fact that you feel uncomfortable about the fact that a child can be sexual (which is a biological fact). Should children grow up completely innocent of sexual matters and suddenly jump straight in at 16 or have age related knowledge up to that time?
We have entered a time where the backlash against sexual freedom in the 1960's is so severe that it rivals the sexual repression in Victorian times IMHO (although then as now such things still go on as much as ever). No wonder we have such a high teenage pregnancy rate whereas in the Netherlands (which has a much more open and straightforward attitude to sexuality) has one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Which approach is working do you think - neo-Victorianism in the UK or more open minded discussion? I know which I'd prefer as a parent.
Did you never play Mummies and Daddies etc (consensual behavior) as a child? Such behavior can now result in a sex offender registration for a child (!). Which do you think does more damage? Involving social services in cases of limited sexual exploration between children or letting the children get on with it as long as there is no hurt or coercion involved.
The current child protection laws now make all men (including myself) reluctant to participate in any activities involving other peoples children or even to pick up a child who falls without worrying whether I will be labeled a pervert. Far from protecting children this has started to destroy family life and put children in more danger.
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The point about freedom is that the concept is total. You either have it or you don't.
This country has laws ergo, we are not free, we do not have freedom. We have state allowed license to certain degrees of freedom. Even freedom of speech is not 'freedom' in the truest sense. You cannot slander or, in certain cases, lie without consequences.
So the above basically means we are not free in the absolute sense. We do live in a 'police state' in one sense, however, it is self imposed as we are the people who allow government to impose these curtailments of freedom.
The current problem is mostly that the powers that be take their election 'mandate' as a license to do what they want, not what we want.
Politics aside, what the IWF is doing is even worse. They are self appointed, unregulated and most likely unrepentant and self rightous.
Anyway, the very point is they have decided that something is 'potentially illegal' but rather than go through due process, have it defined as illegal and then ban it, they have circumvented the system and quite literally acted wholly against the main tenet of our system - the one above where we decide which freedoms we allow ourselves through the political process - which is 'innocent until proven guilty'.
When was the last time you heard anything along the lines of "lets ban it and see if there is a fuss?"
I have not seen the image, neither do I wish to, however, I may well find it distasteful. But it is my right to decide for myself whether if think it is unsuitable or offensive or not.
The one thing people seem to be forgetting is that you DO NOT have the right Not to be offended. If you find something distasteful, (i.e. on TV or radio or even a magazine) if it is not illegal then you do have the right not to read it, watch it or listen to it. You do not have the right to impose your morals on others if the issue in question is not explicitly illegal. Take comedians for example, if you are offended by their act, don't listen to it.
However, the IWF seem to be saying "it's morally right even if not legally so" but even so, even if it is morally correct to censor the image, it is morally reprehensible to act unilaterally in a country where our little bit of freedom is often all we have. Go through the due process if you think it should be censored, otherwise leave it alone. The IWF are not the morality police and should not be allowed to think of itself as such
The standard police force is good enough thank you.
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The IWF has not blocked access to the image. It has put the page on a list of webpages that it finds unacceptable. If the picture was on a child porn website instead of an album cover I am sure there would be no complaints about it being on the list.
It is the ISPs that block access to the pages on the IWF list. As is it their right to block access to anything they wish. No one should be focred to carry traffic they find unacceptable. Be it spam, child porn or hate pages.
In short, their servers their rules.
Now it is up to the customers of the ISPs to decide if they can live with those rules. If not take your money elsewhere.
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One compliant was made to the IWF.
They added this link to the list.
The moral view of one has been used to censor the viewing of many.
IWF etc will just wait and allow the issue to blow over and then continue as they are at the moment.
The only way to combat this is for us all to make a complaint to the IWF about indecent images.
Find all the Nevermind Album covers, cherubs. Any other naked child image no matter how innocent. Get the URL, complain to the IWF with said URL.
This will confirm that the system is unworkable.
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If images, text and other media on the web are illegal, they should be blocked at a national level. Either they are illegal or not.
Maybe we should have a central filter operated by an independent body, overseen by a cross-party group with representatives from Liberty, Justice, etc. to ensure simple political dissent is not censored.
People have a right to think whatever they want, no matter how offensive that may be to us. What they do not have the right to do is expose the rest of the world to those views.
if they disagree with the laws, let them justify those in court.
Freedom comes with responsibilities.
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Just another case of the Nanny state getting it wrong again.
No one argues that children need to be protected from abuse but history has shown that censorship of the media never works.
If the IWF want to really block this image they should start by googling 'scorpions virgin killer' and work their way through the image links displayed.
They should then try altavista and work through those and finally MSN.
That should keep them busy for the next decade or two.
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Wikipedia should look into its own editorial policy. Look up almost any term related to alternative medicine and you will find a heavy negative bias against it. Look at the respective talk pages and you will find people complaining about legitimate info being constantly suppressed by the "Sceptic" moderators. For an example, look up Royal_Rife on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia needs to ensure their own reports are unbiased before complaining when other organisations are forced to block their pages because they show distasteful pages.
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@145
I would gladly swap today's repression with the repression of the victorian era, for one good reason:
In the victorian era, what you did in private was your business. Today we live in a society where the government wants to watch, monitor and control *EVERY* second of our lives, private, public or any shade of grey between.
The victorians would be appalled by the society 'we' (meaning those that overreact to every invented threat they are told about) have created.
Heck, even Victoria herself used to use pot to control her period pains, today she'd probably be locked up.
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It's censored for me using Virgin media. This is pretty scary, what's going to be censored next? ..and who by? What gives another person the right to decide what I can and can not see. For a start the burden of proof that the image is illegal should lie with the censor. Obviously in this case it can't possibly be otherwise the police would be investigating wikipedia.
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@ brenticles 148.
I think thats an excellent idea. Whilst I think the image itself is in bad taste, I do not believe the image to be either illegal, or something that a paedophile would get their kicks from. If we now point out EVERY single image with a naked child, it might make the point that it isn't for the IWF to decide what is art and what is porn.
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If there is a fund for Wikipedia to sue the IWF I'm happy to support them with as large a cash donation as I can.
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@151 Powerofnightmares
I've found Wikipedia's editorial policy to be strong, and thorough... Royal Rife's unproven pseudoscience is quite rightly given the condemnation it deserves. Electro-medicine is bunk.
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Ambivalent on this. The image is highly offensive, I would suggest it might be considered illegal. Incidentally I can see it on wikipedia now. I was aware of the image in the 70s and that it was considered well out of line then. Far more so than the Zeppelin or Blind Faith covers. The album was called "virgin killers" the picture is tantamount to the depiction of the rape of a prepubescent girl.
I don't like censorship per se, but would very uncomfortable defending this image.
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I think we are missing the important point... namely, the description of Scorpions as 'obscure'.
This is a tragedy, and shows the BBC have no concept of real popular culture in their elitist ivory (or should that be white?) tower.
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times have moved on, Im not to sure that an unelected body should be making these decisions, but i did read that they consulted the police first.
Its a weird one, years ago people use to use all sorts of words to describe people, which we do not now as they are politically incorrect and quite frankly horrible.
this picture is a throwback to those years, and is something that we are now (although i think there was a stink about it back then) more sensitive about.
i have looked at the picture and quite frankly it is bad and really shouldnt be promoted. i am sure that there are hundreds of other picture they could use.
as for the comment around books being available with the same image.. its tosh a book becomes a part of history the second its printed whether good or bad. the internet can be changed on a daily basis instantly (the biggest part of wiki!!).
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@159
The Police are in no position to say what is illegal or not either, that is the job of the courts.
The police tend to err on the side of caution and assume many things are 'illegal' when they are not, and then let the courts sort the wheat from the chaff.
IWF needs to stop assuming some policeman is an authority on what is 'illegal' or not, and instead put each image they wish to ban in front of a judge.
Oh, and BTW, that doesn't change the fact that those of us that value freedom of knowledge do not want the IWF being used *AT ALL*.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
BigSean: "i am sure that there are hundreds of other picture they could use. "
How can you illustrate in image by using a different, unrelated one?
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159. Big Sean
You miss the point.
Whether they consulted the police first is irellevant. The picture (in this case, an album illustration so no, they couldn't use something else as the article was about the picture!) is not illegal as the IWF have not gone through due process.
Years ago there were quango's. Remember them? They weren't a good idea either
If the IWF went through due process, had the image banned in this country, then they could have the image removed from the web. As it is they are merely preventing people from seeing something that is not illegal just because one person complained and they think they have the moral right to censor anything that they see fit.
That is the bit that has people outraged.
it's not about the image
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Teach them a lesson they'll never forget.
Complain about every instance of nudity that you can find online. Search professional Art and Photo sites.
I have complained about the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind album as it appears on Wikipedia.
But why go after WikiPedia? Let's submit every naked prepubescent found on Google Images. Not just photos, Fine Art works too. PUT THOSE GOOGLE FOUNDERS IN JAIL WHERE THEY BELONG. And all those photographers too: Anne Leibowitz (Miley Cyrus' photographer), Sally Mann (shot HER OWN KIDS), David Hamilton (DOZENS of teen girls), Garry Gross (Brooke Shields - at TEN), Jock Sturges (shot BOYS too).
Oh my god the filth the filth the filth
Get to work, people! We've got a PLANET to scrub clean!
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The IWF claim that their list is of 'child abuse images', and whatever you think about the tastefulness or decency of the Virgin Killer cover it's clear the girl in the photo is not being abused.
For the IWF to claim that it's a 'child abuse image' is simply a lie.
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"Who watches the Watchmen?" *
I found the Latin version on Wikipedia. I wonder how long it will take before some faceless bureaucrat decides that this page is not in my interest as well!
By all means remove illegal items - but within a context of reasonable dialog, NOT authoritarian dictates
BTW The Scorpions home web site (with the album cover on display) has not yet been blocked....
* I tried posting the original Latin but thats against the BBC editorial policy....
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The most disturbing thing about this story is the phrase "potentially illegal" which I notice the IWF seem very proud of as they repeatedly use it on their website to justify the way they operate.
Isn't everything "potentially illegal" and shouldn't we rather be operating on the assumption of innocence until a court of law has decided that something is "actually illegal"?
The second most disturbing thing is that it would appear it only took 1 person complaining to the IWF to result in several of the countries largest ISPs blocking access to the Wikipedia page containing this image.
