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 …

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tee hee !

This is why they have a disclaimer there saying "The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites".

[TorMentor]

Objectivity please.

Evaluating the image in question seems to be a highly subjective issue. Does it eroticise a naked child or not? IWF obviously thinks it does. The law, as per R. v Oliver, Court of Appeal 2002, gives the following guidlines defining levels of indecent child images:

"Sentencing those having indecent pictures of children

For the purposes of sentencing those convicted of offences involving indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children, the two primary factors determinative of the seriousness of a particular offence were the nature of the indecent material and the extent of the offender's involvement in it.

As to the material, pornographic images were to be categorised by the following levels of seriousness:

(i) images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity;

(ii) sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child;

(iii) non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children;

(iv) penetrative sexual activity between children and adults, and

(v) sadism or bestiality.

As to the nature of the offender's activity, the seriousness of an individual offence increased with the offender's proximity to, and responsibility for the original abuse."

[Anonymous Coward]

VM 'silent' intercepts

Just came across this, haven't been online for a couple of days.

Link is most definitely down on VM, but what gets me is how surprised pple are that this sort of thing is going on.

I'd spotted months ago that VMs 'transparent' web censoring and content monitoring boxes were selectively intercepting traffic bound to-fro a well known file sharing service (badongo, which I see, is still being intercepted, rapidshare appears to be ok)

A few months back, someone else in one of the newsgroups spotted something similar, and was, ISTR, fobbed a line by VM technical Support about 'network problems' (which, as anyone on VM knowns, is a very plausible excuse).

Occasionally, when downloading files from a number of sites, I've found a lot of broken transfers, on the first try, then on second attempt, very fast downloads - spoor of a borken webcache/proxy - but hey, if they (VM, Spook Squad, Uncle Tom Cobley et al) want to waste cpu time parsing Unix/Linux application source code for anything dodgy... at the time, it made me wonder if they were trying out something which triggered on keywords.

In most cases, using traceroute then tcptraceroute, I'd tracked the issue to unnamed boxes lurking somewhere on the VM network.

I see since then, the boxes have been given names..

hey ho, double plus ungood and all that...

(BTW can we have a https://comments.theregister.co.uk/ please ?)

[Mark]

re: re: WARNING - link to image of genuine child abuse

Sorry, I see that you already said that.

If only I waited to read all your message.

Apologies.

(see, we really DO need a male dumbass icon, since I'm not a woman, but just evidenced dumbassery of the required cailbre)

[Anonymous Coward]

If this image is illegal it's also a 'scene of crime'...

If this really is an 'indecent' image as defined in UK law, then it follows that it is also 'a scene of crime' (see: Jim Gamble CEO - CEOP).

I await the first of the dawn raids on all and everyone who has either viewed this image online, owns the original album artwork, the record companies, the retailers on and off-line who have been pimping this filth and, of course, the taking of the woman who was presumably forced as a child to pose for this 'abuse' all those years ago. She could probably make a mint in criminal compensation now, actually.

I suspect UK law will dodge this bullet by claiming any new laws regarding 'obscenity' do not apply retrospectively; thus anyone who saw or owned this image prior to the Inquisition's latest dictats on 'indecency' can somehow continue owning and looking at it without fear of persecution, but as for those new to the party... time to expect the six o'clock knock..?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger picture

Aren't we missing the bigger picture here. The real question is not Wiki's attitude to all of this or the way the IWF (7 people plus some coppers) have decided that this single image is "potentially illegal" - btw I'm waiting for the cops to raid Amazon and HMV and seize their stock and arrest all their staff for distributing illegal images, or maybe I should wait for The Scorpions and their record label to sue IWF.... now that would be fun

The bigger question is really what else out there have the IWF blocked for similar reasons that we haven't noticed? They keep their list so close to their chest to stop people working out if they've been put on it that no-one really knows what is on it.

Of course its also made every person realise that their internet feed is monitored and controlled by an unelected group of New Puritans....

Oliver Cromwell would be laughing.. or did he make that illegal too?

[Frank Fisher]

A thoughtless thought crime

"It's either child porn or it isn't. It can't change it's status simply depending on what site it it on."

Doesn't work like that in British law - it can change status depending on who looks at it or posesses it, or if you're turned on by it or not. No joke. Naked child photo in parents hands who look on it with fond afection: no crime. Naked child photo in stranger's hands who looks on it as cute: no crime. Naked child photo in paedo hands who looks on it and gets the horn: crime.

