Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/2008 IWF action/Media coverage

Main page: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/2008 IWF action

The following articles represent coverage on the controversy between the Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia, following the web filtering dispute of December 2008.

Mainstream

• BBC News Online — Wikipedia child image censored (most popular article on site from 3am to 10am Monday morning), IWF backs down on Wiki censorship
• Guardian.co.uk — Wikipedia falls foul of British censors, Amazon US under threat as internet watchdog reconsiders Scorpions censorship, How the IWF blacklist stops you seeing the Scorpions' album cover, Internet ban on 'child porn' album sleeve, Internet Watch Foundation reconsiders Wikipedia censorship, British censor reverses Wikipedia ban & A nasty sting in the censors' tail & Wikipedia censorship highlights a lingering sting in the tail & How to make child-porn blocks safe for the internet
• Associated Press — Forbes, Yahoo! News, Charlotte Observer, San Francisco Chronicle, The State, Las Vegas Sun, Salon
• Channel 4 News — Wikipedia 'may challenge' IWF ban & Censors anger Wikipedia users & IWF lifts Wikipedia ban
• LiveNews — Wikipedia page banned by ISPs over child porn controversy
• Teletext — Wikipedia site banned
• Sydney Morning Herald - Wikipedia added to child pornography blacklist & Labor plan to censor internet in shreds
• Sky News — Wikipedia Ban Over Naked Girl Pic
• Daily Mail — Wikipedia rock band article blocked over 'child porn photo'
• Metro — 'Child porn' ban on band's 'Virgin' Wikipedia entry & related poll & U-turn on Wikipedia 'child porn' ban
• Daily Telegraph — Wikipedia page on rock band the Scorpions blocked over child pornography concerns, Wikipedia article blocked over child pornography concerns, Wikipedia founder considers legal action over ban on 'pornographic' album cover & Wikipedia ban lifted by Internet Watch Foundation
• South Africa Times — Band’s Wikipedia entry banned
• NME — The Scorpions' Wikipedia page banned in UK
• The Independent - Wikipedia article blocked in UK over child photo & The Big Question: What does censoring Wikipedia tell us about the way the internet is policed?, Community self-policing is the way to tackle internet child porn & IWF: What are you looking at? (2002 article)
• Digital Spy - Scorpions' UK Wikipedia page banned, British ISP's restrict access to Wikipedia amist allegations of child pornography (comment thread)
• Washington Post – Wikipedia Censorship Sparks Free Speech Debate (Content produced in cooperation with PC World and written under a PC World byline)
• The Herald (Glasgow) – Album cover shows how morality evolves
• The Dominion Post – Wikipedia added to child porn blacklist
• The Times - Wikipedia victory in Scorpions censorship row
• International Herald Tribune - British agency resolves dispute with Wikipedia over album cover
• AFP - Internet watchdog backs down over naked girl image
• Irish Times – Censorship with the best of intentions
• Financial Times – Was it right to censor a Wikipedia page? (requires registration)

Blogs

• BBC News dot.life — Wikipedia is censored & Wikipedia - IWF backs down
• The Guardian Technology Blog — Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography', Wikipedia censor mess 'a no-win' & IWF backs down over Wikipedia censorship & [Sting in the Scorpions tale is the exposure of Wiki's weakness
• ZDnet community blogs — UK ISPs switch on mass Wikipedia censorship (syndicated to CNET and Yahoo! Tech)
• Metro: The Ridiculant — Net nannies break Wikipedia in album cover kerfuffle & No such thing as bad publicity... & Interview with the Internet Watch Foundation's Sarah Robertson: we'd have blocked Amazon too
• DaniWeb (Davey Winder) — Naked child causes chaos on Wikipedia
• Channel 4 News — Censors anger Wikipedia users & Wikipedia: the bloggers reaction
• Anorak — The Top 20 Children On Album Covers, A Wikipedia Special
• Examiner.com – UK Wikipedia censorship shows need for filter circumvention
• Minneapolis City Pages Wikipedia entry for "Virgin Killer" by Scorpions banned in UK
• Wired Threat Level — Wikipedia Blocks UK Editors Amid Censorship Flap
• Silicon Valley – A chill wind makes for a slipperier slope & Wiki follow-ups: Upon further review …
• Huffington Post — Blind Faith: The Slippery Slope To Internet Censorship
• Daily Telegraph technology blog — The Internet Watch Foundation must learn from the Wikipedia debacle
• Amnesty International blog – This amp goes up to 19!
• Light Blue Touchpaper (Security Research, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge) – Technical aspects of the censoring of Wikipedia
• Andrew Keen — Fighting online child pornography

