IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship 226
jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."
not a "child porn" image (Score:5, Funny)
Let's get it right; the IWF didn't say the page was porn; they said it was "potential illegal child sexual abuse." Most people seem to have assumed this was because the album cover artwork on the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] included an image of a naked girl, but the reality is that IWF only wanted to protect children from the horrors of having to listen to anything released by the Scorpions.
NOFX - Fuck The Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
but the reality is that IWF only wanted to protect children from the horrors of having to listen to anything released by the Scorpions.
Than and all they had to do is make a press release, and garner worldwide attention. Some of it negative, but think of all the increased support by religious types. This was just an elaborate marketing ploy on their behalf that is sure to increase donations to their coffers while providing free media coverage over such a nonstarter of a band, issue and picture.
Re: (Score:2)
while in a way i appreciate your pick in the post 'subject', i feel it was not notable enough ;)
on other hand, try to google 'streisand'. weird, i get "Streisand effect" as the 3rd hit. hi, barbara. feel like being on the wrong slice of celebrities ?
Re: (Score:2)
try to google 'streisand'. weird, i get "Streisand effect" as the 3rd hit. hi, barbara.
Her "effect" is obviously more notable than her career. Don't blame Google for that.
Re: (Score:2)
No, just more relevant recently. That's like saying Heath Ledger is more notable than Jack Nicholson because Googling "the joker" shows four images of Heath as the Joker at the top of the page. (Heath was arguably the better Joker, but certainly not more notable than Jack, IMO).
Google just gives more weight to recent events.
Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
IWF is organization set up by ISPs. I believe their remit is to flag and block anything possibly illegal, allowing the legal/illegal argument to then be made (and any action taken). Their REAL purpose is to keep governments off the backs of ISPs - we're regulating ourselves, so you can leave us alone.
Now.
New bit of law just rolling out (Jan '09) outlaws 'extreme porn' in the UK. Complete and utter knee-jerk, poorly thought out c
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody seems to be focused on the Scorpions Album Cover and its not the cover thats important, it's the now proven fact that the internet for the UK is filtered monitored and blocked!
This event was a slip up, we were not supposed to know about the censorship and filtering going on. The big question in the UK is what else is being blocked and why? People outside the UK should know that the UK is being monitored and filtered (People in the UK should know too but probably the majority still don't). What is being blocked in your locale? It is highly unlikely that any of us are getting an unfiltered service.
How much of what we read is honest reporting and how much propaganda? what don't we get to read whats missing ?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see that the "page not found" blocking still seems to be in effect, at least for my connection.
This is a welcome move announcing that it was a mistake to block this particular instance. It is the height of foolishness to block an encyclopedia, particularly for content that has been in the public domain for thirty years or so.
Thought crime should not be something that the free world invokes as a weapon against criminality. We have fought wars with states that created the idea of thought crime and it would
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're in the UK, I presume? It could be because Wikipedia was in turn blocking a lot of the UK -- someone more technical minded than me can explain that part of it. Guess it'll take a bit for them to remove that block, too.
Re:not a "child porn" image (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't Wikipedia blocking people from the UK specifically.
It was Wikipedias' limits on edits from anonymous users from a single IP. A side effect of the filtering was that all traffic from the ISPs being filtered by the IWF was that all of the requests came from the IWF IP, so it looked like everyone in the UK was sharing a few/single IP address.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So great news
Are you reading the same summary as me?
IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect.
Note that IWF said "oops, our censorship didn't work this time", not "censorship is wrong".
I don't think this is good news. I think it's bad news, as opposed to worse news: the IWF will continue trying to censor the Internet, it'll just be a little smarter about it.
Let's also be clear about the distinction between pedophilia, child porn and child molestation; one is a sexual preference, the second is sexual imagery and the third is sexual activities.
In my world view,
Re:not a "child porn" image (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the disgusting child porn proudly features on Nirvana's Nevermind album, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, Blind Faith's self-titled album [cddesign.com]; also Van Halen's Balance [wikimedia.org] album cover, The Coppertone Girl [wikipedia.org], and all the Family guy jokes about child sex and bestiality(Stewie: "I'd do her, do her, lose the pigtails and we'll talk, ugh who hasn't done her?" as well as Brian's relationships with human women), The now well-discussed showing of Bart's pecker in the Simpsons movie, The Winger song "Seventeen", The Police song "Don't Stand...".