The trick of course is how you decide what people are thinking.... At this level - level 1 of their sliding scale, simple nudity, no sexual content - it's a thought crime. The item only becomes child porn if you're aroused by it.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Once again, no such thing a bad publicity!

There must have been about 10 of us Scorpions fans in the whole world who knew about it, and the Blind Faith one, now everyone knows about it! Should raise their profile again, been a bit quiet lately!

Well I have a huge box of vinyl ready for Mary Whitehouse style cronies to come round and censor when they have time, just hope they have a big budget for taxis and fire lighters as it's going to take a while to get around to all of us!

[Anonymous Coward]

ludicrous IWF judgement

Police opinion - horseweathers. I don't believe for a second they obtained an opinion from anyone qualified to to offer one. They'll have asked some random plod who'll have simply trotted out the party line - "Better safe than sorry, ban it"

Lets recap: this is a photo

- taken with the consent of the subject's guardian.

- neither involving sex acts nor posed provocatively.

- concealing the genitals.

- of a young girl topless.

Go to any beach in the UK in the summer and you'll see girls this age topless. Go to any beach on the continent and you'll see far more - in Barcelona this summer there were lots of kids skinny dipping.

So what we have here is a bunch of self-appointed censors, with no public oversight process, operating without a legal framework to impose a set of ill-defined rules of their own devising. And who would dare complain? Who wants to be branded a paed? Its a win/win situation for the puritans.

Question is - will they dare to go after Amazon and the other retailers selling the album?

[David Hicks]

i think I'll be writing to my ISP

I didn't sign up for a censored internet.

I have no interest in naked children or any Scorpions album cover, I don't care about that. I care that my traffic is being routed via some moral arbiter's transparent proxies.

I didn't sign up to use the IWF 'service' and I don't want their petty fear-based moralising having an influence on the information i can and can't see. Interfering England at its worst.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Kim_Phuc_Phan_Thi commentors

That's not porn because you'd have to be one sick fucker- waaaaaay past paedo (hell, probably past rapist) on the "sick fucker" scale- to find that arousing. Whereas it's concievably possible that someone not too far from "normal" on the same scale could find the VK album cover arousing.

I mean she's been badly burnt by napalm, and is running. I think that image will haunt me for a long time. Sort of the ultimate bit of evidence for El Reg's earlier article about snipers being a good thing- she'd have been okay if they'd used snipers rather than liquid firey-death.

And Nevermind is clearly not porn as it features a male rather than a female- and we all know that it's the men who do the abusing and women who are raped.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're morons...

Not only are they randomly censoring pages that are no worse / different to other sites that are still accessible, they've completely missed out the alternative language versions of the wiki that still show the image.

And I never knew the IWF had this kind of power. It's horrifying that they can blacklist a page and within 24 hours it become nigh-inaccessible in the UK. If they can do it to an album cover/wiki-entry, they can do it to anything: Blogs, books, petitions...

[Anonymous Coward]

tuning

isn't this just how internet regulation & law making in general (in the UK) works? problem occurs - heavy-handed sledgehammer response, big "debate" (i.e. it's the end of democracy / oh no we're living in a fascist police state etc.), lessons eventually get learned, things get tweaked a little and the world becomes a better place...

of course a little thought/planning could have avoided all of this - but hey it's generated some news and some debate, made some people some money and validated some peoples viewpoints.

[Frank Zuiderduin]

Daft

"we did advise one of our partner Hotlines abroad and our law enforcement partner agency of our assessment"

And they are probably still rolling around on the floor laughing.

[Nick]

What's next ?

Check out the next child-porn article to be banned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putto

These are the mores of a warped puritan society that glorifies violence and vilifies sex and the natural human form. Now, _every_ depiction of child nudity is becoming anathema. Even parents cannot snap adulating pictures of their naked toddlers, to show the world how plump and healthy their offspring is, for fear of persecution !

As the article states, the "porn" picture dates from 1976. So, every time the morality threshold changes, we should run ever everything through the new censor filter ? How about having a go at some Botticelli and Rembrandt, or even Michael Angelo ? Let's go back to the 18th century, when all male genitals were excised from statues, since they "scandalised" the "Good Christian" people !

And finally, who will censor the guardians of our "morality" ?

[Jimmy]

Internet Witch Finders.

