Legal Research

IWF admits Wikipedia blocking counter productive

By scott

The Internet Watch Foundation announced today that they have unblocked access to the wikepedia page that contained the image from the Scorpions album cover Virgin Killer. According to the press release from the IWF

“Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, 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. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.”

The IWF also realised that whilst there aim is to prevent access to what they judge to be indecent images of children online, the publicity in this case only succeeding in multiplying the number of sites linking to and hosting this particular image.

The IWF decision is still an odd one, as they still believe the image is potentially child porn under UK law which - going back to my original post on the issue - still leaves anyone in possession of the album, potentially in possession of Child Porn under Uk law, and therefore potentially liable for prosecution and all the things associated with possession of such material under UK law.

It will also be interesting to see how the IWF recovers after this. This controversy has put them in the limelight in a way they have not been before. It has highlighted that a small group of (well intentioned) people are deciding what sites we should and should not be able to access in the UK. It has also raised the question of the worth of just blocking access an individual instance of an image that is widely available elswhere on the internet. Are we, as a society, or our children better protected by this type of action, or - as I have previously argued - does this merely just look good to the powers that be, and us, the wider public, whilst doing little or nothing to prevent the creation of child porn in the first place, or to actually remove it from the internet.

On the bright side, hopefully now, we wont have to listen to Jimmy Wales prattling on and threatening to take the IWF to court, which he did in an interview given to Channel Four yesterday.

Full post as published by Information Overload on December 10, 2008 (boomark / email).