Hmmph. I guess we're all guilty of possessing and consuming what people call "child pornography".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmph. I guess we're all guilty of possessing and consuming what people call "child pornography".
Maybe you pervs are all guilty, trying to pass off your fetish as "mainstream". I haven't heard of any of those things. Family Guy? Nirvana? WTF are those?!
Except Winger. I've heard of them, but not the song "Seventeen". Must be one of their less popular ones, after they sold out.
Why stop at albums (Score:5, Insightful)
Why stop with the albums of decedant rock bands, Wikipedia is full of images of naked children [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
but the reality is that IWF only wanted to protect children from the horrors of having to listen to anything released by the Scorpions.
So now they're going to start having automatic pre-set filters on radio stations for when any activist decides he doesn't like a particular song?
Re: (Score:2)
An embryo is female unless or until it develops into a male. Just a bit of extra hormone development determines the difference.
Disclaimer: I am NOT an embryologist.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Like I said I'm not an embryologist -:)
Although I do remember reading/hearing that idea/phenomena in my above statement more than once.
Best regards,
UTW
Re: (Score:2)
Good Grief (Score:5, Insightful)
omeone better start blocking this bit of smut from that den of molesters at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Raffael_030.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Sick, I tell you, sick!
The end times? (Score:5, Interesting)
huh, a censorship organisation that's capable of acquiring new information, and using that to change their actions.
I didn't think that I'd live long enough to see the day where such a thing would happen.
Isn't there someplace in Revelations where they mention this?
"And yea, look ye unto the people running the anti-child porn organizations on the intertubes. For they shall learn the error of their ways (temporarily) and it shall be a sign that the end of all things is upon you."
Still... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are also admitting that kiddie porn images can be copied and transferred all over the world with no effort.
Unfortunately, I bet they still think it's possible to censor thoughts out of existence.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe they think they can censor things out of existence; I think they're more about making the masses believe they're taking step to protect the children and clean up the net than
Re: (Score:2)
Easy. Use lots of bullets and kill everyone indiscriminately and the game (or anything else you wish to obliterate) will be eliminated.
I'm Relieved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm Relieved (Score:5, Insightful)
you would think people would realize when these policing agencies are crossing the line.
Unfortunately, your enthusiasm will fall flat when you learn that the policy still remains in effect and it's just this one case that has been corruptly allowed to remain. This is how they get their cake, eat it, and have the IWF legitimized. I imagine the meeting went something like "OK, if we give them this one, their complaints about the general policy will lose force."
child molestors... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing that I find hilarious about this is that the people behind groups like the "Internet Watch Foundation"
are from the same social strata that regularly gives us child molestors of the likes such as Marc Dutroux in Belgium
along with his cronies in the Belgian Government.
But of course the child pornography / pornography / minority rights etc. etc. debate is just the right orbital slot
for the popular indignation needed to fuel the underlying agenda which is to monitor and restrict free thought
and free speech, I think many of us not so profane anymores have already realized this.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like the suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag (Score:5, Insightful)
...not in this instance anyway. These people were effectively forced to see the light and had to defend its indefensible actions. Finding that they could not and that, as the streissand effect goes, causes more attention to the matter than they were seeking.
I'm not sure what a better tag might be, but the image of cockroaches running away hiding from the light might be more apt in this case. These people seeking to censor too much find themselves in indefensible positions when light is shined on them.
Re: (Score:2)
how about "suddenbricktothehead"?
Re: ... to the head (Score:2)
You mean a BootToTheHead.
(Now with a choice of cultural variants!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5kGUW6M7W0 [youtube.com]
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Y6231uAmo&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Re:I don't like the suddenoutbreakofcommonsense ta (Score:2)
These people seeking to censor too much find themselves in indefensible positions when light is shined on them.
Does that imply that there exists a line where it is alright to censor things? I only ask because it seems like the rest of your post is in general suggesting that there is not. After all, if there was a reasonable line where censorship can be applied, then this could accurately be called an outbreak of common sense when they realize that they stepped past that line, right?
Re: (Score:2)
I tried to look up the pictures on the web... (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda makes you wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
What else have they censored that dont have the "name recognition" like Wiki or Amazon?
Re:Kinda makes you wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that ISPs should be required to notify us when pages are censored. This is a "you've been censored" page from Demon [thus.net]; but there's nothing equivalent from Be, Virgin, Sky and the rest.
Re:Kinda makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
They denied that they "actively" block anything (?), and then suggested the blocked Scorpions page was a fault with Wikipedia or with my computer settings. I'm looking for a new ISP.