BBC Radio 4: News bulletins

• There was a 60-second radio news piece on BBC Radio 4 from approximately 1am onwards, by BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. Transcript by User:Pretzels.

Independent transcript of BBC Radio 4 news bulletin item

“ A row about internet censorship has broken out over a heavy metal album cover dating from the 1970s. A number of British internet providers have blocked access to a page on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia after warnings that displaying the cover by the German rockers Scorpions could break indecency rules. Here's our technology correspondent, Rory Cellan Jones.

The page which has been blocked shows an album cover featuring a naked young girl. The Internet Watch Foundation, which warns internet providers about child abuse images, decided this picture was potentially illegal. A number of firms then blocked access to the page. That's angered some of the volunteers who run the online encyclopedia. They say it's not up to the IWF to decide what can be seen on the web. They also claim that the image is available in a number of books and has never been ruled illegal. The Internet Watch Foundation says it consulted the police before making its move.

”

BBC Radio 4: Today Programme

• The full interview between David Gerard, Wikipedia representative, and Sarah Robertson, IWF spokesperson, finally happened at 08:54, Monday December 8th 2008. An MP3 is available at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7073232/bbcinterview.mp3, and David Gerard has followed up the appearance with a blog post. You can still stream from BBC Today's site using Flash. An independent transcript by User:Vanderdecken follows.

Independent transcript of David Gerard/Sarah Robertson interview on Today programme

“

JN - James Naughtie, presenter/interviewer

DG - David Gerard, Wikipedia representative

SR - Sarah Robertson, IWF spokesperson

---

JN: A rather curious story about censorship is spreading across the internet, it's all about a page on the online encyclopaedia "Wikipedia", about a heavy metal band of 25 or 30 years ago, the Scorpions. The image at the centre of the story is a record cover from an album of the early eighties [sic] featuring a picture of a naked child, which the Internet Watch Foundation says could be illegal. The Foundation is a watchdog funded by the internet services industry but Wikipedia says that it's unacceptable censorship. Sarah Robertson speaks for the Internet Watch Foundation, and David Gerard is here, he's a volunteer media spokesman for Wikipedia in this country. Sarah Robertson, now, what is it that's led you to think that this, which after all appeared in a publically available album cover 25 or 30 years ago, is now illegal?

SR: Good morning. We received this report last week at the Internet Watch Foundation and assessed it according to our normal channels, which is it's reviewed by our team of analysts in conjunction with UK law enforcement.

JN: So somebody simply said, "Look, have a look at this because it looks to me as if it's... over the top"?

SR: Exactly. The Internet Watch Foundation is the UK hotline providing just that service, that if the public are worried they've stumbled across content which might be illegal they can report it to us. Our job then is to assess that content and trace it, and indeed our assessment last week was that the image in question was indeed a potentially illegal child sexual abuse image.

JN: So which law would it contravene?

SR: The Protection of Children Act, 1978.

JN: Right, so in fact, would it have been illegal, do you think, if someone had complained at the time? I can't remember when the album came out, specifically.

SR: Yeah I understand the album came out before that date, of course that's an important issue - we're applying today's standards and today's legislation to the reports we're receiving today, obviously this is an old image.