What's wonderfully ironic is that the Wikipedia page itself contained a discussion about the controversial nature of the original album cover. So the IWF's censorship of the image has also censored the debate.
And of course, even more hilariously, this photograph has probably now been seen by thousands more people than would have ever seen it if the IWF hadn't taken this action and the BBC picked up on the story.
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No offense taken BigLinuxFan.
Actually the more I think about this the more uneasy I feel. Even though earlier I though it was probably the right thing to do now I'm not so sure. One person has complained (I'm assuming it's one person) and the image blocked. Now if (and it's a big if) it is illegal then it should be tested in court not by a body such as the IWF.
My feeling is that they are letting their morality (and music taste) affect their judgment. I bet they would not have done this if it was a picture by Michelangelo.
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Well done IWF. Any one who does not support this kind of internet policing must be suspect of misbehavior to put it mildly. Lets have more and more of this kind of policing of the web.
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The IWF will shortly become involved in censoring images of 'extreme pornography' - soon to become illegal.
The scope of interpretation of 'extreme pornography' is about as broad (if not broader) than that applied to 'indecent' images of children - for instance a single image of two fully clothed adults standing next to each other and smiling, without any interaction with each other may be considered illegal solely because it belongs to a series of images in which something less savoury appears. Even if no other image of the sequence is displayed or posessed.
The IWF have done us a favour here with their over-sensitive blocking of this legally available image, by introducing us to the nightmare of puritanical and arbitrary censorship of the internet, which the Labour government is about to bring in on the back of 'doing something for the children' and currying favour with certain illiberal sections of society.
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By the way, I suggest that some of the above posters go and read the IWF website.
Their role and remit is quite defined and more over, specific. They really do have a place in the system, however, it seems that in this particular case, someone somewhere has been quite lacksadaisical in their implimentation of their own procedures.
The IWF exists to prevent access to images, they say so themselves. Their child abuse definition is quite wide ranging as is their effective power.
However, it seems quite clear that there has been a common sense failure somewhere.
I assume that the IWF does a very good job in many cases, but they are supposed to work WITH ISP's and the police, not before or unilaterally. I suspect that this is one that slipped through the net of their procedures.
They need an ombudsman or something, but they definitely need to be supervised, reigned in or just better defined.
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I have just reported the IWF to themselves for being criminally obscene. I suggest everyone reading this do the same.
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I think the IWF have made a big mistake on this one and as a result, have devalued the good work. To take something that has been in existence and accepted for thirty years and censor it in that way is bad. However, they're now between a rock and a hard place because of all the adverse publicity they'll get if they back down, and what they'll get if they don't.
I guess this is the price we pay for living in the nanny state, someone has to do all our thinking for us, complete with over-reaction and clamping down on the huge majority for the crimes of very few.
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I am an avid user of Wikipedia and think it is a generally accurate source of a wonderful array of information. I would hate to think that parents felt they had to prevent their children from having access to it as a result of this or any other debacle.
I?ve seen the image and found it disconcerting because the posture implies alluring behaviour by the child. As I understand it, paedophiles frequently see children?s actions as inviting their attention and that disturbing message seems to be present in the picture.
I?ve read that at least one band member wishes the image was not out there ? and I agree with him, but something should be learned by members of the IWF, in that their ineffectual attempts at censorship have brought about far greater exposure of the image and focussed many more minds on its message.
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This Internet Watch Foundation seems a very sinister organization
They appear to be able to act has censors surely this should be up to the courts and really the people who sit on juries to decide if anything is obscene
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If the IWF feel (as everyone should) that the image is illegal and indecent they will of course continue their action and be bringing a complaint to the police to have the record company staff, photographer and printers and record producers and of course the Scorpions themselves and not least the parents for allowing this little girl to be exploited?
I doubt it.
I also wonder why they have still allowed the image to remain on countless vendor sites selling the album and especially on Amazon and on the Scorpion's home site also?
I also wonder now that the IWF have got their 15 minutes of fame how they will use it in the future and how far they will expand their 'remit' into people's choice of viewing and taste in other areas?
Pfffft!
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The police/CPS have had 32 years to bring a case against the Band/Recored company yet not done so. They must then think that it's not child porn or offensive in any way, shape or form.
Yet some unelected, unaccountable body decides to ban it on the grounds that, having consulted with the police, they consider it "potentially" illegal.
Either it's legal or not and that's for the courts to decide.
Personally I've seen the cover before and it's not my cup of tea but I'm not offended by it
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I have to agree with randomname2shaw2ca2 at message 164. Since this image was blocked because it was 'potentially' illegal, it is surely our duty (as upstanding members of society) to report any and every 'potentially' illegal image to the IWF.
Just doing a little research when this story emerged, it was clear there are any number of books of images the IWF might consider 'potentially illegal' for sale on Amazon, by photographers such as Elizabeth Beverley, David Hamilton, Jock Sturges and others, never mind every pseudo-photograph by Michalangelo and his like, or any illustrated clothing catalogue selling child's underwear.
Who are we to decide that these works are art, that they are legitimate? Don't we need to report them to the IWF and let our self-appointed moral guardians decide?
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@169 - You seem to miss the point.
No one is complaining about the policing of content like this... The complaint is the content being policed in this case, is not considered child porn... Offensive? Maybe, but it certainly isn't porn and the picture does not show any illegal activity. If you wish to be censored and blinkered to everything that might seem risque, then you should move to a country that filters the internet as such, or filter the internet YOURSELF.
Censorship like this is over the top when it comes to a Wiki article, using the image (which is NOT illegal) to illustrate the controversy of the picture in the first place.
This is about drawing a line at the point where the government stop nannying us over everything. This is an album cover thats available all over the web, and IS NOT illegal. It certainly isn't for the IWF or the police to decide whether it is.
I would say anyone who is willing to give up their liberties for censorship is suspect too.
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One of the main points is the way in which the site has been blocked, and you have missed that in your article. The actual problem is that the ISPs direct the blocked site through a transparrent proxy, which makes it appear (to wikipedia) that all visitors using Virgin (for example) come from the same PC. not too much of an issue, unless they are concerned about web stats, or in this case, they use IP addresses to prevent abuse of editting procedures - if one person using Virgin edits a Wiki entry which is deemed to be inappropriate, wikipedia will block edits from the IP address - effectively all Virgin ISP users...
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`Censorship is a crime against humanity. I
It matters not whether the information/knowledge being censored is illegal or legal, what matters is that information/knowledge is being withheld from the human race by a select few that feel they should be the moral guardians for the entire population.` #20
`Soon we`ll be censoring against political opinion and will stymie free speech.` #127.
This is how all Stalinist governments work. First they choose to censor something that most people would find reasonable to censor. . .`#128
Some comments taken from above.
Can I ask those arguing against Web censorship if they think there should be any efforts to block Islamic sites calling for support for Jihad?
After all you and I can see its merely propaganda motivated by religious hatred and dismiss and ignore it accordingly, just a several see this image as being merely indecent or tasteless.
This is really a debate about where limits should be set as to what`s acceptable? For extremists it is about whether there should be any limits at all?
The `is it illegal?` argument is a pretty shaky; short of having a trial about every contentious image, speech or video on the web its unlikely we'd ever know for sure if any one particular item has been declared illegal, and that applies to images showing children or animals being abused, westerners being beheaded and so on.
But we do know there are laws against promoting religious or racial hatred, child abuse, cruelty to animals and so on and those form the background to how judgments are made.
To draw a comparison with the recent child abuse cases, had it had become known that the IWF had looked at the image and decided that it SHOULDN`T have been blocked the tabloids would have had a field day. (Even the tabloids that make much of their models being `barely legal`.)
From reading through the comments there`s no consensus at all and a lot of confusion. Not just on web censorship but also as to what is likely to fuel or `normalise` paedophilia; I?d suggest that a picture of a naked eleven year old girl in a sexual pose falls into that category.
For those with daughters, would you be happy to post nude images of your 11 yr old in such a pose on the web?
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@ 169
Today a picture tomorrow its text the next day just becus someone at IWF doesnt like arsenal.
Draw the line today not when we all have a cctv in r living room.
Its not doing something wrong that i am worried about it doing something that today is fine but some right wing ejit makes illegal tomoorow.
"There are no fewer than 3,600 new criminal offences introduced by this government since 1997... I note that some of the offences, frankly, seem to be completely bizarre. Let us take, for example, the offence of causing a nuclear explosion... "
Laws for laws sake what happen to comman sense,
oh thats right nanny state said we didnt need it just follows the laws
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@175
Well, the kind of courts that would be responsible for this kind of legal behaviour would be jury-less. However, there is still a world of difference between a judge, who has judicial oversight to deal with, which would encourage him or her to act within the definition of the law, and the IWF, who are a commercial entity with no legal founding for their decisions, no oversight, and no recourse when they make a wrong decision.
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If the IWF and the authorities in this country are sincere about protecting children then we should be getting news very soon of impending prosecutions of..
The Scorpions
Their Manager
The record company concerned
The producer who commissioned it
The photographer
The Printer
and especially the parents of the little girl.
Nothing else will do otherwise everyone will suspect the IWF is just interested in weilding an 'Orwellian Master Switch'.
Well done IWF, you have placed a hitherto unknown, obscure albeit distasteful picture into IT legend and made it probably a valuable collector's item
Pffft!! Way to go IWF!
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All the IWF have done is made a lot of people on the internet now decide to try and circumvent the DNS blocks to see this image.
So rather than protecting children there will now be a lot more PCs connecting to the internet using OpenDNS (or similar) instead their ISPs standard DNS. So all these people will no longer be protected from real child porn that the IWF is supposed to do.
According to Wikipedia the ISPs that use the IWF block list must do so fully without the choice to overide it's choices, otherwise the ISP cannot use the list at all.
Also does this incident that mean that the ISPs are now admitting that they are responsible for the content travelling over their wires, rather than claiming they were like the Post Office and not responsible for what is sent over their lines/system? They have now admitted that they can and do censor content and therefore anything that they allow you access to, you can now assume is legal to view in the UK.
So if I'm am exposed to child porn can I now sue my ISP for not protecting me?
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Ishfet Wrote
Does this mean that anyone who owns the original cover art is now a paedophile who owns child porn? Are those of us who nipped off to see what the fuss is about, and who have prefetch images on our computer now in possession of child porn? Are in fact makers of child porn, as downloading is making for legal purposes?