Wikipedia has been so compromised by fact fiddlers that it is nothing more than a sideshow in this debate. The real issue is the relationship between the UK government and the self-appointed moral puritans who run the Internet Watch Foundation. These people don't seem to have any legislative standing that authorises them to decide what we can and cannot watch on the internet, so one immediately detects the Jacquiavellian hand of our much loved Home Secretary fiddling with process in order to promote her own agenda of bigotry and control-freakery.

The IWF website is big on the usual NuLabour bullshit about partners and mission statements but short on the methodology they employ when deciding which images to censor. Presumably they use the only acceptable benchmark for determining pornographic content, and that is the degree of sexual arousal caused by an image. But as with most things in life, one man's meat is another man's poison, so following this logic they have to employ a diverse panel of experts consisting of sadists, masochists, kiddy fiddlers, gays, straights, foot fetishists, amputee fetishists, and so on through the whole spectrum of sexual behaviour. The panellists would have their genitals wired to sensors and the slightest twitch or stiffening indicated on the smut meter would have the chairman reaching for the big blue pencil.

Only kidding guys, the real panel consists of the Mary Whitehouse Society, Mrs Grundy, the Oliver Cromwell Society and numerous reps from the Churches for Divine Intervention.

In keeping with the government's desire for more data sharing can we please have the names and addresses of the IWF employees who were sexually aroused by this particular image.

[Steve]

@ Mark

"The child themselves were asked and were OK. There IS NO DISTRESS.”

“running away screaming because she's been burned by napalm”

Oh no, there’s no way she is in distress after being burned by napalm; she must have been screaming with joy in that photo – right?

“Not artistic” as in: it is not beautiful to anyone, it is not a creation, the capture and/or reproduction of it needs no special skill (just a lot of bravery). There is no expression, only documentation; an icon isn’t inherently art. A dead sheep in formaldehyde is obviously much more artistic intent than that – yet most wouldn’t consider that as art either.

“Nudity is not sexual.”

Not inherently, but it is if not presented (or is it more correct to say ‘accepted’?) as an art form (nudists being the only exception I can think of).

“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.”

This was kinda my point. I didn’t say it should be removed, nor did I hint at it, nor would I agree with doing so; I actually asked where the line should be drawn – in terms of depicting an abused child, this is far worse than that ‘album cover’. Like the others who already mentioned this: I was trying to highlight an apparent inconsistency. I can’t help but think we’ve got our crossed wires here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re; Demon

"indecent images of children or pointers to them; you could be breaking UK law if you viewed the page."

It's not the purpose of ISPs to prevent people from breaking the law. If some one breaks the Law then the ISP is not responsible.

If everbody tried to operate in this way, prevent people from breaking the law, society as we know it today would not exist. For one example, a car manufacturer would not be allowed to sell a car in case a) some one breaks the speed limit, b) someone doesn't take sufficient care when driving and mows down a little old lady.

Society does not work in this way and it's wrong for ISPs to do so.

[Anonymous John]

Foot. Meet bullet.

How many pedos knew about this image last week before the IWF banned it? None? Hardly any?

How many know about it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sentencing Guidelines definition

So which idiot at IWF finds that Scorpions cover erotic? Because the sentencing guidelines clearly state it's an indecent photo if it depicts "erotic posing with no sexual activity".

Reckon whoever it is should be signing up for their dirty old man mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anonymous Hero

To quote:

"Indecent " is even more subjective than "pornography", but I think we can agree that the former includes all of the latter plus some content that is not explicit enough to be considered pornography.

This is precisely the wrong way around. Pornography is legal (unless banned for some other reason e.g. like here, it involves underage children). Obscenity is not legal, and is neither a subset nor a superset of pornographic material. This is basic background knowledge not just for this issue but of UK censorship laws in general. I suggest you read up on the basics before offering your misinformed quasi-legal sounding gibberish. Begin with the obvious and try reading up about the Obscene Publications Acts.

The chances of any court finding this cover to be obscene within the meaning of the law are slim to say the least.

[bobbles31]

Ministry of Truth?

Is the IWF the begining of the MOT? Will they be reshaping the internet everyday with revised politically acceptable web pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

uncensored covers in swiss media

as answer to this ridiculous censorship a Swiss news paper publish some censored covers:

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/pop-und-jazz/John-Lennons-Penis-und-andere-Zumutungen/story/31394525

[dreadful scathe]

oh dear

its rather a victorian attitude to assume "indecency" in simple nudity :( Censorship is bad enough, but stupid censorship based on someone else outdated views of decency is a big step toward the collapse of our free society. :(

[Tawakalna]

onoes!!!!!

