Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover Six British ISPs are filtering access to Wikipedia after the site was added to an Internet Watch Foundation child-pornography blacklist, according to Wikipedia administrators. As of Sunday morning UK time, certain British web surfers were unable to view at least one Wikipedia article tagged with ostensible child porn. And, in …
What we need is an anti-censorship extension. If a page returns a 404 then the extension tries in the background using a (non-UK) proxy. If the extension gets an http 200 then there's a good chance the page is being censored, so it flashes a warning of some sort.
"Imaginary crime" doesn't make much sense, but I think I know what AC was trying to say because I expressed something similar myself. I suggested it might be a "thought crime in disguise". Sometimes it isn't even a very good disguise. Take the ongoing attempt to outlaw virtual child pornography. No real children are hurt, so what other explanation can there be?
Even with real child pornography, just looking at it doesn't obviously hurt anyone. In that case there are some legitimate explanations for why it should be illegal, but I suspect the the main reason for the harsh punishments (five years for looking at a picture!) is just that we're disgusted by it and anyone who uses it.
There is a workaround this increasingly repressive attitude towards men and children; simply burn your eyes out, cut off your hands and burn yourself so severely that you need several layers of protective clothing in order to survive. That way the next time so welfare scrounger of a mother accuses you of kiddie fiddling, you can proudly say that she is a liar. And the police will believe you!
"OK, so what about if (purely hypothetically) Gary Glitter's computer contained that image alongside a bunch of other, more straightforwardly pornographic, images?"
He probably also has images of his mom or dog on his PC. Why should anyone care?
"That's the reason for filtering images like this; the notion that (a) paedophiles will use them for sexual gratification"
Please explain why we can't have that.
"(b) men (or more likely adolescents) in the early stages of sexual development may get imprinted with a sexual response to the image, such that they become in effect paedophiliac themselves"
That sounds like total BS coming from some quack psychologist looking for a steep career in law enforcement (like what happened with the "repressed memories of child abuse" so popular in US courtrooms 10y ago). Care to cite any peer reviewed papers on any of this?
"Can someone explain why such images, in that context, should /not/ be filtered? Please do write to your MP about it and come back and report what they say..."
DEFAULT ACCESS IS NOT TO FILTER. Please hand back your AI, EFF etc. membership cards forthwith. If I haven't been too clear: your reasoning applies perfectly well to any democratic "free world" propaganda found on a PC of some poor sod in Bananastan...
The album art you are all on about i am aware of from the original outburst of arguments in the 70's...
Personally, i believe it is inappropriate material. the kid looks young and is in a pose directed by the photographer.... it was right back then, and it is right now to class that filth as child porn...
a few people have piped up about Nirvana and the album art for Nevermind. that picture is another story, its of a baby swimming in water... the photograph is not directed by a photographer and is not sexual in any way.... There is no issue with that...
a few others have said about "what about photos of the kids in the bath", well again, unless the photo is posed in a sexually provocative manner then there should no be a issue..
Wikki should do the right thing and pull the image and then argue the corner....
all that said, i do not believe in censorship... if you are offended by the page, then complain to your local authorities and do not go back there...
@AC "In fact at this point could she not just be asked "were you abused in the making of this image ?" surely if the answer is no then there is no problem."
Hypothetical scenario.
Suppose the cops catch someone who has in the past, but who's served a jail term and been released, with a large numbers of images where the child depicted was not being directly abused *in the picture* (setting aside whether the act of taking the picture, or distributing it, or having a wank over it, is in itself abusive or not.) Let's suppose for the sake of argument that that there's no doubt from the context that the guy's using this material as pornography. Should the possession of that material by that man be a criminal offence, or not?
Visitor icon, 'cos today I feel more like a stranger in a strange land than ever - I can't believe I'm having to make this case 8.
Visiting the page on Virgin Media gives a blank page (0 bytes). It seems that they have redirected requests to en.wikipedia.org to some proxy at 62.30.249.131 - to get the proxy IP simply try and edit any page on Wikipedia which will reveal the IP. Visiting any other website or one of the many 'whatismyip' websites shows me my actual public IP. The Virgin proxy doesn't seem to add or modify any headers though - you literally get a blank page.
Visiting the page through Eclipse Internet gives me a 404 error page
"The Web server cannot find the file or script you asked for. Please check the URL to ensure that the path is correct." This is apparantly generated by a Squid server (squid/2.6.STABLE15) called 'wensleydale.karoo.lan' - public IP is 213.249.193.2. The Eclipse proxy appears to be adding HTTP via, cache and error 'access denied' headers. Again, visiting any other websites displays my 'real ip'.
