Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia

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On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British watchdog group, blacklisted content on the English Wikipedia related to Scorpions' 1976 studio album Virgin Killer , due to the presence of its controversial cover artwork, depicting a young girl posing nude, with a faux shattered-glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was deemed to be "potentially illegal content" under English law which forbids the possession or creation of indecent photographs of children. The IWF's blacklist are used in web filtering systems such as Cleanfeed.

Contents

The URL to the image's description page, which depicts the cover art, was also blacklisted; however thumbnails and the image itself remained accessible. The album cover had been deemed controversial at the time of its release, [1] and was replaced in some markets with an alternate cover image featuring a photo of the band members. [1] The IWF described the image as "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18". [2] Wikipedia's policies state that it does not censor content "that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, even exceedingly so", although it does remove content that is "obviously inappropriate", violates other Wikipedia policies, or is illegal in the United States. [3]

As well as the direct consequence of censoring the article and image for UK-based readers of the English Wikipedia through the affected ISPs (a censoring that could be circumvented), [4] and that the album cover was being made available unfiltered on other major sites including Amazon.co.uk [2] (from which it was later removed), and available for sale in the UK, [5] the action also had some indirect effects on Wikipedia, namely temporarily preventing all editors using said ISPs in the UK from contributing to any page of the encyclopedia, [6] and preventing anonymous edits from these ISPs while the URL remained on the blacklist. This was described by the IWF as unintended "collateral damage". [7] This was due to the proxies used to access Wikipedia, as Wikipedia implements a blocking policy whereby contributors can be blocked if they vandalise the encyclopedia. Therefore, all vandalism coming from one ISP would be directed through one proxy—hence one IP—and all of the ISP's customers using that proxy would be barred from editing.

After invoking its appeals procedure and reviewing the situation, the IWF reversed their blacklisting of the page on 9 December 2008, [8] [9] and announced that they would not blacklist other copies of the image hosted outside the UK. [10]

Background

The album art of the Scorpions' album Virgin Killer , featuring a young girl fully nude with a "smashed glass" effect covering her genitalia, [5] was deemed controversial at the time of its release. [1] The cover was replaced in some markets with an alternate cover image featuring a photo of the band members. RCA Records refused to sell the controversial album cover in the United States. [11] The cover was not the only Scorpions' cover which caused controversy however, as the covers for Taken by Force [12] and Lovedrive [1] have also caused controversy with their content.

In the United Kingdom, access to illegal content (such as child pornography) was strictly self-regulated by individual internet service providers. This began when BT Group introduced Cleanfeed, a server-side filtering system which uses data obtained from the Internet Watch Foundation. The IWF is a Quango organisation that operates a website where users can report web pages containing illegal or dubious content to be added to their blacklists. [13] This was implemented in order to prevent users from accessing this material, since it is illegal to possess an indecent image of a child under the age of 18 per the Protection of Children Act. [14] British ISPs were later obligated by the government to implement filters for illegal content by the beginning of 2007. [15] [16]

Addition to IWF blacklist

On 5 December 2008 the Internet Watch Foundation added the Wikipedia URLs for the Virgin Killer article and the description page of the image to its blacklist. [17] After the blacklisting, users of major UK ISPs, including BT, Vodafone, Virgin Media/Tesco.net, Be/O2, EasyNet/UK Online/Sky Broadband, Orange, Demon, and TalkTalk (Opal Telecom), were unable to access the content. [2]

Sarah Robertson, director of communications for the IWF, said that the image was rated "1 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the least offensive". She described the picture as "erotic posing with no sexual activity". [17] While the image itself has not been flagged as "illegal", IWF determined it to be a "potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18". [18]

The IWF said they were first notified of the Wikipedia URL on 4 December 2008. This followed the May 2008 reporting of the cover image on Wikipedia by U.S.-based social conservative site WorldNetDaily to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A subsequent investigation by the FBI concluded that the artwork did not violate any US laws. [19] EContent magazine subsequently reported that the discussion page associated with the article declared "Prior discussion has determined by broad consensus that the Virgin Killer cover will not be removed", and asserted that Wikipedia contributors "favour inclusion in all but the most extreme cases". [20] However, according to The Guardian because "the IWF doesn't talk to people outside of the UK they weren't able to appreciate what was going on". Internet security expert Richard Clayton explained that "We see this borderline stuff all the time; it's a no-win", before adding that the decision seems to have been based on taking the image out of context, particularly "given that you can go into HMV and buy a copy on the high street". [21] On 9 December 2008 the IWF reversed its blacklist of the Wikipedia pages on the basis of the "contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability". [10]

Effects on Wikipedia

Users attempting to access the Virgin Killer article or image were met with pseudo-404 errors or other messages. VK WikipediaBlock.png
Users attempting to access the Virgin Killer article or image were met with pseudo-404 errors or other messages.