I bought the album back in the 70s with my pocket money, back in the days when record covers were full size. I bought it when I was 13, does this mean I can now expect a dawn raid from the Morality Police, and will it go worse for me because it's a full-size album cover and not a poxy Whackopaedyphile .jpg?

I was listening to this story on R4 on the way into work and roaring with laughter, but it is rather tragic that some self-righteous busybodies can exert such power, even if it is at Wackypedia's expense. That you can see the cover on Amazon's site (££££££) pretty much tells you what you need to know - if you're a big business and you have some cash to throw at corporate lawyers, you're safe from interference by the Morality Police cos you might sue them! but if you're a charitable foundation (even Wookiepeddia) or worse still, some poor sap on his own, you're fair game for the Mary Whitehouses of the interweb. This is nothing more than a flexing of the muscles on the part of the IWF to see what they can get away with.

tolerate this kind of populist publicity-grabbing censorship that actually does nothing to protect real abused kids and you migth as well throw your rights and freedoms out of the Windows. Pretty soon Iran is going to look like a haven of tolerance in comparison.

I'll get me burquah.... (a hand-me-down from Paris, naturally)

[Anonymous Coward]

Complain to your ISP

I have just submitted a complaint to my ISP about their censoring the internet and questioning whether they are in breach of RIPA because they're intercepting my communictions.

I suggest everyone complain to their ISPs on this one.

It is not the job of an ISP to try to prevent someone from breaking the law. It is not the job of an ISP to enforce the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Inconsistency

If the image is illegal then let the Police go after the producers of the album cover.

What we must not have is the situation where content in the real world is regarded as legal and the exact same content on the internet is deemed to be illegal.

You can not allow censorship on the internet but allow these kinds of things in the real world.

Clearly that makes no sense.

[A J Stiles]

@ AC -- "Scene of Crime"

"I suspect UK law will dodge this bullet by claiming any new laws regarding 'obscenity' do not apply retrospectively; thus anyone who saw or owned this image prior to the Inquisition's latest dictats on 'indecency' can somehow continue owning and looking at it without fear of persecution, but as for those new to the party... time to expect the six o'clock knock..?"

You are quite correct. New laws cannot be applied to any action that was performed before the law was passed. This general principle is second only to treating all people as innocent unless proved guilty, and is enshrined in Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights -- "No Punishment Without Law".

If Wacky Jacqui tried that one on so soon after breaching Article 8, she might well be opening up the UK to international sanctions -- including being on the *receiving* end of a declaration of war.

[John Wilson]

Can't they get their acts together?

If a spokesperson for the IWF has suggested that an offence has been comitted under the UK Children's Act, and another points the reader in the direction of the Sentencing Guidelines, may I suggest they bother to read them themselves?

The UK Children's Act deals with the welfare of a child - it does not deal with child pr0n. The sentencing guidelines pointed to by the IWF make mention of the Protection of Children Act 1978, and the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Furthermore, sentincing guidelines are precisely that: guidelines for sentencing someone who has actually been found guilty of an offense. They explain what a person is sentenced to for the various levels of offences covered. What it does not do is determine what contitutes an "Image depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity", only what sentence is attached for someone committed of possessing such an image.

So IWF: Get your act together, and stop bullshitting.

[Mr C]

I want candy

"Provocatively posed naked 15-year-old girl cavorting with several badly dressed new romantics in woodland sex-scene album-cover pedo shock!"

I see that 80s popsters Bow Wow Wow haven't had their Wikipedia page censored yet -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_Wow_Wow

[Mark]

@Steve

Steve, I apologised. See earlier (which may not have been visible before you posted).

Shame.

[Mark]

re: @Kim_Phuc_Phan_Thi commentors

However, that's the point.

Reading the law, that image IS kiddie porn and "possibly illegal (which is well weaselly, since EVERYTHING is possibly illegal, you only find out by bringing a lawsuit).

So it "should" be banned.

And so we lose a dramatic image.

PS: Snipers don't see people. Just targets. They are not nice happy people. And they can aim at the wrong person no problem, just as napalming a village incorrectly will cause distress to the innocent, seeing your father with their brains blown out in front of your face will haunt you for the rest of your life (see "Saving Private Ryan" with the sniper: how do you feel for the characters?).