<- Flaming ISP's!
I'm surprised no one has commented on this already, but take a good close look at the "full res" 300x300 image on Wikipedia. There are no naughty bits on view anyway. The cracked glass effect covers the pubic area and if you examine the chest for the presence of nipples you will find nothing. Whether this is the effect of the low resolution or they have been deliberately airbrushed out is irrelevant. There are no genitalia on show here.
My ISP isn't blocking the page, but my IP address still falls under the naughty range, so I can't edit anything without being logged in: that https://secure trick allows me to do both, and, interestingly, shows that Wikipaedia is getting my actual IP address rather than that of some proxy with an address in the 212.159.xxx.xxx range.
Anyway, panic over, move along, nothing to see here.
Bravo, bravo. Well said throughout.
I rang my ISP (Virgin) yesterday to register a complaint that they are censoring my internet connection transparently and without notification. I am absolutely horrified by this, because it means that even with all the anti-phishing features in my browser, all the domain-ownership checking that can be done to be sure of the site one is on, any given page I look at could be the invention of Virgin and I would be none the wiser.
If I want to censor the content coming into my house I will do so. If I want an internet connection censored by someone else (and I can't imagine a situation where I would) I will buy that service. And most importantly of all, if Virgin feels that it must block access to a particular site or image under its legal obligations it MUST TELL ME IT IS DOING SO rather than present a false version of the internet to me without ant notice.
Demon appears to have it right here - explicit notification that the jackboot of government has prevented an image being shown. Virgin has it totally wrong, with their transparent proxying.
I'm really fucked off.
"Whether it removes the naked prepubescent or not, the Foundation will receive an uncensored Web 2.0 tongue lashing. Wikipedia isn't a user-generated utopia. It's a cultish self-contradiction that can't help but undermine its own ideals. "
As others have said, seriously, WTF is up with that statement? No one, other than perhaps Jimmy Wales, is professing that Wikipedia is a utopia. But "cultish" and "self-contradictory"? I don't see what's "cultish" or "contradictory" about my throwing up articles about the NZ Women's Rugby Team and a governor of NSW in the 1800s. It's a *resource* of variable quality (some parts excellent, some parts crap) contributed to by the general public, with all the strengths and drawbacks that implies. Get over yourself.
That statement really detracted from an otherwise decent news article.
And this on the advice of an unidentified police 'service'!
'IWF spokeswoman said a reader had brought the image to the foundation's attention last week and it had contacted the police before adding the page to their list.' (today's BBC News article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm).
Not, apparently, the Home Office you'll note - just 'the police'...
Looks to me as if 'the police' are becoming pretty much a loose cannon lately, what with recent events involving MPs?
The obvious question is, do the politically correct members of the police services have nothing more pressing to occupy their time these days than offering advice concerning access to Internet sites? Surely that is the province of the legal profession?
Both they, and the bulk of UK ISPs seem way too eager to anticipate the unspoken requirements of what they see as their political masters of late.
Well, if they would care to get back in contact with reality they might, possibly, realise that, in a situation where there are far more pressing matters looming (public order in the police's case, lack of business in the ISP's case) than toadying to the curtain peeking supporters of a government that has a severely limited life span...
I'm fed up, most of us I feel are fed up, with the current situation where, with things visibly coming apart big time, our government appears to be sitting, fingers in its ears, singing 'la, la, nothing's happening, we can't hear you' while things go to hell.
The IWF, supported by our police services, seems to have mutated, as most similar organisations founded with what appear to be the best of interests do, into yet another haven for politically correct control freaks. And the bulk of UK ISPs seem to have placed themselves firmly in the same camp.
Ah well, it's not going to last long. I foresee a nasty outbreak of pragmatism on the not too distant horizon.
Meantime - it really does seem that the loonies have taken over the asylum...
(Anon because, until this is sorted out, it's clearly unwise to speak one's mind in the UK these days)
Picture of naked girl with cracked glass effect over genitals, underneath a banner which says Virgin Killer. Nah, no sexual content there at all. Can't see any paedoes getting there rocks off over that one.
/sarcasm
When most of the commentators above have their own children (First you will need a girlfriend, then stop watching porn for long enough to lose your virginity), perhaps they won't be so outraged at this prevention of them watching whatever they like on the internet.