Technicly you could not be prossicuted for the possetion of child porn as this image has not actually been as yet deemed to be Child Porn.
If you were raded and your computer sezed and this image was found to be on your PC you could then be a test case and if you found guily of possetion of Child Porn then by associaiton the image would indeed then be classed as child porn as it would have been decieded by a Court of Law.
This would have parallels with the case of the art work that is Owend by Sir Elton John and was on display at the Baltic Mills Gallery in Gateshead recently but had to be removed follwing a complaint it was child porn, in this case i beleve the case was not progressed by the CPS.
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Let us not forget that people in positions that give them power to dictate, whether elected or unelected, are still just people. There is nothing, in fact, to indicate that they are a cut above the norm. It is absolutely imperative that the judgement of others be scrutinized and not necessarily accepted as de rigueur simply by dint of authoritative position.
I would go as far as to suggest that for every politician, legislator, executive and so on out there you could easily find a number of people who are far better qualified, wiser and intellectually sound, but who, through choice or circumstance (often the former, for who truly wishes power over others?), are in entirely different (and far removed) vocations.
One only has to look to recent scenarios - such as the arrival of the big three (American car company) CEO's in their private jets, the Sarah Palin clothing fiasco, the re-appointment of Peter Mandelson, the inexcusable data losses in Britain - to realise the stark truth that we are, to all intent and purpose, governed and legislated to by mediocrity.
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Is this an early April fools joke ?
Has the world gone mad ?
It seems to me that the'IWF' can't make one decent decision between the lot of them. I mean, they get one complaint and take this Orwellian action on ONE single complaint ??
The Scorpions are a massive band, Rory calling them 'obscure' is totally inaccurate.
It's too late, the image in question cannot be deemed offensive (borderline at the most, and that really is at the most) and should not be deemed offensive just because seven people say it should be so. Surely they should be be a cross section of society as a whole. If anyone of them knew anything about music in the first place this would never have happened. They're having a laugh aren't they?
What exactly have the IWF done in their very short existence ? Perhaps they have done some good and hats off to them if they have, but in this case they've made a tremendous blunder, I still can't believe it.
Nappy adverts on the TV will be next lol
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This is a very frightening development. I had no idea the UK's internet was censor-firewalled, and given the rights creep that has been happening in other areas, the precedent is alarming. We trumpet on sanctimoniously about China, Saudi and Dubai, but this shows we're no different.
And to all those happy to use "It's all for the Kids" as an excuse, you should know that any pedo not already locked up will already be routing all internet traffic anonymously and offshore, so the IWF doesn't stop anything criminal, it just censors _you_.
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Rory, Setting aside the debate over the image,
"an relatively obscure 70s heavy metal band, Scorpions"
"an" ???? was this because you added in the word "relatively"?
"relatively obscure"? surely this cannot be said of the scorpions? I'm not a metal fan but remember them
"70s"? the record the picture was on the cover of was released in 1976 (according to wikipedia) but the scorpions have spanned many decades, perhaps their most well known track being "winds of change"
As for the actions of the IWF why didnt they simply change the wiki page themselves, surely that is the beauty of wiki! or give the image the ban is on rather than the page(s) containing the image.
if they truly believe this image is child porn they need to ban every copy of it, but I suspect they're not doing that?
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@nmackin
You say China are good because they:
"- not the ones declaring wars on any country that happens to have the wrong colour of skin"
Um, who's doing that? Whatever your view of the war in Iraq etc you can't seriously be claiming it's over the colour of their skin??
"- supporting torture of prisoners"
This is a good thing, how?
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Although Virgin is one of the ISPs that is censoring this image, you can go onto the online Virgin Megastore and buy the album. They'll even show you the cover art before you buy.
Who'll save the children?
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I'm checking the terms of my customer contract with Virgin Media. I don't recall seeing anything that they have the right to censor what I look at online.
The worst of the ISP response is the heavy-handed way they have done it, which prevents users editing Wiki's unless they register an account.
Thw IWF are a charity, they are not the police, judiciary or Government and they certainly aren't elected.
The implications for personal freedoms in this country are truly frightening.
http://angrybutton.blogspot.com
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What ever next banning a record cover.
Will this so called Internet Watch Foundation be banning next any blogs who complain about them.
How do we complain about the Internet Watch Foundation and to whom.
It is very clear from a human rights/freedom point of view these people need to be monitored very closely and be subject to intense review by parliament and the courts.
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Well, they've obviously shot themselves in the foot with this; now millions more people will see the album cover than would have otherwise. If they're trying to stop people seeing the image, they've obviously done it very wrong.
Worse, the IWF just jeopardized their own complaints procedure, as countless web admins will be updating their sites with images of children at the beach, and then reporting their own website for media attention, thus generating advertising revenue. Then there's those reporting this exact same image wherever it appears as it spreads across the web, and others asking about album covers of other bands. I'd hate to see IWF's email inbox right now.
Plus, according to Wikipedia they've only got 7 people working there to deal with the complaints.
Increasing the number of people to deal with complaints increases the chance of other such mess-ups in future. There's also an overall security issue; it's not just images they're blocking but entire pages, imagine what could happen if they accidentally blacklist a bank? Or a news outlet (page 3 girls, etc)
Then there's the problem that what the IWF are doing is most likely illegal on human rights grounds, under freedom of speech laws, as they've stopped people from 1) reading a legitimate encyclopedia article and 2) stopped people from editing the website as a result of giving almost everyone in the UK less than 10 IP addresses. As others have said, they're lucky it's a charity, let's see what happens if they try the same thing on the same image at amazon, eh? After all, i'll be nice to see some consistency!
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How fortunate for me, to be saved from something I didn't even know existed until IWF saved me.
However, what bothers me as someone who believes in rationality: Is there some other reason than sheer taste for blocking wikipeadia's article about the scorpions? I mean, what is the basis for this pre-emptive strike? What is considered to be the imminent threat? Are there throngs of child abusers to be released simply by looking at that picture? Or is this another example of busy bodies, who are eager to make the world a better place, a place more like they would like to have it... Taste might not be the best foundation to ground this new world upon.
While trying to sign-in to BBC, I received a "this server is temporarily not responding" message. Has BBC published something that disturbes the taste of a well-meaning IWF-member, I asked my self, while thinking of these annoying war-pictures sometimes published by the BBC.
Luckily, the shut-down server was only temporarily, this time at least.
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Essentially they have only blocked the text on the page. The url of the wikipedia page has been blocked but not the url of the actual image.
So, what they are saying is that the text of the page is offensive but not the image. Absurd! Besides, the google cache of the page will allow anyone to find the image. Or just looking on Amazon or any number of sites will turn up the image. It may even be at your local library!
By targeting an obscure page on such a major website they have merely provided free publicity, on a large scale, to a disturbing image.
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All forms of censorship are completely wrong. If somebody was using wikipedia to distribute child pornography it would be a different matter. This is simply a first step towards disallowing free speech. We must nip this problem at the bud and not allow things to get worse.
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@196
Apparently the 41 year old woman shown in the cover art might suddenly become traumatised over her 'abuse' that she suffered 32 years ago, and they want to prevent this kind of horror from her life.
Of course, she's been asked and isn't even remotely traumatised by the event, apparently. But it could happen any day now!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
One of the (relatively minor) problems I have with measures like this is that quite often censorship attempts end up masquerading as technical faults.
I'm an IT Support Tech by trade. When something doesn't work, I like to know why. Usually, error messages tell me why. But all too often, I hear of censorship methods that basically lie and claim to be some other problem.
For one thing, as a techie I want to be certain that an error message is actually accurate. For troubleshooting purposes I *have* to be able to rely on errors being accurately reported. Even if I don't agree with censorship, at least if it's accurately flagged then I know what a problem is and isn't. As from the sounds of it, many Wikipedia users (editors) have been caught out by the transparent proxy and it took a while for the actual root of the problem to be discovered. If I'd been a techie involved there, I'd be calling for heads to roll right anout now. As it would have been time wasted investigating a non-related issue.
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"you can get to any site you want, as long as it isn't breaking the law "
And so that isnt' censorship? My god what breathtaking logic the fools at the BBC exhibit. So Chinese censorship isn't censorship because it's within their law?
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A quick visit to the IWF site shows it to be sponsored by a whole host of well known brands. Do they really wish to be associated with this cack handed approach to censorship?
The IWF is itself funded by the EU. I don't recall being asked for my tax money to fund this. It does, of course, claim to be independent; but then there's "independent" and "independent" if you catch my drift.
I've no time for child porn but this episode really ridiculous. A 30 year old image that no-body knew or cared about until this blocking drew attention to it. It gets caught in the "potentially illegal" catchall remit of the IWF.
Comments from the above article seem to imply that the process is automatic; ie nobody seems to be able to draw back and say just what the hell are we doing here. It's madness; but it's also potentially dangerous madness. It provides the framework for any future censorship to be brought about.
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There's a rumour a paediatrician has moved into our street. Me and the lads are going to give 'em a hell of beating.
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Fact is, we should ask the person photographed whether she feels she was abused. No point in proselitysing.
If she is not upset, it's a non-story.
If, on the other hand, she feels badly treated in any way, then there is a case to answer.
Somehow, my instinct tells me that she would not feel abused. However, should she do so, she is perfectly free to take appropriate action. She does not need 'holier than thou' campaigners to fight her case. She is an adult.
Let's face it, the kid (then) is in her late 40s or early 50s now. 32 years is a long time. I doubt she suffers, and I doubt even more strongly that there is any need to make a fuss. It was an album cover. IS ALL.
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Frankfisher, the BBC is not at fault here. The BBC, on the contrary, is encouraging this debate.
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I reckon it's a ruse by the Schenker brothers to generate sales. OK, they weren't bad guitarists (UFO fans note), but they weren't exactly AC/DC either.
An ordinary band, ordinary music, Berlin attitude to sex.
Typical Eurotrash really, and hardly worth the fuss.
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I suggest everyone go on a search of the album cover on large corporate sponsored websites (e-tailers, the record company, the bands website, etc) and REPORT THEM ALL.
Of course IWF won't want to anger a major corporation so their double standards will be clear to everyone.
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"I'm sorry Mr. Orwell, but the Thought Police can't come to the phone right now. They are busy protecting the sensitivities of the most puritanical among us, thereby ensuring that all on the island become compliant, like-minded Puritans...