JN: David Gerard, speaking for Wikipedia, what do you make of that?

DG: The album was issued in 1976, it's been available continuously for 32 years. The album cover was changed because various people told the band this is a stupid and crass image, which it is - I'm not questioning it's a tasteless image, but that's quite different from illegal. You can still buy the record with this image in the Scorpions box set in any high street. There are many other record covers available - Blind Faith by Eric Clapton, Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin, Nevermind by Nirvana, which feature naked underage people - none of these albums are illegal, you can go into any high street record shop an buy them. You can see this image, the image of the album "Virgin Killer" by the Scorpions, on the Amazon website right now - when we asked the Internet Watch Foundation why they blocked Wikipedia and not Amazon, apparently the decision was, quote, "pragmatic", unquote, which we think means that Amazon have money and would sue them whereas we're an educational charity and wouldn't.

JN: Well, Sarah Robertson, can I just put that point to you - if it's proper to block Wikipedia it's proper to block Amazon.

SR: Absolutely, we only act on the reports we receive, and as I understand it the only report we received regarding this content, as of Friday, was the content on Wikipedia--

JN: So you'll go for Amazon will you?

SR: We need to take a view today, obviously we need to look at the reports that have come in over the weekend, I know there's been a lot of activity as you said on the internet, we need to take a view with our analyst team and with our police partners.

JN: Yes indeed, but you would confirm that it isn't a question of how much money somebody's got, if it's a principle it's a principle and it applies to Amazon as well as to Wikipedia.

SR: Absolutely, we process around 35 000 reports every year, only about a third of those are confirmed to be potentially illegal, as such they're all treated the same.

JN: What can you do, I mean many people are concerned about the consequences of the freedom which they value with the internet, and a lot of people think that the Internet Watch Foundation is a guardian for them, but what can you actually do?

SR: Well what we do do is do our very best to ensure that the only content that is inaccessible is the specific content, including the illegal images, so how we block is-- our main function is a hotline, we're also a takedown body for illegal content when it's hosted in the UK, but if it's hosted abroad--

JN: There's nothing you can do.

SR: There is, and our industry members have asked us to provide them with a list of specific URLs, which we do, all the URLs, which is an individual web page are live and they're depicting child sexual abuse images.

JN: David Gerard, everyone will know, most people will know if they use the internet, about Wikipedia and how it works, and what a source of information, occasionally disinformation it is, do you object to the idea that there is someone out there funded by the industry who can take down something which is regarded as so offensive or potentially illegal that it goes beyond the boundaries.

DG: No-one objects to the IWF blocking actually illegal content, that's what it's for, what they object to in this case is they blocked an image that is not illegal, that has not been found illegal anywhere in the world - it was investigated in America by the FBI in May after a complaint by a fundamentalist Christian group, who told them to go away. The IWF also censored the text - what the issue in this case is they censored encyclopaedia text on the number four website in the world. This is the biggest website the IWF has ever blocked, and we think it was an experiment to see what they could get away with without people noticing.

JN: From the IWF point of view, final last words Sarah Roberston, was it an attempt to see what you could get away with?

SR: It's absolutely not an experiment, we don't experiment, look, we do our job in good faith, we apply the Protection of Children Act and the UK sentencing guidelines, that's all--

DG: Blocking text?

SR: We've only blocked the URL that contains the pag-- the image.

JN: Sarah Robertson, David Gerard, thank you both. [interview ends]

”

BBC World Service: World Update

• David Gerard also appeared on Monday 8th December's edition of BBC World Service World Update (47:26–52:08). He was interviewed by Dan Damon. The entire interview by Dan Damon is available online until 2008-12-09 10am UTC in WMA and RA formats. An independent transcript by User:Pretzels follows.