The best thing to happen would be for Wikipedia to remove the offensive picture, and whilst I don't have any sort of nudity taboo whatsoever, I did find the picture unnecessarily offensive . Whether they regard it as porn or not, it would save so much cr*p just to remove it.
I was going to say that speed limits were a poor analogy because they only inconvenience speeders.
Then I remembered a steep gradient near bicester which you had to hit the accelerator hard to get up and which had a speed camera exactly where it levelled off and your speed jumped up for a couple of seconds. So yes, excessively strict speed rules are a bad thing.
Still, a better analogy would be parking restrictions and the nurse in Canterbury whose car was clamped while she knelt beside it in full uniform giving emergency first aid to someone who had collapsed on the pavement.
i have not looked at the image and would not want to, but this debate raises some important issues with the internet as it stands
content (such as the image above), ISP processes (for instance phorm in the UK) or even if for advertsing / privacy options etc (some countries says has to be opt-in others opt-out to be legal) which are legal in one country may not be in another, so how should these situations be handled
this legal mess is a global issue and can't be resolved by a single quango or ISP unilaterally censoring bits of the net
but the issue is to try to get all governments / legal authorities to agree on a common framework and punishments for infringment, as some countries run on cash generated by black economies this will be a problem in itself, take medicines if you read some of the emails it seems to indicate canada allows online sales of prescription drugs, hence all the viagra adverts say canadian origin etc. take pron, what is deemed accepable images of consenting adults in one country are not acceptable in another
i do not see a sensible conclusion to this issue until there is international co-operation and a body with teeth and that is not afraid to use them enforcing any rules against the website owners and if required hosting companies. but then you have issues with hijack sites and various other issues as well that could lead to innocent sites being subject to penalties
as i say no sensible conclusion to this case, but it is yet again showing just how much tracking and invading of privacy the major ISP's are doing without telling their customers
peter
"I have been following the story this morning and may - editors allowing - add to it tomorrow. Be aware that under UK Law, POSSESSION of an indecent image of a child is an offence.
Your intention (research, rubber-necking, whatever) do not count.
Having spoken with the IWF, they are reasonably happy with their conclusion that this image breaches UK Law. Therefore, be very aware that downloading the page could have consequences.
I am sure I don't need to point out to the technically-minded on here that simply opening the page will probably leave a copy of the image in your cache somewhere.
Options: don't access the page. Or access it with images turned off.
Or be prepared to argue the toss before a court. A highly unlikely outcome - but maybe one that those who pay attention to NSFW categories should bear in mind."
Such a cowardly response from a staff writer on The Reg: I expected better. This image has been 'retrospectively' declared 'indecent by the New Inquisition but for how many years has it been a perfectly acceptable album artwork without ever raising an eyebrow? How is it now - suddenly - a 'dangerous' thing?
Where are the champions of free speech and common sense? All cowering, it seems, behind incoherent and servile statements of morality and 'staying the right side of the law'. Good job, Reg - you got nobbled, too, didn't you, by the State - they put the sh*ts so far up you even you dare not reprint what has been a perfectly legal image for decades because the Paedogeddon has decided it's now 'obscene' and 'indecent'.
Things are getting very silly now. And very, very dangerous for all...
I'm also too chicken-shit to post as anything other than Anonymous. It's pathetic.
See http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/legal/oncable/acceptableuse.html
12.2 We are not responsible for the content of materials and information published by others (including Users) that are accessible via the Services, and we do not accept liability or responsibility for any such publication.
(I don't think 12.3 applies to this case, since wikipedia isn't on their servers).
Here's the rules;
To minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content specifically;
* images of child sexual abuse* hosted anywhere in the world
* criminally obscene content hosted in the UK
* incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK
*Please note the IWF use the term child sexual abuse images to accurately reflect the gravity of the images we deal with. They are also commonly referred to as: Child Pornography, Child Porn, Child Porno and Kiddie Porn. If you see such images online please report them.
So this picture is serious kiddie porn. Presumabely;
A) The band is going to face charges about producing child porn, and it's now an offence to possess said image
or
B) IWF is going to back down with serious egg-on-faces
or
C) the IWF censor-list is going to be dumped by ISPs with serious egg-on-faces.
Well done IWF!
Terror laws, indecent images and Child protection laws (specificially child abuse/porn laws), all seem to be written in the vaguest possible way, so that the laws can be applied to anything without exception.