"Complain all you like sir, for the only ones to give weight to those complaints are miscreants like yourself...
"Censorship? Absolutely not, Mr. Orwell. We prefer to label it "good governance". After all, the general public is far too feeble to be able to decide for itself what it should be entitled to see and what it ought to think about what it does see. They need to be told what to see and what to think. Otherwise, we lose the control which is so vital to governing as we wish, and we wish to have an obedient population. An obedient population is good for our governance - hence, this is an act of good governance...
"No sir, art is not in the eye of the beholder. If it was, that would mean that discomfort with an image would be a problem with the viewer, not the image. That simply won't do. If we all conform to what is set as the social norm, there can be no dispute about what is and what is not acceptable. And since we all have the same social norms, it is perfectly acceptable for the Thought Police to say what is unacceptable before it reaches the general population. Think of it as eliminating social stress pre-emptively.
"Freedom? Of course the people are free. We tell them they have freedom, so they have it. They are free to follow our rules. They are free to do as we say they can do. They are free to think as we say they should think. And you, Mr. Orwell, are free to spin in your grave."
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Nudity does not equal pornography.
The Scorpions album cover is not explicit, its not erotic, the child is not being exploited, its has no intention of sparking arousal. If anything, its a rather bland, boring, inoffensive, unimaginative album cover albeit controversial.
People need to differentiate between the contexts. That Scorpions cover is just simply a naked child to emphasise the album title - Virgin Killer. The naked child representing innocence and purity. Virgin Killer - the defilement of innocence and purity.
Child nudity, or any nudity is not erotic or pornographic. Its just what it is. Nudity.
So would those who complain say paintings of naked children are pornographic? statues of cherubs are pornographic? photographs of babies are pornographic? American Beauty and Lolita are child pornographic films? Are other album covers like Nevermind by Nirvana pornographic?
If people think thats child pornography, then these people should not be around children. I can only assume that when these people look at naked children they are aroused ergo they deem it to be child porn. I can't fathom how they manage to cope when at a swimming pool, at a beach or at friends/relatives house who have young children. I know I would be concerned about their well being if they were offended by something like and possibly keep them away from my children as they have a problem with nudity.
I think the IWF brought themselves into disrepute and made an ill formed judgement. The Virgin Killer album is not any cause for concern. It has no sinister intentions. People who believe so says more about them than this cover will ever do.
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why bother when anyone with a brain and some skill can bypass the block by using a free website service?
besides, it's hosted on many music sites!
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@lynard/209
I fully agree with all your points. I just wish I knew what I/we could do to right these wrongs. I will certainly not be voting labour next time, but I'm not naive enough to fool myself into thinking that the conservatives don't support this kind of evil spiral to totalitarianism too.
It saddens and hurts me sitting here realising that no matter what I do, as an individual I cannot change the system, I cannot stop the injustice that is being encouraged by these people. I feel like I am living within soviet russia, but there is no cold war to drive our evil government to bankrupcy and break their system in the process.
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By the way did you know that Erik Moeller (Wikipedia`s Deputy Director) has written essays arguing that children should express their sexuality. He has written, and I quote,
`But if there was any doubt, yes, I am defending that children can have sex with each other. Not only adolescents, but also children of earlier ages -- whenever they want to.` ` What is my position on paedophilia, then? It`s really simple. If the child doesn`t want it, is neutral or ambiguous, it`s inappropriate. This excludes most adult/child sexual contact. . .`
He posted that article under the pen name of Eloquence. Click on the pen name. it takes you to Moeller`s profile.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/3/30/4410/84525/72#72
What! Most, just MOST: `adult/child sexual contact is inappropriate`?
I`d like to ask him when he thinks it is appropriate, which he clearly thinks it can be.
Want to know more? Google: Erik Moeller. There`s some interesting things being written about him. I think Wikipedia have a problem brewing.
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First of all I'd like to state that I am 100% in agreement with the blocking of child pornography.
It may be considered distasteful to some but at no point yet have I seen it's clarification as pornographic.
I'd like to congratulate the IWF for such a reckless act - well done. Not only have you managed to cause the biggest UK ISP censorship debate, in such a short spam of time, but you have also just caused every news agency to report on the situation.
This in turn has just made the top discussion on blogs, news sites, social networking sites and more.
The simple fact is: all you have to do is go to Google, Amazon and any other site on the internet to find the image. You couldn't have done a better job at highlighting it's existence.
I'm personally wondering what the next step is?
Does IWF solely focus on adding url's to it's blacklist for the next 5 years of variations of this album article/image? or does it get on with blocking real illegal child porn.
Could I also say well done to the person that reported this image. You've given IWF their 15 minutes of fame - highlighting the image to the world.
Let's not play games, if people really want to access this blocked image or article all they need to do is use a proxy server. View the Google Cache or use a title variation on Wikipedia.
So what for us UK citizen's does it now become illegal for us to access the page due to it's "potentially" illegal status?
What about those that own this album?
Condemning the China Internet Censorship?
Maybe... Just Maybe...
We should be condemning the censoring of UK Internet.
and ISP's - what is going on...
404 error pages?
Be honest about what pages you are blocking and why. Maybe I should surf via proxies servers all of the time, I might just find more things are blocked than I realise.
I'm 18, I'm worried about the world I'm going to grow up in...
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You have to be flat out stupid not to know wikipedia is censored. It has been censored since the beginning of its existance. I feel sorry for the people who are defending Wikipedia in this because they are flat out wrong, taking the victim route when they have no clear defense.
If you want to learn about articles that are censored feel free to learn the wikitruth, there are various websites that reveal the amount of backhanded ways Wikipedia censors it's articles, whether it be admins owning articles and not allowing certain topics to be added, no matter how well referenced and sourced.
Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is the most Orwellian and amatuer encyclopedia in existence. Any attempt to question the methods or processes that work on Wikipedia you will be labelled a troll, have all history removed and banned indefinately. Sounds Orwellian enough for me.
Wikipedia will always be censored, use the wikitruth to view what they censor for ridiculous reasons.
See the people behind Wikipedia and draw your own conclusions.
Wikipedia in the past has had lots of episodes where members in high positions held pro-paedophilia views, Wikia has hosted a wiki on child spanking, isn't that swell?
Learn the Wikitruth. (google)
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I think it is strange that someone at IWF would not think to contact Wikipedia or *gasp* edit the photo out, you CAN edit the page, ANYONE can edit the page.
I don't know if you in the UK realize it but your society is already Orwellian. You have iris-scans at airports, CCTV everywhere, a National Identity card that "people are excited about" and databases to link all of that information. The internet censorship is just an extra bonus. The British may need a re-read of 1984, or maybe just need to stop using it for guidelines.
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cynicaleng at 10:58 am: "At worst this image would be classified as Level 1 under UK sentencing guidelines "Images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity" - penalty for possession of small quantities for personal use Fine or conditional discharge."
No, at worst it would mean being placed on the SOR for several years, thus being unable to get most jobs, having one's name and address heavily implicated across the front pages of the Sun and News of the World, explaining to your tearful kids when they come home saying their "friends" say their dad's a "pedo", having bricks put through your windows and dog mess through the letterbox. Where have you been for the past ten years of British paedophile hysteria?!! Such an offender is meat and drink to the tabloid gutter press.
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Regarding the block on this picture. Legally Web hosts must not wait for an image to be declared unlawful by a court when they receive a complaint. If they wait, there is every chance that the declaration will come at their own trial. The Protection of Children Act 1978 bans indecent images of children. A sexually provocative pose of a child, which the Scorpion cover image is of (the girl was 11 yrs old at the time), would constitute an indecent image. (It`s also worth noting that the law covers only photographs and `pseudo photographs` so wouldn`t cover art works such as Renaissance art.)
The IWF judged the image in accordance with the Sexual Offences Act 2003 Definitive Guidelines. If this went to court that image would be judged unlawful.
It is worth noting the band themselves had nothing to do with producing this cover and distanced themselves from it shortly afterwards, using alternative cover art.
Interesting that no one has mentioned that Wikipedia itself has a censorship policy; it has its own blacklist of people from particular IP addresses who are forbidden from changing Wikipedia`s pages. This results from numerous attempts by jokers, cranks and the malicious. It was introduced as a defensive measure to try and ensure the quality of Wikipedia entries.
Wikipedia`s complaint that its editors were locked out was prompted by the way all traffic from the ISPs (that took IWF guidance) now look to Wikipedia as though it comes from the same IP address. That causes a problem for Wikipedia. It doesn`t mind who looks at its pages, but it does want to control who can change them and that`s why its editors were locked out for a while. The glitch was with Wikipedia`s servers.
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@90 TonyByers: "Take this to the extreme; what if someone has posted pictures of child porn - not just borderline cases like this? I'm sure most would hope that it would be blocked or taken down."
Yes, child porn images would be removed by Wikipedia, as they are illegal in the US. Wikipedia will take down images that are illegal in the US (where it is hosted). If Wikipedia hadn't noticed them, and the US authorities were unaware of them, then it would be easy for the IWF to notify the US authorities, who would then notify Wikipedia. Since there is an international consensus on child porn laws, this cooperation isn't a problem.
There isn't, however, an international consensus on 30 year old band covers. The question of illegal child porn images has nothing to do with taking down images simply because somebody in some country somewhere is offended by them, or some country decides to block them.
I doubt anyone would care if an actual child porn image was blocked either. The problem is that things are blocked because the IWF claims they are "potentially" illegal, with no checks by the courts, not to mention the blocking of text that is obviously legal.
RJBrad: "If you just want to whine about something on the internet however, then you are free to do so, but don't expect anything to change."
And you're not whining?
Yes, you are correct that this is being done by private organisations, but why on earth does that mean people aren't allowed to voice their concerns? Let's imagine that 95% of the ISPs were secretly censoring on a far greater scale - your logic is, it's private organisations, so no one should worry?
Of course not. As you say, paying customers can switch to other ISPs - but for that to be effective, it helps to inform everyone else of what is going on. Without this "whining", most people would not even be aware of this censorship, just assuming any blocked pages are due to the site being down (thanks to the faked error messages).
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Welcome to New China, formerly known as the UK.
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Just had a look at the image (thanks BBC for the link.) Not sure what all the fuss is about. It's a bit like conceptual art: An idea is conceived, represented then displayed. No better or worse than most of Damian Hurst's nonsense, only the image concerned is a naked child.
