Arrested for possesing a Scorpions album?
IF the picture was obviously illegal, your points might carry more weight. The police advised only that it MIGHT be, and given the hardly secretive presence of the cover on the likes of Wikipedia and Amazon over a period of years with no prosecution having occurred, I hazard a guess that the courts are not likely to be quite so reactionary in their opinion. You say Amazon should be banning the image as well, I would ask if that also means you consider possession of the album should constitute a criminal offense that should put you on the register of sexual offenders?
The problem is the the IWF seem to have overreacted here. The image was not child porn, there was nothing sexual about it, and it contained nothing that could be considered abusive. To declare it as child porn is to reveal the system as problematically broken. I had respect for the IWF before, but this leads me to question whether they are any more effective as a moral guardian than a pack of rabid Daily Mail readers would be.
I have two concerns.
1. The IWF lacks transparency. There is no way to find out what they are blocking, and it is worrying to know they can make arbitrary decisions about artwork that could mean linking to images of the Sistine Chapel would be an offense. If this story had not broken, would we have known how crazy their decisions could be?
2. They lack accountability. Their web site makes it easy to complain about a web site, there is nothing on there to allow you to complain about the IWF or to challenge decisions.
The IWF is a self-appointed body, and it is disturbing in the extreme that it has the power to ban web pages with no apparent checks and balances being in place.
The IWF need to stick to what they should be doing, keeping illegal material blocked. They were completely wrong to cross the line into second guessing morality on what is clearly very far from being a clear cut case.
As a note, I own a copy of 'Nevermind'. Should I go and burn the cover of that album before the Stazi^H^H^H^H^Hpolice come breaking down my door?