Reply from VirginMedia:
Thank you for your e-mail dated 7 December 2008.
We're sorry to hear you feel we have censored our internet connection, we are a part of the Internet Watch Foundation and this is a common code of practise between many service providors, we do not activley block content and do not have a list of blocked content nor do we provide a censored or uncensored Broadband service. Sites with restricted content may be blocked for many reasons, these include the providor of the website or service, your internet security settings or if the site has been removed or disabled or is having technical issues.
If you have further queries regarding this matter or any other issue, please use the link provided below:
www.virginmedia.com/contact
Please note if you reply directly to this e-mail your response will not be received.
Kind regards
Customer Concern
E-Contact Team
Virgin Media
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like an automated message.
Did you follow through with the instructions given in the closing?
Re: (Score:2)
More than likely they had their PR department write up a canned script. If it was anything like the Internet companies that I have worked for in the past, any escalations to "Management" or whatever will likely go into the virtual recycle bin.
Re: (Score:2)
Does anyone else find the irony of the company name and the topic at hand amusing?
Re: (Score:2)
Wow
???
"Neither A nor NOT A"... This logically evaluates to:
Re: (Score:2)
It's been slow lately anyways.
Get those donations in, people! They need some more throughput!
Re:Kinda makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what happens in the UK and the rest of Europe, but I know here in australia they have already passed an amendment to the freedom of information act to *exclude* the internet blacklist from any FOI requests.
http://www.efa.org.au/2008/11/15/filtering-pilot-and-acma-blacklist-not-just-illegal-material/ [efa.org.au]
Yep, thats right. The AU govt is planning on increasing the blacklist of banned websites by an order of magnitude (that they will admit to, but now it will be difficult to tell), and they have taken steps to make sure there can be no oversight
We all know how well this works, don't we. [cnet.com]
That scares me more than the actual censorship.
Re: (Score:2)
People actually did this in Finland, and managed to find all the content on the blacklist. They also showed that only about 1% of the blacklist was actually illegal.
A university researcher also reverse-engineered the British filter. Because greylisted (sites subject to further review - e.g. all of wikipedia for the blacklisted album cover) sites are run through a proxy, you can check thousands of sites every second by checking whether or not the reply is coming from the proxy or the website.
Presto - free li
You'd think... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that an internet organisation that's been around since 1996 would understand the internet and would've realised the storm that censoring Wikipedia would cause and the resultant effect.
But frankly, to me there's a more important issue here- the IWF has accepted they're wrong which raises the question as to whether procedures need to be put in place to prevent mistakes happening again. The IWF is in a position of immense power and failures to perform their duties correctly need to have repercussions.
There have been various conspiracy theories as to whether the IWF was testing the water in light of Britain's new extreme porn law which makes BDSM and such illegal and hence whether the IWF was seeing what the response would be if they were to start filtering this out- particularly as scenes that could be deemed to be extreme porn exist in many common and publicly accesible places. To filter extreme porn as they do child porn they'd most certainly have to go after a lot more mainstream sites, it would no longer be a case of simply filtering out underground sites that only a small minority of people who are already classed as criminals visit.
Whatever the real aim of this was, whether it was simply a blunder or not, I hope for one thing- that the IWF now ensure they concentrate on what they're supposed to concentrate on, helping prevent child abuse and access to sites that really do gain money and so forth from such abuse and also that this has put to sleep any ideas of a power grab or increase in censorship to other, arguably harmless areas for the IWF.
Re:You'd think... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. And that new law about S&M porn is pure moralistic censorship with a thin, fabricated "think of the women/children!" justification.
Going after legitimate businesses like kink.com and insex.com is counterproductive to what SHOULD be the real concern: pornography that features nonconsensual acts.
Those kinky porn models enjoy what they do and get paid well [kink.com] for it. In fact, if you check out the 6th preview video for all of the segments featured on www.free-hardcore.com, you'll notice that pretty much every model that does a shoot says they'd like to do it again. Which is probably pretty shocking to all of those censor-happy prudes in government, considering the subject matter and the fact that they themselves are probably not interested in such sex acts. Otherwise they'd have to realize how stupidly ridiculous all of this is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the IWF has accepted they're wrong
Well, the IWF didn't really say "sorry, we were wrong to classify that image as indecent" or even "sorry, we were wrong to censor that website". What they actually said was "oops, we tried to censor but failed." As such, they are merely saying that they have reversed the censoring simply because of the publicity and the overall failure in suppressing the image (quite the opposite: more people were exposed to the image as a result of the ban).