Normal people don't get sexual gratification from kids. Or dogs, or door handles. You can't make rules for everyone based on the actions of abnormal people.
There are plenty more things that need the eye of the law turned to them than this old album cover. Still, it's an easy target I suppose.
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very simple point.
Since when is "potentialy illegal" the same as illegal?
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@syk/214
I wouldn't worry about being considered a criminal if you managed to view that image via a work-around...
That album cover is 32 years old, it was controversial in 1976 when it was released, however, in that 32 years it has not been banned, nor has CPS ever managed to even attempt to bring a case against the record company, the band, or anyone involved in distribution of the album.
In essence, the image is not illegal - for it to be illegal it would need to be deemed such by a judge/court. Whatever IWF, or even the metropolitan police say about the legality of the image, it remains legal until it is deemed thus by a court.
As for the world you will grow up in, I'd love to tell you that it'll be alright, but I can't, we are just a fraction of a distance from a totalitarian regime as it is, and there is no obvious way for the people to resist it. None of our international partners want to stop it either. If there is any hope, it is that the EU human rights commission *MAY* be on our side, but I wouldn't hold much hope. What the UK needs is a revolution, but the power balance is too much in favour of the ruling-party to allow that to be anything other than a bloodbath.
I'm a 37 year old woman, and I fear we will not see freedom in the UK in either mine, nor your, lives.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The real travesty here is describing the Scorpions as relatively obscure when Wind of Change was one of THE songs of the 90s.
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@mdwh,
I imagine this post will get tagged as 'defamatory' but I strongly suspect that RJBrad is an employee of IWF, his comments sound like someone speaking from the corporate playbook.
So I doubt you'll get him to see the way of those of us that feel our freedom has just been abridged.
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An IWF representative was asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning whether what the IWF had previously described as "pragmatic reasons" for their targeting Wikipedia (rather than the many other sites hosting this image) referred to the fact that educational charities tend to have less money to spend on lawyers than large corporations.
Since the spokesperson denied this, I've reported Virgin Media (ironically, the most draconian blocking ISP) to the IWF for not only hosting this image but selling the album on their website. If they aren't blocked very shortly without notice or explanation like Wikipedia was you can all draw your own conclusions.
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@219 ; "Wikipedia`s complaint that its editors were locked out was prompted by the way all traffic from the ISPs (that took IWF guidance) now look to Wikipedia as though it comes from the same IP address. That causes a problem for Wikipedia. It doesn`t mind who looks at its pages, but it does want to control who can change them and that`s why its editors were locked out for a while. The glitch was with Wikipedia`s servers."
Wrong. First, Wikipedia are on firm legal ground over in the USA, far away from UK law. They don't legally need to do anything in this case, as the USA (land of the free, etc) is laughing at us.
The "glitch" exists somewhere in the UK, with whatever filtering software they're using. We know this because it's only UK users which are having (still ongoing) problems. Wikipedia now provide a customized error message if you're attempting to edit from the UK, explaining that the whole country's now using banned IP's. And that it's not their problem.
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`Normal people don't get sexual gratification from kids. Or dogs, or door handles. You can't make rules for everyone based on the actions of abnormal people.` rolyrolyroly #221
`Normal` people don`t.
Unfortunately perverts and messed up people do. It doesn't just involve those that beat, starve or neglect their young childrens needs or see them just as a meal ticket (Think recently of Baby P or Shannon) they also do do really terrible sexual crimes (and also murder) against them.
As shown recently in Sheffield:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5233981.ece
or in New Zealand
http://www.theherald.co.za/herald/news/n16_05122008.htm
or in the Sarah Payne case
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/dec/13/childprotection.qanda
And don`t think child pornography is harmless:
`The children in the images range from babies to 18 years of age. Some images show rapes and other abuses`
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/child-pornography-australia-arrests-70-840696.html
And many websites produce abusive images to make money. Looking at such images feeds demand. This is exploitation of the worst kind.
It is because of these people that we pass laws to protect children. Just as we pass laws against murder to protect ourselves.
I have no sympathy for those that claim they were just looking for `research` or out of curiosity. A wrong is a wrong.
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@227: joeblakesley: "I've reported Virgin Media (ironically, the most draconian blocking ISP) to the IWF for not only hosting this image but selling the album on their website."
Do you have the link for this (or a hint as to where to find it, if this blog won't let you post it)? This would be very interesting to see.
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SheffTim: And what does any of that have to do with the image in question?
I don't think anyone is saying that images of child abuse are okay, but the IWF has overstepped that mark.
Side point: "The children in the images range from babies to 18 years of age"
An image of a 17 year old adult is harmful, is it? Yes, the fact that "child" porn law has been extended to cover images of adults that can legally consent to sex shows that whilst criminalising child abuse images was entirely reasonable, the Government have been using this as an excuse to criminalise all sorts of other things. Just as the IWF uses the excuse of "child abuse images" to censor 30 year old album covers.
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Rory:
I think that Wikipedia is censored when its comes to things, that are uncomfortable to the company and; its final line, when it comes to the money.
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I emailed bith the IWF and the Culture Secretary yesterday, asking how this unelected and unaccountable self-importand body can set itself up as arbiter in a case where there is POTENTIAL illegality, not ACTUAL, but POTENTIAL.
Needless to state I have yet to receive a reply from either...
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`I don`t think anyone is saying that images of child abuse are okay, but the IWF has overstepped that mark`. #231
The IWF acted because someone reported the Wiki page to them and they then had to consider its legal standing. Legally that image would judged to be `erotic posing with no sexual activity`if this went to court. The Protection of Children Act 1978 bans indecent images of children and the Sexual Offences Act 2003 Definitive Guidelines gives the legal definitions of how such images are to be judged.
The Scorpion cover was produced without the band`s knowledge and they distanced themselves from it decades ago. That cover was banned in several countries when released; people were uncomfortable about it even then. I`m surprised it`s taken this long to begin removing it from the web. The fact that it is `old` does not excuse it.
`the fact that `child` porn law has been extended to cover images of adults . . the Government have been using this as an excuse to criminalise all sorts of other things` ` #231
That case was in Australia where individual states have separate laws regarding age of consent, so you can hardly blame the UK govt; and the bulk of the images in that case were of children considerably younger than 16 yrs.
If you disbelieve child abuse can happen then there`s this from the USA, based on arrests in the United States for the possession of child pornography during a one-year period from 2000 to 2001: `the majority of those arrested had images of children who had not yet reached puberty. Specifically, 83% had pornographic material that involved children between ages 6 and 12; 39% had material involving children between ages 3 and 5; and 19% had images of infants or toddlers under age 3.`
http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/sexonnet.html
Child sexual abuse does happen and some websites do cater for those that have fantasies regarding this.
The IWF was set up to help combat access to such sites and images. Its actions are simply setting boundaries as to what society regards as acceptable on the Web.
Some may disagree with that, but then at least one man also thought it OK to rape his own daughters and father children with them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5233981.ece
This is at heart about protecting children from adults that seek out such material and have sexual fantasies about children. I`m afraid not everyone looks at that album cover with `innocent` eyes.
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@SheffTim
So you're suggesting we should censor all media that a small minority of people find arousing?
In this case I guess you'd agree that we should start with The Bible, as I'm sure there are many examples of the crucifixion providing inspiration for mutilations of a sexual nature.
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Alas, there are some inaccuracies here.
The album cover has not found to be illegal in any country thus far. The claim that it is an "illegal image" is at best, misleading. I think we all agree that it's distasteful, but it's definitely not an illegal image.
I think there are two points to bear in mind here.
Firstly, there doesn't seem to have been a step in the IWF process where analysing the image in context occurs. Had they done so and realised that this was a commonly available album cover that had been sold on British High Streets for over 30 years, I doubt they would have taken the same action. Had they looked at the wider internet for the same material, they would have realised that a single URL block would have been largely ineffective at preventing UK access to this content. It seems that common sense has not been applied to a rigid, inflexible process by the IWF. Coupled with the way the IWF blocked access to the encyclopaedia text and not just the image and the whole thing develops a rather more disturbing feel
Secondly, there's the knock on effect that due to the crude way the IWF filtering mechanism works, millions of Wikipedia users in the UK are now unable to edit what is normally a completely open project. This problem is caused by the clumsy configuration of IWF filters at many leading ISPs use. This disenfranchisement of the UK population by the IWF is an unfortunate fallout of this debacle, but nonetheless requires correction.
Since the initial problem, the IWF has since decided to widen it's remit to blocking articles on Wikipedia that attempt to discuss the entire affair, citing media sources on the various aspects of this episode. The original article, "Virgin Killer Controversy" has now been added to the IWF blacklist. Although the article has now been retitled to something more appropriate, this now seems to be taking on a far more sinister trend.
The IWF do a difficult job. one which, till now, had taken place largely without inicdent. I look forward to when the IWF regain a modicum of common sense in relation to this matter, and can start the process to regaining public trust.
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Since no one can post to wikipeadia anymore, why not post your messages of support for the IWF here: http://www.iwf.org.uk/reporting.htm
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Whilst the image is probably tasteless its never been found to be illegal. The IWF do seem to have really stepped over the line here and I'm yet to hear of Amazon being blocked or Yahoo Images or HMV , or any highstreet store being raided and the CD seized.
Can the BBC do some investigation and find out if the IWF blocked this image because of one single complaint?
If that is true the we are looking at potentionally millions of people's internet connections being interfered with because of one single person who reported an image to an un-elected body, a body which answers to no-one.
Even Orwell never saw that one coming.
Also why have the police and the IWF said NOTHING apart from their initial rather weak press release on the IWF website?
If the IWF have to back down then what does that do their creditability?
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@qazd/235
It's worse than that, the bible even contains descriptions of child sexual abuse, rape and incest, in a positive light, in the story of Lot.
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Does anyone want to tell SheffTim that he isn't a judge, and shouldn't speak for a judge and assume that this particular picture would be considered illegal, or shall I do it?
SheffTim... Do you work for the IWF? You seem, like they have, to have taken a position on this image without it actually going through the legal process it needs to in order to state its legality.
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If art should not be censored, then artist could make child porn and call it 'art' and thus severely cross a line. Personally I think this image crosses a line but it's still an album cover and should therefore not be banned from Wikipedia at all. I wonder why this would classify as porn, or why it would not, because the girl in the picture looks at the viewer? Because she exposes her body? Why block now when this has been published in 1976?