NOTE: it doesn't matter how "sick a fucker" you have to bee to see it as pornographic:

a) The law doesn't make the distinction

b) There are people who get off on visions of pain or corpses

c) KP activists (ones who DO it) are pretty darn sick to begin with

[David]

disgusted...

...with the censors.

[Lottie]

Who decided

I may have missed it, but just who decided that this was potentially illegal? Surely if IWF had looked at it, they could asscertain for certain the legality?

Also, I'm assuming that the people who *did* make the decision are in jail now as obviously seeing such corrupting images will turn them into peados in the blink of an eye.

[Giles Jones]

What next, Nirvana?

I haven't see the album cover in question and I couldnt care less about a 32 year old album cover.

I know that Nirvana's Nevermind album cover has a naked child, are they going to ban that as well?

[James]

Still popular

The articles "virgin Killer" and "Scorpions" are the most popular articles on Wiki - they have had over 35,000 hits in the past hour alone

Compare with the 3rd most popular - this has had a mere 6,900 hits

All thanks to the IWF

[James Hughes]

Go swimming!

Quick question...

Why are all the commentators who thing this 'censorship' is a bad thing not complaining about not being able to take photographs in the local swimming baths? You cannot do that without permission, because they are worried about child abuse etc. So I cannot take a picture of my own child in a swimming costume in a public place, but I can look at a picture of a naked prepubescent girl with Virgin Killer plastered on in? Double standards anyone?

Presumably, most of the commentators are too stuck behind their monitors whinging about their civil rights that to get out and do some exercise, so have never encountered a swimming pool.

[James]

New news

Just when you thought it couldnt get any worse...

The Internet Watch Foundation may add Amazon US to its list of sites "blocked" for hosting a picture of an album cover by The Scorpions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/08/amazon-internet-censorship-iwf

[dervheid]

Yet more "Act first, think later"

From those who "know best".

This album has been around for over 30 years FFS, can we PLEASE have our collective sense of proportion returned to us.

This is SO fucking heavy handed.

It would also appear that Amazon are 'in trouble' over this album cover now too.

What a crock of shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't complain to your ISP

At the moment ISPs are encouraged to implement IWF filtering. There is no requirement for them to do this. If they remove the filtering, then govt might just enact a law for all ISPs to do this. That would be a very bad thing, much worse than the current quango that is the IWF.

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before we see "IWF screwup blocks access to bulk of 'net - economic chaos ensues"

A lot of people seem to be missing the point, that there's an organisation out there that can, at a whim, block internet access to certain URL's etc. at will.

How long before it 'goes wrong' - and accidentally blocks everything? - That'd be a great 'show stopper' for December 8th's so called "eChristmas Shopping Day"

Or, what if important stuff is (cough) 'added by accident'? - Typos?

What if one of the techies running the show goes 'postal' and decides to wipe out a few companies by blocking certain 'criticial' URL's for their checkout processes? (or the system does it on it's own).

What if / when the IWF is charged with blocking access to 'terrorist' material, or material likely to encite, educate, or be used in terrorist acts? - That'd be handy, maybe there's something else we can get them to block...

Where's it all end?

Like most of the 'IT Solutions' produced, all this does is try to 'fix' the problem on the cheap. Sweep it under the carpet, make the people involved 'look good' - and keep the 'public' happy. Is it actually effective at stopping the people who want to see this material? No.

What happened to proper police work? - I mean, everyone in the Industry *knows* what could be done to trace, prosecute - and jail the bulk of the people comitting the actual offences, but that would need properly funded, educated police - oh, and more prisons...

Costs vs. Apparent result? - IWF ftw!

[Anonymous Coward]

If a picture is arousing it is 'indecent'...

This all comes down to a question of whether or not you will find the image of the girl on the album a turn-on or not: the IWF says you will and therefore any picture of a minor (in the UK, btw, that includes anyone at or below age 17) that is in anyway arousing (even partially clothed or completely non-nude) is deemed at best 'inappropriate' at worst 'indecent'. Hmmm. I really should stop reading the likes of iD and other such jail-baiting fashion magazines...

Just looking at any such image is enough to corrupt you, the IWF and it's associates believe, so its best you don't even have the option. Besides, we all know anyone below the age of 17 (male or female) has no sexuality and therefore any and all such pictures, however innocuous, must be crime scenes.

I've seen that album cover. She's a pretty girl, looks quite happy and I can't see any sign of a criminal in or out of shot about to abuse her. I'm not 'offended' by the picture and I can understand the shock factor the artistes intended to garner by using such a provocative image. Probably says more about the shortcomings of the music therein than anything else...