It is almost as if the politicians have discovered a way to introduce the orwellian society, legally, and with the consent of the public.
Most of these laws seem to circumvent the normal protections that the public had, such as rights to privacy, innocent until proven guilty, and so forth.
The change is achieved by diverting the attention from the content of the laws to the focus of the law, which means critics will consistently have to defend actions such as terrorism, paedofiles, and so forth, which means critics are silenced by that association with nasty things, and thus such laws are created without opposition, nor any real debate about their contents. This of course results in the scope of the laws being almost unlimited, and the potential for misuse of the laws is also unlimited.
If the erosion of civil rights, and protection of the individual, is organised or driven by someone, that person is ingeniously moving the so called free world (tm) towards a totalitarian state, that will make the USSR and China seem like progressive, freedom loving societies. Most incredibly, they are achieving it with the support of the population.
My fear is that once a certain critical mass of these types of laws are achieved, then judicial system will collapse, and the west will be shifted from "The Free world" to "the federation of police states"
Most frightening about the way the world is moving is that all these new laws, surveillance of the general public is not improving the security of our world (as the creators of the laws claim), the laws are just the foundation of the coming orwellian police states.
For instance in Denmark the current rate of new laws over the last few years, is more than 1 law passed per day. It is probably of a similar magnitude in other so called free states,
Anonymous Delivers
Unfortunately El Reg isn't very ascii art friendly it seems. You'll have to see it here:
http://selfnotes.net/8f87a2057be74183f0890178f13933cc
No she isn't really made up like a clown. Yes, all of the cracks represented are in the glass, not the girl. And yes, I do feel slightly creepy for having made that.
Bobbi Flekman: You put a *greased naked woman* on all fours with a dog collar around her neck, and a leash, and a man's arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?
Ian Faith: This is 1982, Bobbi, c'mon!
Bobbi Flekman: That's *right*, it's 1982! Get out of the '60s. We don't have this mentality anymore.
Ian Faith: Well, you should have seen the cover they *wanted* to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me.
[...]
David St. Hubbins: It's a fine line between being stupid and clever.
IMHO, the IWF are so far beyond the stupid side of the line that they can't even see it any more.
WHAT THE F**** ????
I don't need protected, I am an ADULT.
If I want protection I will go watch a film rated 12. I will not go to a website which we must all know by now, makes a point of not censoring itself and admitting what is surely common sense online: that you might come across potentially offensive content..
Well great. I go online specifically to get the uncensored truth but darn it, my government is stepping in to make such a thing impossible.
If I type in the word crab anywhere on the internet, (for example) looking for an innocent little image of a crab running along the beach... I am fully aware that a huge picture of a penis may pop up at any moment. In fact, I would be surprised if it didn't.
I realise bad things happen, and honestly, a photo of a naked child is not something that would disturb me, what disturbs me is the government going out of it's way to control my life and not only guess what will offend and corrupt me, but make it impossible for me to one day see anything but cute little fluffy kittens and rainbows.
I fail to understand the extreme seriousness of supposed child porn images, mostly the pseudo images, and specifically things like cartoons. I don't understand the gross over-reaction. Yes, it is appalling blah blah, but a photo is not a crime. Seeing a photo cannot possibly be an offense because no-one is being harmed by the viewer. The viewer has not done anything wrong and even if it was a mistake they apparently still get in trouble with our police which means we end up with a society saying 'will I report it or will reporting it get ME in trouble?' It's already going on with various other crimes.
This is all backwards. If the images that are getting censored are so bad then I hope that whoever took them are all sitting in jail right now, whilst our government waste millions of pounds trying to eradicate (NOT child porn) but all photos of all children ever. Meanwhile they fail to get the point that paedophiles will be cranking out more (real life stuff) by the hour, so their efforts are futile.
But at least instead of the bad guys getting away with it, the police seek comfort in thinking they're actually achieving something, by transferring the blame and punishing people who come across the photos by accident, or merely have a photo of a naked child.
Not to mention the fact that they have now brought a very obscure cd/photo to the attention of god knows how many people!! (also the ridiculousness of their attempted censor doesn't even take into account that you can view the page complete with the photo on their very website if you just view the page in another language. Oops! I shouldn''t have said that. I guess they'll have to pay more attention the next time they try to ban us from seeing certain things online...)
This post has been deleted by its author
Has the IWF actually published a legal opinion to confirm its own belief?