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Kiddie-porn hosted on BBC?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/zanelowe/masterpieces/nirvana_art/420/01.jpg
Where's the difference?
Just don't tell the IWF
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I'm from Spain, and first the first thing that comes to my mind at the moment its OH MY GOD, what are we doing???
Then I went to the Spanish wikipedia, and there is no pic, but some one has edited the article adding how the IWF block the image.
Well done.
But this page is also almost censored, just take a look at "This comment is awaiting moderation". It's not the same, but it's a begining. In Spain the comments are not usually moderated, which is better for the free expresion, and worse because of the trolls :(
A blog like this in spain will be full of demagogy comments about politics, change of goverment, discalifications to inmigrants, etc...
London is full of cameras, police can arrest you if you use your neighbor WIFI (but you have to give them every password in your PC if they ask), etc...
Be careful, English people you have one foot inside the "big brother" society.
Fear and "dammed words" ("terror", "child abuse", "pornography") it's what they are using to reduce your rights.
Sorry about my english, I can't write iin spanish or I will be banned!!!!!
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@234 SheffTim: "Legally that image would judged to be `erotic posing with no sexual activity`if this went to court. "
Really? Well I'm glad to see we can now do away with courts. If we want to know if someone is guilty of a crime, we can just as SheffTim. Obviously that's a much better system.
I guess hundreds of thousands of people are now guilty of downloading child porn. I'm curious that you're even admitting to having seen the image on a public forum - if I'd downloaded what I thought was child porn, I certainly wouldn't!
This also explains why the album with that image isn't hosted by any other website (such as Amazon), isn't available to buy in the UK, and isn't linked to by mainstream media sources such as The Guardian. Except ... that's not the case, all of those things have in fact happened.
"That cover was banned in several countries when released"
The band themselves rereleased it, but it has never been ruled child porn by a court.
"If you disbelieve child abuse can happen then there`s this from the USA"
Where did I say that? Child abuse is a serious and awful issue. To compare 30 year old band covers you don't like to child porn is an insult to the suffering in child abuse cases.
"The IWF was set up to help combat access to such sites and images."
That was fine. It has now overstepped that mark, even going so far as to censor encyclopedic text, that is clearly legal.
"This is at heart about protecting children from adults that seek out such material and have sexual fantasies about children. I`m afraid not everyone looks at that album cover with `innocent` eyes."
What on earth does the former have to do with the album? This is nothing about "protecting children". What harm was caused in the production of that image? And if it was really abusive, why not go after the record company? It's not like the source of the image is unknown.
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Granted the IWF should have handled matters better, however, if there are questionable images that sexualise children then prompt action and an immediate censorship is needed for obvious children, this is a matter of protecting children and should not be confused with the rights to free speech etc. I commend them for their action in protecting our children.
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Surely the most salent point is that they blocked the URL of the page, yet the image is still viewable if you know the URL for it, thus if it is included in any otehr page it will be viewable. They should have only blocked the image.
Even more sensible would have been to speak to wikipedia and get them to censor the picture itself (hardly a problematic thing to do).
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Disgraceful! Blocking the whole Wikipedia site is absolutely disproportionate. If a page is offensive (which I doubt) there are wiki mechanisms for resolving it.
If this is the law (which I doubt) it needs changing immediately.
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imperial06:
"however, if there are questionable images that sexualise children then prompt action and an immediate censorship is needed for obvious children, this is a matter of protecting children and should not be confused with the rights to free speech etc. I commend them for their action in protecting our children."
First of all, I have seen the image, and if you feel something sexual, then you are insane, and you must go to the first psicologist you find.
Second: "questionable images". What is questionable?? Who made the rules (we know whoy applys)???
Third: "I commend them for their action in protecting our children."
This is a major protection, now I feel better and safer.
Maybe something good can come out of this, police can use the photo showing it to the people. If you like the photo, your pulse raise or your mouth is full of scummy the can arrest you for live. End of the problem?
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So you`re suggesting we should censor all media that a small minority of people find arousing? #235
I`m not just suggesting it, this is what most in our society agrees should happen for good reasons.
Not least because that such material on the web can involve children being coerced or have non-consensual acts performed against them in order to produce such material.
That also breaks societal norms as to what are agreed to be the differences between being a child and adult; that sex between adult and child (or sexual attraction by an adult towards children) can never be condoned or considered `normal` behavior and that incest is a taboo that should not be broken.
This is at heart about protecting children from adults that seek out such material and have sexual fantasies about children.
If you don`t like this then campaign to change the current laws regarding what is acceptable material to have or view on a website; laws that appear to have widespread public support across many countries. All societies set limits as to what is permissible. Look at the broader issues behind this.
I doubt you`ll find much public support for allowing websites (or magazines) of nude (or provocatively dressed) children in poses sexual or otherwise for adult consumption.
`tell SheffTim that he isn't a judge, and shouldn't speak for a judge and assume that this particular picture would be considered illegal, or shall I do it?` #241
You`re now making a judgment that a court wouldn?t find it unlawful.
Produce such an album cover today and see how acceptable it is? Attitudes have changed over the years.
For what its worth I don`t think the Wiki page should be blocked now the image has been removed from the page.
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Yesterday's story on BBC online news site [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm] contains a link to the Scorpions own site where the image in question still resides. Is IWF now going to block access to BBC online?
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ShefTim: You seem to be getting quite close to the truth, then your mind veers off on a wierd tangent for no obvious reason - you say:
Not least because that such material on the web can involve children being coerced or have non-consensual acts performed against them in order to produce such material.
On it's own, that makes sense - banning images of children being abused removes one reason for children to be abused, and that's all to the good. The Virgin Killer cover is not an image of a child being abused, so sound as your principle is, it doesn't apply here.
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One of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam war was the Pulitzer award winning picture of a young naked girl, Kim Phuc, running from her village.
Its probably appeared on every news site including the BBC in the world.
So does the IWF think that needs to be censored too?
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@Gazimoff
You say that the image is not taken in context. But that's the problem. The police / politicians cannot admit that it's the context that matters. Otherwise they'd have to admit that they're locking people up for being paedophiles or being attracted to teenagers. i.e. that they're locking people up for what they are and not for what they have done, which goes against traditional principles of English jurisprudence.
This image is objectively level 1 child pornography. There have been whole commercial child pornography companies in the former soviet union whose output was never more "hardcore" than that image. Probably the most prominent example being.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Ukrainian_child_pornography_raids
The owners of some of those sites have been imprisoned and some of their UK customers have been convicted on nothing "stronger" than the image on that album cover. While it remains a mystery in the UK, the Irish police, where the laws are very similar and the COPINE rating scale is also used, have stated that about 40% of convictions for child pornography involve only this kind of material. The absolute majority of images that the IWF deal with are level 1.
So the problem is this. Objectively the Scorpions cover must be child pornography - if it is not then thousands of people have been wrongly convicted and also wrongly demonised by the press. Yet we say it is not child pornography, not because of any quality of the image itself, but because those viewing it and possessing it (electronically viewing is possessing) are likely to be heavy metal fans or curious techno savvy followers of the news. In other words, the "reason" it is not child pornography is that the people viewing it aren't paedophiles. But that is clearly a ridiculous way to define what is or is not child pornography.
The law also has no regard for whether anyone is a paedophile and undoubtedly many people have been convicted on child pornography charges who are not paedophiles (as the letter of the law says they should be, since it criminalises acts, not states of mind). The existence of paedophilia is left as an implicit assumption for the public to make when they read about CP cases in the media, and normally the public laps it up and puts 2 and 2 together to make 5. This is why this case creates a jolt, because we KNOW that people who are not paedophiles both view and possess this image. So we can't put 2 and 2 together and make 5. Either we deny it is an illegal image (it is), we go into hyperbole mode about babies being tied up and raped (ignoring that 40% of CP convictions are for nothing "stronger" than this image), or we try to pretend that the law somehow only convicts people who are paedophiles and not people like us for viewing the image (sexual preference is no defence).
Another problem is that the child protection agencies view of paedophilia when it comes to child pornography is attraction to under 18s. The media goes along with this and regularly calls people with possession of post pubescent under 18 images "paedophiles". Such a definition makes most people paedophiles - almost everyone who is not genuinely asexual due to a medical condition or otherwise. This is typical of the psychology of past inquisitions and is really just an extension of the same dynamic into the present times, as McCarthyism also briefly was in America.
http://www.inquisition21.com/article150.html?&MMN_position=95:95
Slowly the inquisition creeps into more things. First the IWF gained a remit to censor racial hatred (a form of political speech whether you or I like it or not). Now we have extensions into porn portraying violence or the threat of violence, bestiality, and (staged or real) necrophilia. Any old album covers falling under that remit? I dare say so. I guess the inquisition will be busy knocking down peoples doors and their internet censorship arm the IWF will be busy with the heavy metal back catalogue on wikipedia.
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Another thing, normally when people see something they suspect is illegal, they are expected to report it to the authorities/police.
So why is this IWF even need to exist?
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@RenWilliams/255
The IWF does not need to exist... There is already a europe-wide method of reporting illegal child pornography on the internet, which utilises their connections to police departments across europe. They are funded directly by the EU, and thus have oversight on their activities. They are called 'InHope' (www.inhope.org)
I have used them before to report child porn images I found on a website I was directed to - because while I find censorship abhorrent, I also believe child pornographers, and that's REAL pornographers, should be investigated and dealt with BY THE LAW.
So no, there is no need for the IWF, and in fact, if anything they are probably diluting and harming the actions (by not having the same level of contacts and abilities to bring things to the attention of law enforcement) of InHope, who actually do have a legal foundation for their existance.
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As a further to my previous comment, this is how I think that IWF is harming the situation.
Lets say, for sake of argument, that some british citizen is browing the web, and comes across a picture of a child being sexually abused on a brazilian web server.
a) the citizen reports it to IWF, the IWF contact the met who say 'yes, it's illegal, but its not our juristiction, there's not much we can do', IWF block the image, which is now invisible to all UK users, but no action is conducted against the host/photographer of the original image
b) the citizen reports it to InHope, InHope recognise that it is a brazilian server, and using their contacts they contact Interpol and the brazilian law enforcement, the image remains on the internet for 2 days, but after that 2 days, the original photographer is arrested, the image taken down, and the photographer spends time in prison.