The blacklisting of Virgin Killer also caused other inadvertent issues for Wikipedia users in the United Kingdom. Usually most Internet users have a unique IP address visible to websites. However, as a result of ISPs using the IWF blacklist implemented through Cleanfeed technology, traffic to Wikipedia via those affected ISPs was then routed through a small number of proxy servers. [22] This caused problems for users of the site. Since Wikipedia allows users to anonymously edit its encyclopedia articles, these individuals are identified only through their IP addresses, which are used to selectively block users who vandalise the site or otherwise break its rules. The proxy filtering makes it impossible to uniquely distinguish users, and to prevent vandalism Wikipedia "instituted a blanket ban on anonymous edits from the six ISPs, which account for 95% of British residential internet users". [23] This had the immediate effect of requiring nearly all registered users in the UK to request the lifting of IP Autoblocks on their accounts before they could edit again, and the de facto permanent effect of barring any contribution from people without user accounts on the site, who contribute merely under an IP address and not a user name.

The MediaWiki software that Wikipedia runs on can interpret X-Forwarded-For (XFF) headers, allowing Wikipedia to identify a user's main IP address rather than the proxy IP address, allowing the ability to block proxy users individually by their client's IP rather than the proxy server IP (avoiding the need to block the whole proxy due to the actions of a single user). [22] However, none of the ISPs subscribing to this system pass XFF information to Wikipedia, having the impact of reversing the normal method of identification and blocking on Wikipedia. [24] IP addresses assumed to be assigned to an individual person or organisation were assigned instead to millions of people and thousands of registered editors. [25] Wikipedia servers saw them all as the IP of the proxy rather than each as the IP of their own machine.

Due to erroneous use of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and other routing technology to redirect the connections to the filtering proxies, users of some networks were temporarily prevented from accessing or editing any content hosted by Wikimedia, a problem reminiscent of Pakistan's accidental blocking of YouTube for much of the world instead of only their own citizens. [26]

Responses

On 7 December 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation which supports Wikipedia, issued a press release about the blacklisting of their sites by the IWF stating that they had "no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world", and noting that not just the image but the article itself had been blocked. [27]

On 9 December 2008, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, who holds the "community founder seat" on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, told the UK's Channel 4 News that he had briefly considered legal action. [28] [29] [30] After the block had been removed, Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, stated "there is still plenty to be troubled by in the operations of the Internet Watch Foundation and its blacklist". [31]

On 9 December 2008, the IWF rescinded the block, [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] issuing the following statement: [10]

[...] 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.

Aftermath

The incident was commented in some countries implementing or considering to implement Internet filtering or censorship plans. In Australia, Electronic Frontiers Australia vice-chairman Colin Jacobs said that "[the] incident in Britain, in which virtually the entire country was unable to edit Wikipedia because the country's Internet Watch Foundation had blacklisted a single image on the site, illustrated the pitfalls of mandatory ISP filtering". [37] [38] The Sydney Morning Herald has commented that "Ironically, the banning of the image has only made it visible to more people as news sites publicise the issue and the image spreads across sites other than Wikipedia" (an example of the Streisand effect). [23]

At the time of the incident Amazon US were also displaying the image on their site and the IWF stated that it "might yet add Amazon US to its list of 'blocked' sites for hosting the picture"; [17] however, Amazon subsequently took the decision to remove the image from their site. [39] In an impact study preparing a bill dealing with cybercrime, the Cabinet of France listed the Virgin Killer block as an example of indiscriminate filtering. [40]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticised the IWF's reasoning: [41]

We agree with their decision [to reverse the ban], but they have the wrong reasoning [for the reversal]: they had no business censoring that article in the first place — the community of Wikipedia editors is if anything the more legitimate, reliable and grown-up adjudicator of which images are appropriate subject matter for an encyclopaedia.

The IWF continues to assert that the image is indeed child pornography, and asserts that the image would be blocked if it were on a British server. [42]

See also

Related Research Articles

An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software determines what content will be available or be blocked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proxy server</span> Computer server that makes and receives requests on behalf of a user

In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. It improves privacy, security, and performance in the process.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is an Australian government statutory authority within the Communications portfolio. ACMA was formed on 1 July 2005 with the merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Communications Authority.