Independent transcript of David Gerard interview on BBC World Service World Update

“ A curious story about censorship is spreading over the internet. It's about a page on the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia", about a heavy metal band 30 years ago; the Scorpions. The image at the centre of the story is a record cover from the album from the 1980s featuring a picture of a naked child, which an online watchdog says could be illegal. The British-based Internet Watch Foundation has banned access to the Wikipedia page for its subscribers. So what are the objections? David Gerard is a spokesperson for Wikipedia:

"No-one objects to the IWF blocking clearly illegal content. This is not clearly illegal content; you can still buy the record as part of the Scorpions boxset in any high street record shop, and the image has never been taken to court and found illegal in 32 years, and more importantly, they blocked the encyclopedia text as well: that's what's really got people who just use the internet outraged. They're going to access the page, see it blocked, they call their provider and ask, "What's going on here?""

But the Internet Watch Foundation does say it consulted police before taking this action and they, sort of, believe that this was an illegal image. Now you're saying of course there's been no court case hitherto but is it not possible we're just at the start of a process that will see this image eventually banned, and you're just the first case rather than being a particular victim?

"That is theoretically possible, however the image was recently investigated in the US for example, after a complaint there, and, it was found not illegal at all there, and the laws in the US are very similar to those here."

You've seen the image yourself ("Yes"), is that the sort of image you would like to be propagating?

"It's distasteful, it's crass and stupid, and it frequently appears on a list of the worst album covers of all time; that itself makes it noteworthy to talk about. The Watch Foundation has even blocked us from talking about the article, and the image itself."

Why do you think they went for Wikipedia, before anyone else?

"We're small, we're a charity, we don't have money, we can't fight back; all we have is our voice and our supporters. The image, the same image, is readily available on Amazon, because they sell the boxset as well, and as I said it's still available in any high street CD store. They issued a press release yesterday which was arguably defamatory about Wikipedia - if they'd done that about Amazon, they'd have been sued."

Well I've been to the page, obviously you can see pretty much anything you want to see about Scorpions, you can see every other album, click on all of that information, I guess you can't actually see about this particular album itself; it seems like it's a fairly small issue.

"It seems like a fairly small issue, but it's a worrying expansion of the IWF's remit. When they censor clearly illegal information, no-one's worried about that. When they start blocking encyclopedia text on the fourth most popular website in the world, that's a bit more of an issue."

So where do you go from here then? You say you can't fight back; surely you can do something, you're fighting back just by being on the programme aren't you?

"That's all we can do: spread news that this happened. People are outraged, as in normal internet users in the UK. Proportion population, British people edit Wikipedia two and a half times as much as Americans do, not just reading but participating, and it's very popular here, and that's being broken by this decision. A lot of internet providers use the IWF as a mechanism to block illegal content, but this was ham-fisted and incompetent."

So what do you want the IWF to do now?

"Unblock the image, stop censoring Wikipedia, contact us if there is an image they seriously think is illegal - they did not contact us first, it's not like we're hard to find."

There are issues of course of all the freedom of publication, everything you've spoken about, but perhaps would you be happy for there to be some kind of formal investigation and decision on whether this image is in fact illegal, and then were it declared illegal, would you be happy then to have the image banned on your site?

"That would be a legal issue. We're not going to be pursuing a case ourselves, because we don't have money; we're an educational charity."

Can't you get legal aid?

"We possibly could. The charity's US-based, the site's US-based, the image is clearly not illegal in the US, so at the moment we're just publicising the issue and the arbitary censorship of encyclopedia text - it's not just the image, they censored the text. They're starting to block people from talking about the image. That's new."

I was talking there to David Gerard, a spokesperson for Wikipedia, on quite a contentious topic of course, and do email us if you think you have an opinion on that.

”

BBC Radio 5 Live: Midday News Programme

• Sarah Robertson, IWF Director of Communications was interviewed on the Midday News programme, BBC Radio 5 Live, at 12:40, Monday December 8 2008. An independent transcript by User:Whimsical Oracle follows.