If (a) occurs, then (b) cannot occur, as no UK member is able to see the image to then contact people that CAN bring justice.
The only way real justice is brought against the hypothetical photographer, is if the IWF is never involved in this situation.
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Oh, and one last issue, InHope guarentees indemnity for those reporting images they find, IWF does not.
Thus someone reporting a child porn image to the IWF may leave the experience scared for being convicted of something that was purely accidental, when they did the right thing.
With InHope, the person knows that by doing "the right thing" they have shown that their viewing of that image was accidental and without intent to view child pornography.
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Unfortunately IWF seems to be a member of InHope.
http://www.uk.inhope.org/ redirects to IWF site.
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""So you`re suggesting we should censor all media that a small minority of people find arousing?""
SheffTim> "I`m not just suggesting it, this is what most in our society agrees should happen for good reasons."
You're wrong on this one. The fact that it is arousing to a few is not why child porn is censored. You then gave a better reason for censoring it: it's about the fact that the creation of said images involves abuse, "such material on the web can involve children being coerced or have non-consensual acts performed against them in order to produce such material."
If doorknobs or dogs or small children are apparently arousing to some, that does not mean that Homebase catalogues should be censored.
To quote crimeinfo.org.uk,
"It is not illegal to be a paedophile, or to suffer from paedophilia, but if a paedophile chooses to act on their attraction, that is a different matter entirely."
If it were in general necessary, or practical and commonplace, to perform abusive and illegal actions in order to produce pornography for doorknob-philes, Homebase catalogues would be censored. It's not the fact that the arousal happens that makes it illegal. It's the fact that producing child porn very often involves abuse.
""tell SheffTim that he isn't a judge, and shouldn't speak for a judge and assume that this particular picture would be considered illegal, or shall I do it?""
SheffTim> "You`re now making a judgment that a court wouldn't find it unlawful."
With all due respect, you're confused. The previous poster is merely stating that you cannot assume the outcome of a court case. The previous poster is quite correct.
SheffTim> "Produce such an album cover today and see how acceptable it is? Attitudes have changed over the years."
Five words: "Klara And Edda Belly-Dancing." Courts are not as reactionary or predictable as many believe.
SheffTim> "For what its worth I don`t think the Wiki page should be blocked now the image has been removed from the page. "
The image has not been removed from the page. In fact, the image is still visible from the UK. The numbskulls who set up the filtering actually managed to block the wrong item - the text instead of the image.
The low technical standard of the solution is entirely appropriate to what we already know about the low standard of evidence and process.
In a previous post you link the issue of censoring an album cover on Wikipedia with the "Gaffer" case, stating that "some may disagree with that, but then at least one man also thought it OK to rape his own daughters and father children with them." And I think that says it all about this topic.
This photograph has nothing to do with systematic abuse of two women throughout their childhood and through many years of their adult lives. The "Gaffer" is not a victim of an excess of child porn, any more than rapists are driven to their criminal acts by the existence of miniskirts and legal porn.
Britain has an increasingly unhealthy attitude to subjects relating to sex, and it's about time that this trend is reversed. We are doing our mental health (and that of our children, incidentally) no good at all with our current attitude. It is clearly about time for us all to reevaluate our position with respect to both sexuality and abuse, perhaps to rediscover the ability to observe the world in all its shades of grey, and to contextualise and react to what we see in an adult manner. Let's do it - if not just for ourselves, then won't somebody think of the children?
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A few replies.
14. I did not write of "tireless child protectors" or "paranoid amoral libertarians". In fact, I made no judgement as to who was in the right - that's not my job, that's yours.
27. The release from the Wikimedia Foundation came in just as the button was about to be pressed for publication - so it was easier to add as a link.
On a point of information, the IWF is not a government body - it is simply used by a number of ISPs as a reporting mechanism for potentially illegal images. They are under no obligation to block sites on its blacklist.
Some people had problems posting - sorry the BBC's signin software may have been acting up yesterday.
#190 - right to spot the grammatical infelicity. The "relatively" was inserted by an editor who thought that the Scorpions were not really that obscure.
And on that point - sorry. You're right. I grew up in the Seventies, and somehow failed to notice the Scorpions. But I now know they were - and remain - absolutely immense.
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`The Virgin Killer cover is not an image of a child being abused, so sound as your principle is, it doesn`t apply here.` # 252
The issue isn`t about whether the child in the image is being abused or not, nor the motivation of the photographer, nor whether or not the child (or their guardian) has given consent.
Under the The Protection of Children Act 1978 as amended by Section 45 of the Sex Offences Act 2003 it is unlawful to take, make, allow to take, distribute, show, possess with intent to distribute, or advertise indecent photos or pseudo-photographs of children under the age of 18.
In practice this means any images of children, involved in sexual activity or posed to be sexually provocative and includes images depicting erotic posing, with no sexual activity.
NB: I understand that the age was raised to 18 in order to stop very young looking 16yr olds being dressed and posed to look like much younger children for the purposes of adult sexual gratification. (The police do exercise discretion, as with 17 yr old page 3 girls (the tabloids chose ones that look like grown women anyway) or with those that marry at 16 and photgraphed by their spouse etc. etc.)
It is also unlawful to:
(b) Distribute or show such indecent photographs; or
(c) To have in their possession such indecent photographs, with a view to their being distributed or shown by himself or others; or
(d) To publish or cause to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that the advertiser distributes or shows such indecent photographs or intends to do so.
The issue is about protecting children from those that fantasise about sexual grtification from children. To remind you the girl in album cover was 11 yrs old, that cover couldn`t be produced today.
Peodophiles look at images (and pay to see them) in very different ways from you or I. We know that some act, or try to act, on their impulses and fantasies; and some also kill to try and hide their crimes.
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Nice to see an acknowledgment of the Scorpions true status as colossi of rock, but if you weren't sure in the first place you could have just looked them up on Wikipedia :-)
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"@71 _mdwh_
Take this to the extreme; what if someone has posted pictures of child porn - not just borderline cases like this? I'm sure most would hope that it would be blocked or taken down."
Umm...We would hope it would be examined and if necessary a charge brought by the police. The perpetrator would then have a day in court where an independent judiciary would consider whether a crime had been committed.
That is what is wrong here. Mdwh seems to be of the common opinion that child porn is a crime where to be accused is the same as being guilty, and that normal judicial procedures should be suspended for it. This is a common and very dangerous belief.
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`The Virgin Killer cover is not an image of a child being abused, so sound as your principle is, it doesn`t apply here.` # 252
Leagally the issue isn`t about whether the child in the image is being abused or not, nor the motivation of the photographer, nor whether or not the child (or their guardian) has given consent.
Under the The Protection of Children Act 1978 as amended by Section 45 of the Sex Offences Act 2003 it is unlawful to take, make, allow to take, distribute, show, possess with intent to distribute, or advertise indecent photos or pseudo-photographs of children under the age of 18.
In practice this means any images of children, involved in sexual activity or posed to be sexually provocative and includes images depicting erotic posing, with no sexual activity.
NB: I understand that the age was raised to 18 in order to stop very young looking 16yr olds being dressed and posed to look like much younger children for the purposes of adult sexual gratification. (The police do exercise discretion, as with 17 yr old page 3 girls etc. The issue is really about younger tennagers and pre teens.)
It is also unlawful to:
(b) Distribute or show such indecent photographs; or
(c) To have in their possession such indecent photographs, with a view to their being distributed or shown by himself or others; or
(d) To publish or cause to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that the advertiser distributes or shows such indecent photographs or intends to do so.
The issue is about protecting children from adults that fantasise about gaining sexual grtification from children.
To remind you the girl in album cover was 11 yrs old, that cover couldn`t be produced today.
Peodophiles look at images (and pay to see them) in very different ways from you or I.
We know that some act, or try to act, on their impulses and fantasies; and some also kill to try and hide their crimes.
Im doubt any law will cover every eventuality or grey area, that`s why cases sometimes go to court for juries to decide.
But it is better to attempt to try and set limits as to what is acceptable or not than not to try to.
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"...We know that some act, or try to act, on their impulses and fantasies; and some also kill to try and hide their crimes..."
SheffTim
We also know that they have familiars, little imps that call up the Devil for them, that they float on water and weigh as much as a duck....
Honestly! I didn't expect to see the Witchfinder General making a return appearance in 2008.
The Spanish Inquisition, now, that's a different matter....
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Followup to #254
A big problem about child pornography law is that the public cannot have an informed debate about it, for the simple reason that it is treated like kryptonite and the public are not permitted to view it and therefore draw their own conclusions about what should be illegal, or what an appropriate sentence for a particular image should be. The media then always appears to emphasise the worst - every CP pic is baby rape and no-one wants to hear about the ones that are some smiling happy fifteen year old girl on a nudist beach in Belarus bouncing a beach ball or an American 16 year old boy in his bedroom passing out pictures of his naked bod to impress some girl or other he's talking to on msn.
No nuance seems to be allowed in discussing these subjects. No light and shade or gray. The whole discourse is like a fire and brimstone speech by Ian Paisley.
This is why I think that this IWF blocking is a good thing to have happened. It has shocked people into realising that when it comes to the issue of child porn sometimes the IWF, or the police, or even the courts can be the bad guys. Sometimes they get it wrong. Not only that, but that sometimes the people accused of child porn offences can be the good guys, or at least innocent of any evil intent. This can only be good.
As the unchecked power of anti-child porn organisations increased I guess it was only a matter of time that the confidence they had due to public goodwill led them to make an enormous cock up. Thankfully that day has arrived. Hopefully it will now be acceptable for a person, or even an MP to openly say that our present child pornography laws or the way the police enforce them, or the IWF go too far, and not be treated as a pariah. We'll see.
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SheffTim,
If the album cover is as illegal as you state, why has the CPS never even brought a case against the label, band, photographer, or any of the many record shops STILL distributing the original artwork (yes, it's still available, don't kid yourself).
The fact remains, that album cover is not illegal, it's not a sexual pose, so your claim of 'photographs of under 18s' being outright illegal is nonsense.