Internet censorship in Australia is enforced by both the country's criminal law as well as voluntarily enacted by internet service providers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has the power to enforce content restrictions on Internet content hosted within Australia, and maintain a blocklist of overseas websites which is then provided for use in filtering software. The restrictions focus primarily on child pornography, sexual violence, and other illegal activities, compiled as a result of a consumer complaints process.

Cleanfeed is the name given to various privately administered ISP level content filtering systems operating in the United Kingdom and Canada, and as of May 2012 undergoing testing in Australia with a view to future mandatory implementation. These government-mandated programs originally attempted to block access to child pornography and abuse content located outside of the nation operating the filtering system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship</span> Legal control of the internet

Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behaviour rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.

Most Internet censorship in Thailand prior to the September 2006 military coup d'état was focused on blocking pornographic websites. The following years have seen a constant stream of sometimes violent protests, regional unrest, emergency decrees, a new cybercrimes law, and an updated Internal Security Act. Year by year Internet censorship has grown, with its focus shifting to lèse majesté, national security, and political issues. By 2010, estimates put the number of websites blocked at over 110,000. In December 2011, a dedicated government operation, the Cyber Security Operation Center, was opened. Between its opening and March 2014, the Center told ISPs to block 22,599 URLs.

Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, administrative regulations and voluntary arrangements. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Block (Internet)</span> Restriction on accessing an online resource

On the Internet, a block or ban is a technical measure intended to restrict access to information or resources. Blocking and its inverse, unblocking, may be implemented by the owners of computers using software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lapsiporno.info</span> Finnish website

Lapsiporno.info is a Finnish website opposed to Internet censorship. The website was founded and is maintained by software developer, researcher and Internet activist Matti Nikki, who previously attracted international attention by analyzing Sony BMG's digital rights management rootkit that the company's products automatically installed on users' computers. The website focuses on the internet censorship in Finland, its effectiveness, and the issues and problems related to it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Watch Foundation</span> Registered charity in Cambridge, England

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a global registered charity based in Cambridge, England. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhere in the world and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK." Content inciting racial hatred was removed from the IWF's remit after a police website was set up for the purpose in April 2011. The IWF used to also take reports of criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK. This was removed from the IWF's remit in 2017. As part of its function, the IWF says that it will "supply partners with an accurate and current URL list to enable blocking of child sexual abuse content". It has "an excellent and responsive national Hotline reporting service" for receiving reports from the public. In addition to receiving referrals from the public, its agents also proactively search the open web and deep web to identify child sexual abuse images and videos. It can then ask service providers to take down the websites containing the images or to block them if they fall outside UK jurisdiction.

<i>Virgin Killer</i> 1976 studio album by Scorpions

Virgin Killer is the fourth studio album by the German rock band Scorpions. It was released in 1976 and was the band's first album to attract attention outside Europe. The title is described as being a reference to time as the killer of innocence. The original cover featured a nude prepubescent girl, which stirred controversy in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. As a result, the album was re-issued with a different cover in some countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Streisand effect</span> Increased awareness of information caused by efforts to suppress it

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project's photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew far greater attention to the heretofore obscure photograph in 2003.

Censorship in Finland refers to government policies in controlling and regulating certain information.

Widespread censorship of Wikipedia has occurred in countries including China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The length of different blocks have varied from hours to years. When Wikipedia ran on the HTTP protocol, governments were able to block specific articles. However, in 2011 Wikipedia began running on both HTTP and HTTPS, and in 2015 switched over to solely HTTPS. Since then, the only censorship options have been to block the entire site for a particular language or prosecute editors, which has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.

There is medium internet censorship in France, including limited filtering of child pornography, laws against websites that promote terrorism or racial hatred, and attempts to protect copyright. The "Freedom on the Net" report by Freedom House has consistently listed France as a country with Internet freedom. Its global ranking was 6 in 2013 and 12 in 2017. A sharp decline in its score, second only to Libya was noted in 2015 and attributed to "problematic policies adopted in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, such as restrictions on content that could be seen as 'apology for terrorism,' prosecutions of users, and significantly increased surveillance."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship in Russia</span>

In Russia, internet censorship is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor).

The precise number of websites blocked in the United Kingdom is unknown. Blocking techniques vary from one Internet service provider (ISP) to another with some sites or specific URLs blocked by some ISPs and not others. Websites and services are blocked using a combination of data feeds from private content-control technology companies, government agencies, NGOs, court orders in conjunction with the service administrators who may or may not have the power to unblock, additionally block, appeal or recategorise blocked content.

The child abuse image content list is a list of URLs and image hashes provided by the Internet Watch Foundation to its partners to enable the blocking of child pornography & criminally obscene adult content in the UK and by major international technology companies.

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