Independent transcript of Sarah Robertson interview on Midday News programme

“

AM - Aasmah Mir, presenter/interviewer

SR - Sarah Robertson, IWF Director of Communications and spokesperson

---

AM: A row about censorship has broken out after several British internet providers blocked access to part of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.The decision came after a warning by the internet watchdog that a page featured an image of a naked child. The picture was taken from the front cover of an album by the German rock band 'Scorpions'. Sarah Robertson is from the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation. Hello, Sarah. I believe it was you that contacted Wikipedia, is that right?

SR: Good afternoon. What happened was that we received a report last week - let me point out that the IWF is the UK hotline if people are worried about content that they have stumbled across online and they can report it to us, and we can assess it on behalf of the internet industry in conjunction with the police - well, we received a report last week from a member of the public who was obviously worried they had stumbled across content which may be illegal. We assessed it, as we do all reports that come in, and indeed we believe, in conjunction with our police partners, that the content in question was indeed an indecent image of a child.

AM: And what did they [Wikipedia] say?

SR: Because Wikipedia is hosted abroad, we don't have a remit to issue notices abroad. If it was hosted in the UK, we would have spoken immediately with the company concerned, in conjunction again with police. But because this content is hosted abroad, what the internet industry asks us to do is provide them with a list of live URLs where the images are posted. And as a result, we put this on our list.

AM: Right, so what has happened here is that several British internet providers blocked access to those URLs that you are talking about?

SR: That's right, yes.

AM: But not all of them? Or did all British internet providers do this?

SR: Well, it works in partnership, really. It is not a legislative requirement that companies block. What they do is that they try to demonstrate best practice in order to protect their customers from being inadvertently exposed to child sexual abuse images, so they take the step of taking our list from us and trying to prevent access to that content.

AM: Hmm. The problem seems to be that apparently something hasn't gone quite right and they are not able to access certain bits of Wikipedia, they are not able to edit entries, that kind of thing. Do you know how that has happened?

SR: Yes that is what I understand. I want to underline first of all that the list we provided is just specific webpages - just URLs for each report that comes in to us that is indeed an illegal image of a child. What has happened on this occasion, I understand, is that as a result of how Wikipedia's technological infrastructure is set up, that once ISPs have implemented our list and are blocking, unfortunately that is not something we have direct control over.

AM: The other problem is that this is an image, on an album cover, that has been available since 1976, something like that?

SR: So I hear, yes.

AM: So why is it a problem now?

SR: Well, we can only deal with reports that come in today. We can only apply today's standards and today's legislation. The Protection of Children Act came in 1978, clearly defining what is an illegal image. I understand that the actual release of the album predates that. I am not aware of whether or not there have been prosecutions of that album cover. I understand that particular album cover was banned in most countries and replaced with an alternative. Essentially we are not involved in a debate about the morals or otherwise of that album, what we are involved in is assessing the image that came in to us last week on Wikipedia, and by the Child Protection Act, according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines, the image is an indecent image of a child.

AM: I presume then that it must logically follow that other album covers and material that was deemed acceptable maybe 10 or 20 years ago, that the same things could also fall foul of what you are talking about?

SR: Not necessarily. The law is the law. We just interpret legislation. I am not aware of any other album covers with that genre of image which might fall foul of the law. The categories are laid out very firmly. This was categorised as a Level 1 indecent image, and that's that. It doesn't necessarily mean there are a number of other album covers which will be illegal. We move on from here, and what is happening now is that we are in discussion with Wikipedia and we have invoked our appeals procedure and we are consulting now with senior law enforcement and with senior IWF staff to invoke that procedure.

AM: Okay Sarah thank you.

[interview ends]

”

Channel 4 News

• An item appeared on Channel 4 News at approx 7:40pm on 8th December 2008, featuring an interview with the chief executive of the IWF, Peter Robbins, and soundbites from the Open Rights Group and David Gerard, a spokesman for Wikimedia. To watch, see Channel 4 News, Part 4, 4:00, or here. An independent transcript by User:Pretzels follows.

