Update on Wikipedia ban because of Scorpions cover
On the 8th of December I wrote an article on Wikipedia. Wikipedia had a post which has been banned/blocked by most providers in the UK because of the cover of an album of the Scorpions “Virgin Killer”. The organization IWF said it contained illegal nudity (of a child).
Today has been announced that IWF (the organization who was responsible for this ban); reconsidered their decision….and “de-blocked” this article. With even a little apology;Â “We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users.”
The explanation of the IWF you can find overhere.
One of the explanations of IWF is; ” IWF’s overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect“.
And yes; this ban/block got a lot of publicity – which even made Sjeltur’s Blog appear in different kind of articles;
Article of Channel 4
Article on Readers-Editon.de
Note they regret the *consequences* of the blocking, not the actual blocking itself, despite their own observation that “on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect”. So they know their action completely backfired, but they don’t take full responsibility, nor do they really apologize to Wikipedia and its users…
They still think that the picture is illegal and should not be on the internet – available for everyone….
And they do explain why they think they have the right to (give the advice to) block such a picture.
Perhaps this incident will make the people of Britain realize this is the wrong way to deal with potentially illegal content, but that’s probably not going to happen…
[...] UPDATE ON THIS ARTICLE HERE [...]