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"Under the The Protection of Children Act 1978 as amended by Section 45 of the Sex Offences Act 2003...." - SheffTim
The dates kind of give it away; this image was in the mainstream as an album cover BEFORE these laws were passed. It exists in various places across the internet as part of historical archives; including "controversial album covers" (which was what the blocked page on Wikipedia is about!). And now thanks to this ineptitude by the IWF, it will now forever be used on the internet as an example of what child porn is NOT, regardless of what UK law may have to say about it. The IWF simply doesn't have authority to actually remove these images from US (or Chinese, or Russian, etc...)servers. Which means either the IWF are wrong, or (thanks to their incompetance) we now need to have almost every major website on the net blocked (this includes google, and ebay) in order to comply with UK laws.
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@265. At 3:35pm on 09 Dec 2008, SheffTim wrote:
"Peodophiles look at images (and pay to see them) in very different ways from you or I. "
Exactly, I have heard of a case where a paedophile was browsing the child section of perfectly legal online mail order catalogues, and getting sexual gratification.
So what are we supposed to do?
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well pointed out poster 243: Kiddie porn on the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/zanelowe/masterpieces/nirvana_art/420/01.jpg
I can't be bothered to report the BBC but someone can if they want to.
The funny thing is at one point in my life I had the Scorpions Lp and sold it (not to a paedo I hope), but the worst thing is I've still got the Nirvana album, I'm fearing a knock on the door at anytime... one mo...
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Amazon is now advertising this album with a different cover shot (of the band) as are HMV. Zavi now aren`t showing the cover but a label stating `offensive image`.
`The fact remains, that album cover is not illegal, it`s not a sexual pose, so your claim of `photographs of under 18s` being outright illegal is nonsense.` 268
The image is of an 11 year old. It will be interesting to see if anyone (from say Wikipedia or the record company) is prepared to go to court and contest that this image falls outside the remit of the law as it currently stands (see my posts above, why not do some research into what the law currently is) or should be exempt on grounds of artistic merit etc.
That might also happen if the image is banned on the Web but the album with that cover is sold in high street shops.
On a broader point, you guys think that having pictures of nude young children on the Web is OK?
Campaign to change the law then, I can`t see any mainstream Party or newspaper being sympathetic; I won`t hold my breath.
My last post. I thank the mods for their patience.
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So will everyone who has tried to access the Wikipedia page be getting a knock on the door from Inspector Knacker now? Or are ISPs not obliged to report people who try to look at pages on the list?
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@272
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/718106.stm
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This is a fundamental probelm with the IWF - the self-appointed guardians of the internet in the UK are totally unaccountable and ever since it was set up, it has had a "Daily Mail" type of agenda. The legitimate and proper aim of stopping (access to) illegal content has always been overshadowed by a more subjective obsession with obscene/indecent content, regardless of common sense and context.
There is also a misunderstanding about how it works - it's like a anti-spam list. IWF has a list of what they consider to be dodgy sites, and ISPs blindly use that list to censor their users' internet access.
So there are two issues which the media as a whole and the industry need to address:
1. The IWF's opinion is subjective and unaccountable
2. The ISPs have no say (or apparent interest) in the content of the IWF's list
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Regarding the article: "Internet ban on 'child porn' album sleeve" It is very worrying that an album cover that has been sold thousands of copies over the past 30 years can not be presented or discussed on the Internet. The design clearly tried to provoke the establishment and it is not a design I would use, but I would not have a problem showing it to my children. If you want to judge for yourself see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Virgin_Killer.jpg (Note: not the image has been blocked, only the article discussing it).
Blocking this image runs contrary to the freedom of information we expect from the Internet. People who find this image to disturbing should grow up or not look at it. I don't think that this childish action by the IWF has any impact on Paedophiles and other perverts.
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btw, for anyone interested, Be have responded to customer's complaints about the filtering with a very thinly veiled 'If you don't think the IWF is marvellous, you must be a paedophile' comment, along with some 'Oh no, think of the children!!!' remark.
Anyone here considering ISPs at the moment would do well to avoid them.
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@SheffTim
"On a broader point, you guys think that having pictures of nude young children on the Web is OK?
Campaign to change the law then, I can`t see any mainstream Party or newspaper being sympathetic; I won`t hold my breath."
That's rather a straw man, and it glosses over the fact that the most contentious part of CP laws relate to viewing, not distribution.
If I said I saw a picture of a naked child in a shop window 100 yards up the street and someone went and looked for themselves, do you really believe that they should be convicted of a criminal offence? That's effectively what the law says in relation to CP on the internet but NOT in "real life". I think that needs to be made sensible before we talk about anything else. It's an atrocious law that is against common sense.
It has also been used as a model for "extreme porn" legislation see no we can look forward to the police, if they cannot find anything else to get you with, being able to arrest you for a serious offence for merely putting the words "dog sex" into Google image search, and arresting people like this,
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjBBD7XRw2Q
I guess that MP's will probably only realise what a mess they've made of these laws when it's their own teenage sons and daughters being convicted and put on the sex offenders register, ruining their career prospects. But I think that time will come. It has to eventually.
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Also to point out. Particularly with the addition of these new extreme pornography laws, these laws are a MUCH greater threat to your teenage sons or daughters well-being than however amount of "internet predators" that are out there.
If you leave your 14 year old son on the PC then the first thing he's probably going to do is look for pictures of nude women. The second thing he's probably going to look for is pictures of nude 14 year old girls. With a ready supply of such increasingly coming from 14 year old girls with webcams and camphones themselves they are not hard to find.
One slip and your son, and even you can be in real trouble. This is much more likely than that he's going to run off with some balding 40 year old "paedophile" from a chat room.
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I think a lot of people are missing the point here. The concern is not about a 30 year old album cover and whether or not it is legal. It's not about child abuse and/or pornography either.
Neither is it about the editorial policies of Wikipedia or the political and sexual views of the people who run it.
The point is that an unelected and unaccountable group of people produce a "blacklist" of web pages which is then used by most ISPs to block our access to webpages, for whatever reasons they see fit. And we are not even told that we are blocked from viewing, we get misleading "page not found" errors. The least that the IWF could do is employ a solicitor to check whether something is legal or not rather than relying on the police - to the police everyone is a "potential criminal" so what does that tell you?
It's a fundamental freedom that is at stake here - NOT, I stress, the freedom to view pornography, but the freedom to read internet content without heavy handed censorship - after all, who knows what else has been censored and on what dubious grounds? If pages are to be censored then we should at least be allowed to know what is censored and why, and be allowed to challenge that if we believe that the censorship itself is wrong/illegal.
Today, a 30 year old album cover of dubious taste is censored, tomorrow, maybe a political point of view that someone disagrees with. This is the thin end of the wedge. And of course we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Censorship is necessary, but it should be with a light touch, and by campaigning to get illegal websites closed down, rather than heavy handed blanket censorship erring on the side of caution.
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@280 KateUK1
This is exactly the point, and nicely summed up.
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It appears that IWF has now "backed down" and has unblocked access to the site...
http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm
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The IWF has backed down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7774102.stm
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And my ISP (BT) is still providing fake 404s
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What I want to know is, that as the IWF is a independent charity.
Why have they not been prosecuted for accessing child porn, What exempts them from from the law like the rest of us?
How do we not know this isn't just a very clever cover for a paedophile ring. We can't know this as the organisation has no accountability.
I know if I was a paedophile, I know where I'd want to work.
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Confirmed this is now unblocked, and editing on Wikipedia is now possible again. This is surely the end for the IWF; having admitted they just blocked one of the web's most popular websites for over 24 hours for no reason, they're now likely to be held legally accountable for the screw-up. (EU Human Rights, Article 10, amongst other things)
Don't expect any government agency to do any better either, we all know good UK.gov is at IT projects.
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I think the fact that the IWF have backed down is even worst than the fact that they censored the image in the first place.
Either the image is illegal or not. There's no middle ground here.
If the picture is illegal then they shouldn't be bowing to public pressure but should be providing evidence to that fact and sticking to it.
If its not then they should have made sure that they double checked before they added to the picture and should now be accountable for breaking one of the most popular sites on the internet.
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This whole issue has caused me to actually sit back and think about the issue of paedophilia rationally, and I've come to realise that it's unfair to discriminate against people for the things that turn them on.
To tar everyone with the same brush would be similar to calling all BDSM fetishists rapists and torturers. Instead we should judge people by their actions. It wasn't long ago that the mainstream view of homosexuals was that they were as mentally ill boy rapists.
I'm not claiming that images of child abuse should be legal, but why should people not be free to enjoy paedoerotic cartoons and child catalogue models if that's what turns them on? Instead of being universally hated as evil and sick individuals, it would make a lot more sense to encourage them to seek out gratification in ways that don't harm our children.
In England, they came first for the self mutilators, and I did nothing because I do not practice BME.
When they came for the fetishists, I did nothing because extreme pornography is obscene.
When they came for the paedophiles, I did nothing because I am not a paedophile.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
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The IWF doesn't require a court of law, the MoU with the HO and ACPO, is what it is, and Wiki's problems are caused by their own censorship policies.
Wiki wants to control what people write, their mechanism, is their responsibility. Web hosts must not wait for an image to be declared unlawful by a court, otherwise they could end up in jail.
Wiki has a list of people from certain IP addresses who are verboten from changing Wiki pages. Wiki does not like what they write and the IWF spolied Wiki's own censorship operations.
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What's next? Nirvana's "Nevermind"?
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One has to wonder about a group of people - the so-called "IWF" - who are fixated on surfing the internet to find pictures of naked children.
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#151:
It's unfair to accuse Wikipedia of bias just because its articles on alternative medicine are largely highly critical of alternative medicine.
The fact is that most alternative medicine is total bunk. It's entirely appropriate that Wikipedia should say so, rather than try to give a "balanced" view in which the supporters of a particular brand of snake oil are given as much prominence as the critics.
Some alternative treatments do actually work, for example St John's Wort for treating depression, and this is quite clearly acknowledged by the Wikipedia article.
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The funny thing here is that, according to current law, the IWF were right to ban the image. It is clearly a level 1 image according to the Act.
What we have here is NOT a mistake by the IWF. It is more fundamental than that, it is a mistake with the law.
We all know that our lives have been made miserable and oppressive by this current government's nanny-state legislation. Here is one of the few instances when the people (in practice the compter techies) have risen up and said "We won't stand for it!". And the state has folded.
In France they refuse to accept oppressive legislation. We should do this more often in Britain...
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The real question is "What will be banned next?" How about Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit album cover?
I understand the concern for protecting against child pornography, but in this case, it was an album cover.
How about working with Wikipedia to work on a warning prior to opening certain pages?
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Take the IWF to court for looking at that image!!
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