Independent transcript of news item and Peter Robbins, head of IWF, interview on Channel 4 News

“ (Jon Snow) An album cover dating back more than 30 years has been blocked from Wikipedia, one of the world's most popular websites, after it was described as potentially pornographic. But that stopped most users from the United Kingdom from editing any of the online encyclopedia's pages. Our technology correspondent Benjamin Cohen has more.

(Benjamin Cohen) They're ageing rockers best known for performing at the fall of the Berlin wall, but ironically the Scorpions are now embroiled in a row about Britain's internet firewall. Until yesterday, it was only dedicated fans of the heavy metal band who visited the Wikipedia article about their 1976 album Virgin Killer. But now most people in Britain will see a blank page, because of the image of a naked prepubescent girl featured in the artwork.

(User:David Gerard, Wikimedia Foundation) "The IWF has blocked this image in a really hamfisted way. They mostly get it right, but this time they've blocked encyclopedia text - which is clearly not illegal. The image itself has been around for 32 years."

But child protection groups have defended the IWF's highly unusual decision to block access to one of the world's most popular website.

(John Carr, Children's Charities Association) "They take a view as to whether or not it would be likely to be found to be an illegal image, should the case come to court, and they base their discussions and their notices on that judgement. In 12 years of operation, as far as I'm aware, nobody's really contested that they've got it wrong."

So how does the block work? Well, requests to websites are checked by internet service providers against the IWF's blacklist. If the site's OK, the request goes straight there, but as Wikipedia is on the list, part or all of the site is blocked to users. But this system has accidentally meant that British users are also unable to register accounts or edit entries on Wikipedia, which is supposed to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit.

According to the Internet Watch Foundation, by simply having viewed this page, I could have technically broken the law. And even with it blocked, it doesn't stop me finding thousands of other copies of the image all over the web, including on big name retailers like Amazon. So will they get blocked too?

Normally, Britain's internet firewall operates behind closed doors. But today's row has illustrated how the technology is there to theoretically filter out anything the authorities don't want us to see.

(Becky Hogge, Open Rights Group) "This is certainly the first time that the UK general public has been made so aware that filtering takes place on the internet, but in fact filtering for child sex abuse images has been going on for some time online. I don't think today indicates that the filtered net is the norm, in fact it may challenge some of the ways filtering has been done up until this point."

Today we were able to buy the album without any trouble on the high street, and it's still for sale online. The page at the heart of today's controversy has now become the most viewed on Wikipedia. After decades of obscurity the Scorpions may find an unexpected spike in Christmas sales.

(Jon Snow) We're joined by Peter Robbins, chief executive of the internet watchdog Watch Foundation, he's in Hertfordshire. I'm just wondering, could you just clarify whether you can ban a page like this, or you simply advise it should be taken down?

(Peter Robbins, Internet Watch Foundation) "We do two things, Jon. On the first hand, we operate a hotline where the public report their inadvertent exposure to indecent images of children on the internet, and if we were to find that content hosted in the UK then we would be able to issue a notice to take that content down to the relevant hosting or service provider."

Now in this case we've got an image which has been around since, well, for 22 years [sic]. Surely if anyone was going to take offence, they'd have done it by now?

"A member of the public reported this image to us at the end of last week, and in accordance with the guidelines that our staff operate with, within the UK law, that picture was deemed to be an indecent image of a child under the age of 18."

The difficulty is, that this lays you open really to any old pressure group getting itself together to get anything off the internet, and the whole beauty of the internet surely, is that it should be unfiltered and left for people to sort out for themselves.

"That's absolutely right, and that's exactly our position Jon; we fully concur with that viewpoint. However, the list that we create is a list of child indecent images of children, child sexual abuse images, and images such as the one displayed on the Wikipedia website was an image reported to us by a member of the public, and when you apply the guidelines that the UK has for these types of images, that image fails the test."