This is hardly the admission of failure that many of us were lo
Thanks to IWF, now I've seen the image myself! (Score:3, Funny)
Before the efforts of Internet Watch Foundation, I had never seen the image they were all worked up about, which is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg [wikipedia.org].
And now, thanks to their tireless efforts to protect me from myself, I have seen it.
Good work, IWF!
Re: (Score:2)
But think of the children (Score:2)
.....
Re: (Score:2)
No.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not at all ridiculous. The issue has nothing to do with the victim.
Crimes are, at their core, offenses against the State, not against individuals.
This has nothing to do with her being a child and everything to do with the fact that once a crime has been permitted- an offense against the State- the State is the entity that takes the lead in prosecuting, not the victim.
There is even, I would say, a very strong public policy rationale to be served in ensuring that the victim does not have a role in the ad
Re: (Score:2)
It's not at all ridiculous. The issue has nothing to do with the victim.
It's ridiculous because there was no victim. Of course if there was a victim then that victim would obviously be a significant part of the issue.
Crimes are, at their core, offenses against the State, not against individuals.
No. Crimes are against an individual when they are perpetrated against an individual.
They'll be back (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't need to, they censor sexually provocative pictures. Nude photos are fine.
To the IWF, as has been demonstrated, nude photos are sexually provocative.
Pyrrhic victory (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Wikpedia admins
2. Jimbo Wales personally
3. Cabals
4. The marketing and legal teams of Corporations
5. Governments
Still, one censorer less is something I suppose.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no cabal
Great Firewall of Britain? (Score:5, Funny)
"The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain...
Wouldn't that be "Hadrian's Firewall" in this case?
Re:Great Firewall of Britain? (Score:5, Funny)
No, that would be an Italian firewall used to censor Scottish content.
Britain cutting itself off from the rest of the world is better represented by the Channel Fogwall.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case it's the Antonius wall, built under Imperator Antonious Pius. (pius [lat.] = pious [eng.]).
Some people forget.... (Score:4, Insightful)
the Internet is much, much older than they are aware of, and for a reason. The Internet has always been a "nasty" and "krass" place. During most of its existence, as text only, maybe there was more left to the imagination? Its great to have all the added bandwidth, but not the added hassle of "do-gooders".
Nobody is going to "regulate" or enforce their religious convictions here. Leave us alone!
Filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
IWF has decided to make an exception for this particular image, but the underlying attitude that led to its blocking remains the same. If not for the public scrutiny this particular decision has prompted, the image in question would still be blocked. I find that very disturbing.
The biggest problem I see with this sort of filtering is the fact that, at least for borderline cases, you rarely know whether the image being blocked is actually illegal. Usually it takes the due process of law to determine that a person producing an image has done something illegal, but with filtering all it takes to block an image is for the image to seem like child pornography. Whether it is or not is irrelevant. All that matters is the judgment of a private party.
What we have learnt (Score:5, Interesting)
o That the people trying to censor net access in this country are not just idiots, they're incompetent idiots.
o That the "blocks" that the major ISPs have in place are effectively useless; either they're incompetent as well, or (more likely) are paying lip-service to the whole idea by saying "yes, we subscribe to the IWF block-list" while using mechanisms a five-year-old could bypass.
o That Chris Morris was right.
Sometimes (as in the case of dodgy 70s album covers), this seems just a bit of a joke; but sometimes it isn't. During the early 90s spokesmen for the political wings of the terrorist organisations in the North of Ireland had to be re-voiced by actors, making interviews essentially impossible. I remember one occasion, after a particular gruesome bombing (many innocent people killed) when the spokesman concerned was able to hide behind the actor to get his message across without answering WHY his organisation supported this indiscriminate slaughter - the "censorship" rules had the exact opposite effect to what was intended.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone spread the rumour that Gerry Adams (the leader of Sinn Fein) had a silly squeaky voice, and that his interviews actually sounded better when dubbed by a professional actor. Not true, of course, but it made the attempt at censorship look even more foolish.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Last year I gave up moderating a hub on Direct Connect. One of the reasons was I couldn't be bothered banning users who were sharing child porn all the time. I'd come home from work, type in a list a 20 words relating to child porn and ban 10 out of 300 users for sharing this sort of crap. Before bed, I'd do the same. During the day, other mods would be keeping an eye out.