Oh Christ, does my being in the house when my other half bathes her young son make me a nonce? I know people who have been abused and people who have been lied to by convicted nonces (they said they weren't when they are on the SOR) and even they think the IWF has overreacted here.
I can see the future - people being dragged off to the cells by police because a neighbour has reported them for being in the house while a child was bathed.
Time to get the flock out of here.
The ISPs that do the filtering do so by serving up altered DNS records from their name servers to point your browser at the filtering proxy.
Set your nameservers in your router to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Say hello to OpenDNS and goodbye to proxies. As a long-time OpenDNS user I followed the Virgin Killer link from Slashdot, and the page loaded normally, and I'm on one of the ISPs who do the filtering.
Changing your DNS servers is much faster, easier and a lot less hassle than changing ISP!
If this image is really child pron, then the IWF should get off it's arse and prosecute the "criminals". They can start with HMV, Zavvi and anyone else in the UK stocking this item. They can then move on to amazon.co.uk etc.
It's either child porn or it isn't. It can't change it's status simply depending on what site it it on.
- The child within the linked image is not simulated
This has been commented upon several times already, but in case you missed it:
- This image is not simulated
- The child is obviously a minor
- The child is naked
- The child is obvious distress
- The image is not artistic
- THIS IS NOT A JOKE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Phuc_Phan_Thi
So where do we draw the line?
- The child within the linked image is not simulated
Not a problem
- This image is not simulated
Not a problem
- The child is obviously a minor
Not a problem (do you have pictures of your children? Or are they simulated...)
- The child is naked
Nudity is not sexual. Read the act and the definitions used in it.
- The child is obvious distress
Nope. The child themselves were asked and were OK. There IS NO DISTRESS.
- The image is not artistic
In what way?
- THIS IS NOT A JOKE
No, it isn't. You have made some points that have nothing to do with the legality. You make a point which says it is something to do with the illegality and you are wrong. You make up something that doesn't exist and then finish with a personal opinion (pre-raphaelite pictures) and the award winning picture of a girl in Vietnam running away screaming because she's been burned by napalm is neither artistic, showing a simulation, showing someone not in distress, nor showing a minor, or with a minor dressed even partially would fall foul of your definition of what ***you*** consider child porn.
Yet if we remove that picture from history, we have damaged our history and hide the horror of decisions made in error. Cheapeneing our future as humanity.
But, so long as you can't see nekkid kiddies, that's A-OK!
perfection, and I read with great interest the reg's investigations into the somewhat obscured machinery behind the scenes of what is a very influential resource which is not probed adequately by mainstream media......but using this debacle as an excuse to attack the wikimedia foundation is frankly pathetic, and you now have me wondering if other reg reports on wikimedia are born out of biased vitriol.
I'd feel far more comfortable if our author would fully disclose any details about his own relationship with wikimedia?
"Picture of naked girl with cracked glass effect over genitals, underneath a banner which says Virgin Killer. Nah, no sexual content there at all. Can't see any paedoes getting there rocks off over that one."
There's nothing about sexual intercourse. In fact, to take the black-and-white, if the child was molested, they could not be killed because they would no longer be a virgin.
So the very title, rather than intimating sex, merely intimates killing and explicitly EXCLUDES sex.
And paedos get their rocks off over beauty queen pageants and underwear section of Argos catalogue. Heck, if they have a foot fetish too, children fully clothed walking barefoot. Do we chop off feet to stop that?
Since I suspect none of the isps blocking this has included the right to censor the internet in their customer agreement, you guys are lucky. You just got out of your binding-time agreement, since the ISP is not supplying the product you agreed on, and you are free to switch to another supplier. If sufficient amount of customer leave the censoring bastards, they'll start loosing money, and will stop this practise.
Or, you can demand that they block amazon.com as well, unless they want to be sued for unfair practises (which they are open to now)
"The image is not sexually arousing in the slightest, at least it shouldn't be."
A friend at University was telling me once about how "The Accused" was watched and a male friend afterwards said to her that the movie made him feel ashamed.
My first thought was "Why? Did he get a boner?". The second was "Why? Was he trying to show how 'sensitive' he was and get therefore into your knickers?".
I said neither.
Probably just as well.
But yup, the rape scene was horrific. It didn't shame me because the bad actions of someone with some chromosomes missing like I have doesn't make me ashamed of me.
If I *had* gotten a boner at that scene, I would have been somewhat ashamed, but that would be because of *my* actions or reactions. Not the actions of others.
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