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing your DNS has NO EFFECT

>to anonymous coward above

I've been on OpenDNS all along, on Be Broadband and any page requests to wikipedia are NOT performed with my known IP. I can access pages on wikipedia with https and my true IP is displayed. Changing your DNS has NO EFFECT

[Anonymous Coward]

Response from Virgin Media

I just got off the phone after a long conversation with Virgin Media in response to my complaint. I originally complained about 3 points.

1. They were being dishonest with customers by dropping the connection or returning a page not found error when blocking, and that they should inform the customer when they block something. Surprisingly, Virgin assured me that they were making changes to do so!

2. That by redirecting the whole of Wikipedia through a transparent proxy and not passing the "X-Forwarded-From" header they were breaking Wikipedia and preventing all of their customers from editing Wikipedia anonymously. On this point the customer services rep claimed that I was the first person who had complained about this, but if 5 people reported it as a technical problem then it would be investigated. So if you are a Virgin Media customers, please call Virgin and complain that you can't edit Wikipedia anonymously due to a Virgin technical problem!

3. That Virgin Media had broken their contract to me by blocking some content and not providing access to the whole of the internet. They claimed that their terms and conditions allowed them to do this, although they insisted on sending me a highlighted copy by post(!) to tell me which part applied.

[Anonymous Coward]

@James Hughes

"Can't see any paedoes getting there[sic] rocks off over that one"

You seem to have put your finger on the gummints intention here, which is to stop the evil perverts getting the horn. In order to do this effectively, you require a totalitarian state, complete with informers, invasive monitoring of peoples' thought processes etc etc.

[snip the ad hominem bit]

"The best thing to happen would be for Wikipedia to remove the offensive picture"

Ok, and the point people are making here is that, in order for the IWF to be effective (and consistent, but that's not a problem if you're the govt), they ought ban all instances of this picture. I don't think anyone (certainly not me) is defending the abuse of children, whether for sexual gratification or some other motive; but that isn't the issue here. If the IWF are in the business of suppressing the production and distribution of images of child abuse (eg. Mr Swirly) that's fine by me. If they're indulging in some function creep, they, and their supporters, can fuck right off.

It would be amusing to report all instances of this picture to the IWF, but I fancy you wouldn't get your computer(s) + mobile(s) back quite as quickly as that nice Mr. Green.

I also find myself wondering about the saddos in the papers who've been found with "images at the bottom of the scale". Presumably they've haven't got any pictures of abused children at all, just pictures of children alongside some rather disturbing thought processes? This seems to be a perversion of justice: surely the rationale for this law was to prevent children being abused, not to worry about what someone might be thinking about whilst spanking the monkey?

If the politically correct mob want something else to go at, you can try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato_dialogue); the Ancient Greeks were great ones for just buggering about. They may also like to ponder Cardinal Richelieu's dictum: “Give me six lines written in any man's hand and I'll find you a reason to hang him.”

[blackworx]

244 Comments?

Cool. Imagine if they tried the Great Aussie^H British Firewall. At least something's working round here.

[A J Stiles]

@ James Hughes

Who says we're *not* annoyed at not being able to take pictures at the swimming pool? (Not that the humidity would do a camera any good anyway, as I learned myself back in the days when you were allowed to do exactly that, but that's beside the point.)

However, this was in specific reference to an album cover which depicts a naked young girl with a tastefully-placed "broken glass" effect.

And if some perv wants to get his rocks off to that then frankly, as long as he only does so into a box of Kleenex, it's none of anyone else's business.

[Schultz]

Welcome to Web 3.0

Government controlled content.

Welcome to China.

[Mark]

@Frank

"Naked child photo in parents hands who look on it with fond afection: no crime. Naked child photo in stranger's hands who looks on it as cute: no crime. Naked child photo in paedo hands who looks on it and gets the horn: crime."

Anne Diamond: done for a photo of her child in the bath.

Doesn't always work as it should.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Go swimming!

Nope, I'm pretty consistent, I think that that is bulls--t too, you can take a photo of your kid where ever you please as far as I'm concerned. But then I'm not a weird freak (either a mentally retarded pro censorship - ZOMFG PEADOS ARE EVERYWHERE AND THEY'RE GONNA RAPE YOUR KIDS! Or a peado.)

But whatever, I don't need a bunch of retards protecting my mind, it's mine and I'll look after it however I damn well please.