We were a small hub of friends sharing 20 year
Encyclopedophile (Score:2)
I still find a bitter taste in my mouth over this whole episode. I think I'd rather have seen this come to a conclusion with more judicial overview so that there is a clearer decision on what responsibilties the IWF should control, how the public should be made aware of blocks, and what appeals process exist. As it stands we just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope the IWF dont screw something else up.
I'd also prefer this to come to a larger debate about the merits of censoring images that are clearl
best irony ever (Score:5, Funny)
Today from work (instead of working) I decided to check out the IWF website.
Turns out Getbusi content filtering proxy is blocking their site as "porn"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Streisand effect (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect [wikipedia.org]
I wonder (Score:2)
I wonder how much of an impact all the UK traffic to Wikipedia being proxied through their servers may have had, and whether that impact played any part in this sudden reversal. Wikipeda was certainly the highest traffic page they've tried to filter to date.
Re: (Score:2)
HTML was blacklisted, though not allegedly illegal (Score:2)
The original IWF press release suggested that the "web page" at the blocked URL "was" a potentially illegal image. Whereas in reality, the main URL only contains HTML text -- and the image in question was only linked in and actually resided at another URL. This means material was blacklisted which was not alleged to be illegal in the UK. This wasn't just a side effect -- the HTML page was intentionally added to the list as well as the image itself.
As a Wikipedia and Media Wiki contributor, I wrote to the
IWF's true intentions (Score:2)
IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect.
This fiasco only shows the true intent of the IWF. They should make the blacklist available so people are aware of what other non-violent, and non-pornographic images, text, etc are being censored.
Wikipedia confuses me. (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia says they do not censor. Yet they'll remove videos of male masturbation from -- the page on masturbation. They'll even remove images of people having sex and replace them with ridiculous drawings or drawings. They don't do that for other pages. Go to the page on a lion and they'll show you a big image, in colour, of a lion. No one says: "Well, a big image showing all the parts of the lion, and in colour, is just not necessary. Everyone knows what a lion is: A detailed image is not necessary to get the point across." But go to the Talk pages for fellatio or ejaculation and you'll see this exact argument used there. I would say they do censor. I think it's duplicitous of them to say that their official policy is "Wikipedia is not censored." And of course they censor child pornography from their pages, because it is illegal in Florida, where their main servers are.
Content still blocked by Blue Coat at my employer (Score:3, Interesting)
I just attempted to view the Wikipedia entry for "Virgin Killer" (the Scorpions album), and my employer's proxy content filter (supplied by Blue Coat) still lists this particular Wikipedia page as blocked:
Not sure if Blue Coat updated their records yet, but I'm about to complain to them about the content filter. This is the first time, incidentally, that I've seen any Wikipedia page blocked, though I've seen plenty of other asinine filters set up for other sites.
And for the record, I'm nowhere near the UK -- this is in Phoenix, Arizona. Nice to see how someone else's "community standards" are being enforced on me, across national boundaries.
'Censorship by Edit' imposes UK/EU views gloablly (Score:3, Insightful)
How lame (Score:2)
So given that image is legal (and she's clearly under age) then any new modifications of that image are legal, right (except for maybe the naughty bits hidden by the cracked glass).
So you could modify her hair... or skin color... etc. for a million different legal photos.
And then what about a new photo that is very similar.
At the least- either it is child porn and should be censored or nothing involving a completely naked sub teen female alone that hides that tiny piece is child porn. The piece is obviousl
Re:Whoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm rather surprised personally that they even admitted that it was their efforts that created the opposite effect rather than trying to label those talking about it as being "part of the problem" like most groups do for these kinds of issues.
Re:Whoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its almost like they were trying to do the right thing and realised they did the wrong thing.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Notice "naked" is not on the list. Nevertheless, the first result is this link [lakeland.edu]
A quite famous picture (won the Pulitzer Prize) is on that page. With a naked girl-child in it. Of course, you would probably tear off your clothes and run screaming/naked too, if you had a really close encounter with napalm. I'm pretty sure I recall complaints about the original publication of that picture. Probably by relative
Expect further censorship (Score:3, Informative)
Try doing a Google Search for this sequence [ viet nam war news picture girl running screaming ] Notice "naked" is not on the list. Nevertheless, the first result is this link http://www.lakeland.edu/studentservices/news.asp?article=4354 [lakeland.edu] A quite famous picture (won the Pulitzer Prize) is on that page. With a naked girl-child in it. Of course, you would probably tear off your clothes and run screaming/naked too, if you had a really close encounter with napalm. I'm pretty sure I recall complaints about the original publication of that picture. Probably by relatives of the same idiots who objected to that album cover.