Could I ask you why you haven't moved against Amazon, or any of the other many sites that have this album sleeve on them?

"Today is the first day after, obviously the incident was reported at the weekend, and what we've been doing is actually reviewing our procedures, and also taking account of the complaints that are coming in. Once we've got all those complaints, then we'll take a view as to what we do next."

Peter Robbins, thankyou, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there, but thankyou very much indeed for joining us.

”

News searches

• Google News — Google News search

Tech/internet news

• ZDnet — UK ISPs flip censorship switch on Wikipedia, Wind up the Internet Watch Foundation & Wikipedia censorship 'easy to evade'
• The Register — Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover, UK e-tailers scurry to scrap dodgy Heavy Metal covers, Scorpions tale leaves IWF exposed, IWF pulls Wikipedia from child porn blacklist & IWF rethinks its role
• BoingBoing — Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to Wikipedia
• DSLreports — Six UK ISPs Block Access To Wikipedia
• Open Rights Group — IWF censors Wikipedia, chaos ensues
• T3 — UK ISPs censor Wikipedia over 40-year-old album cover
• Webuser — Wikipedia block causes storm
• PC Pro — Brits blocked from Wikipedia over child porn photo & Wikipedia boss blasts IWF censorship
• PC World — Wikipedia Article Censored in UK for the First Time, Controversial Wikipedia Ban Lifted by U.K. Watchdog Group & Wikipedia Censorship Case Sends 'confusing' Message
• Computer Weekly — UK Wikipedia users unhappy over Scorpions page block & Wikipedia founder considers action against IWF over Scorpions image ban & Wikipaedia beats Internet Watch Foundation on own goals
• Computer World — Wikipedia article censored in U.K. for the first time & Reversal: U.K. watchdog pulls Wikipedia page off blacklist
• Computer World UK — Wikipedia U-turn under fire
• IT Pro — ISPs censor Wikipedia over child porn pic
• Metafilter — Internet Sting
• InformationWeek — Wikipedia Censored In U.K. Over Nude Girl
• IT Examiner (India) — British ISPs block Wikipedia & Just who does the IWF think it is?
• Techworld (Australia) – Wikipedia article censored in UK for the first time, Wikipedia censorship case sends 'confusing' message
• APC – Internet filter stuff-up cuts off Wikipedia
• MyBroadband – Wikipedia entry banned
• LinuxInsider – British ISPs Block Wikipedia Page, Reigniting 30-Year-Old Child Porn Controversy
• HULIQ – Is the U.K.'s Filtering of Wikipedia Just the Beginning?
• NewsFactor Network – UK Agency Blocks Wikipedia Image, Editing of Site
• Digital Lifestyles – IWF: How Web Sites Become Banned In The UK
• IT Wire – Wikimedia welcomes IWF backdown in album cover controversy
• Ars Technica – IWF backs off of Scorpions Wikipedia block after criticism
• Think Broadband – IWF appeals procedure reverses Wikipedia block
• Broadband Expert – Access restricted to Wikipedia by six ISPs after it was added to child porn blacklist
• WHIR – Internet Watchdoggin' Ain't Easy

Law News

• Out-law — Why the IWF was right to ban a Wikipedia page (Editorial comment); also syndicated by the Register & Why the IWF was wrong to lift its ban on a Wikipedia page
• LegalBrief — UK censors Wikipedia naked girl photograph
• Lawdit Solicitors – Censorship and Wikipedia (comments by Michael Coyle: "Solicitor Advocate who specialises in information technology law and intellectual property law")