The girl's name is Phuc. How long do you expect to be able to search for such an obscene word? Obviously, such a search could only be seeking evil images, and the nannies must prevent it...
Re:Whoo! (Score:5, Informative)
The IWF never admitted to doing anything wrong. They merely realized that the knowledge and publicity of this event harmed their main goal and purpose of censorship, and in fact had the opposite effect of making this image more widely known and seen.
This example is one good reason to (at least) make the blacklist completely public and transparent. When a government (or in this case pseudo-government) and highly public agency want to hide things then corruption will inevitably follow. Transparency will always be better than sneakiness. If a public agency that effects the public does nothing wrong then they should have nothing to hide.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that...
I was anticipating such arguments, but was hoping that I didn't have to take the time to explain the fallacies...
At any rate, I now feel compelled to at least go over a few points:
1) Knowing the list does nothing for "inadvertent" access, etc. People don't need official lists to find what they want and people don't need official lists to not find what they want. If it comes down to inadvertently finding pictures of naked children on album art, etc then people should just get over their fetishes. There is no
Re:Be honest! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and banning the image now would be like going back to sensor re-runs of television shows from the 70's. That's awesome! Perhaps we can get rock-a-billy music censored out of existence?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of things are tasteless but not illegal, and it should probably remain that way.
I think exceptions can be made for rock-a-billy music. I wouldn't want anybody, much less a child, to be accidentally exposed to it. In fact, I've just put the Wikipedia page about rock-a-billy on the IWF site so that Britain's, at least, can be protected. Since the IWF mandate goes beyond banning merely pictures of children, thank goodness, people can be protected from all sorts of nasty stuff. Activist citizens like me should report other such disreputable Web sites to the IWF so that they can be banished
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
- George Orwell, 1984
Re: (Score:2)
However, I don't consider it child porn, otherwise I think the band would have not been allowed to release it and several people would have been arrested.
So something is child porn if you get censored or arrested for producing it?
Interesting metric.
Re:Be honest! (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the 70s, everyone had a much more relaxed attitude to this sort of thing. According to wikipedia, there was even a spread of a naked 11-year-old girl in the Italian edition of Playboy in 1976. It is only in the last few years that activists have spread the idea that it is bad to look at pictures of naked children.
So, the picture was legal when it was first released, but may well be illegal now, at least in the UK.
Re:Be honest! (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have a link to the article where it has that Playboy fact? It sounds like trolling.
Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Ionesco [wikipedia.org]
It took me less than a minute to do a search for that.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:mob rule (Score:4, Informative)
According to their statement, they have decided to never take any future action against the same image if it is hosted outside the UK, but if they find it hosted in the UK, it will be "assessed in line with IWF procedures", which means they will threaten the web site with prosecution.
Which of course means that those of us in the UK we will have to be content with seeing it on Wikipedia, Amazon and so on, or with buying it in record shops, or with reading books containing the picture, and so on, and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
So you think that people that pay for images of this stuff don't contribute to the perpetuation of it?
You're making assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)
"So you think that people that pay for images of this stuff don't contribute to the perpetuation of it?"
I agree with the AC. If the images are just of naked children (almost half of the child pornography cases in Ireland relate solely to pictures depicting no sexual activity whatsoever), that question is irrelevant, unless a child is actually forced to pose naked.
You're also making the assumption that everyone who is arrested for possessing child pornography has actually purchased child pornography. Many child pornography offenders are caught after taking their computer to a repair shop, having their IP address logged and traced, etc. They probably haven't harmed anyone, yet their life is now damaged beyond repair.
There should be a law against producing, purchasing, selling, requesting and trading pictures of children being molested (mere nudity should not be criminalised), but laws against accessing and possession do nothing to protect children; they simply provide an easy excuse for the government to exert control over citizens.
Re: (Score:2)
I have some sympathy for your views but, in the final analysis, preventing child abuse must be the priority and "access" is sufficient to encourage the production of child porn. There are
Re: (Score:2)
Naah. You still have to go through the technical rigmarole. They're still filtering via the same mechanisms, which is massive proxy serving, it just means that this one location isn't on the list any more. The proxy's are still banned from editing.
Re: (Score:2)
DAMNIT. proxys proxys proxys. Stupid extraneous apostrophes.
Re: (Score:2)