Non-English

• In Czech:
  • Mladá fronta DNES — Cenzura udeřila na Wikipedii kvůli nahému děvčátku od kapely Scorpions
  • Lidové noviny — Británie v. Wikipedia
• In Dutch:
  • Gazet van Antwerpen — Wikipedia site van The Scorpions van internet gehaald
  • nu.nl — Britten blokkeren Wikipedia om kinderporno
  • ZDNet.be — Britse webproviders censureren Wikipedia
  • Webwereld — Britse providers blokkeren Wikipedia-pagina
  • De Telegraaf — Britse Wikipedia-pagina's geblokkeerd
• In Finnish:
  • Helsingin Sanomat — Wikipedian artikkeli Scorpions-bändistä sensuroitiin "lapsipornona" Britanniassa
• In French:
  • Clubic.com — Wikipédia partiellement censuré au Royaume-Uni
  • Ecrans — Wikipedia, victime collatérale du filtrage d’Internet
  • Le Point — GB : une page Wikipédia bloquée pour une pochette de disque controversée
  • Tribune de Genève — Des fournisseurs d’accès internet britanniques bloquent une page Wikipedia (Swiss)
  • Metro Monteal –Censure de Wikipedia: l'IWF retire sa plainte (Canadian)
  • Ecrans Un Wikipédia sans filtre, s’il vous plaît
• In German:
  • Basler Zeitung — Wikipedia unter Kinderpornografie-Verdacht (Swiss)
  • Focus — Kinderpornografie: Britische Provider filtern Wikipedia wegen Scorpions-Cover
  • Gulli — ISPs filtern Wikipedia wegen Kinderporno-Verdacht
  • Heise Online — Wikimedia verurteilt Artikel-Sperrungen in Großbritannien
  • Heise Online — Britische Provider sperren Wikipedia-Artikel
  • ORF — Kritik an Wikipedia-Zensur in Großbritannien (Austrian)
  • Rolling Stone — Nach den USA jetzt UK: Scorpions- Album macht Wikipedia Probleme
  • Spiegel online — Verdacht auf Kinderpornografie: Englische Wikipedia-Seite blockiert
  • Der Standard — Britische Provider filtern Wikipedia: Vorwurf der Kinderpornografie (Austrian)
  • Stern — Anstößiges Plattencover : Deutsche Rockband legt Wikipedia lahm
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung — Britische Wikipedia wegen Scorpions-Cover gesperrt
  • Tagesanzeiger — John Lennons Penis und andere Zumutungen (Swiss)
  • Tagesschau — Wikipedia-Artikel über Scorpions blockiert
  • die tageszeitung — Verdacht auf Kinderpornografie: Wikipedia-Sperre wegen Skandalbild
  • Die Welt — Plattencover: Scorpions lösen Porno-Skandal bei Wikipedia aus
  • Göttinger Tageblatt – Netzgeflüster: Verbote machen neugierig
• In Hebrew:
  • Ynet — ויקיפדיה מסוננת בבריטניה בגלל תמונת קטינה
• In Hungarian:
  • Index.hu — Korlátozták a Wikipedia elérését a britek
• In Italian:
  • Corriere della Sera — Wikipedia censurata per la copertina degli Scorpions
  • Punto Informatico — Wikipedia: quel nudo non si tocca
• In Norwegian:
  • Side 2 (Nettavisen) — Blokkerer platecover på Wikipedia
• In Spanish:
  • Barrapunto — El Reino Unido limita el acceso a la Wikipedia con un firewall como el chino
  • El País — Las operadoras británicas censuran un desnudo infantil en Wikipedia
• In Swedish:
  • Svenska Dagbladet — Naken flicka föremål för hätsk internetdebatt (where Swedish Police says it has decided not to blacklist this page)

Blogs

• The Nock Blog — Great Firewall of Britain (has technical overview of proxy involvement)
• Kelly Martin Wikimedia vs. Internet Watch Foundation
• Danny Wool Stung by a Scorpion
• Seth Finkelstein Reflections on Wikipedia vs CleanFeed, Censorship and British ISP's
• spEak You’re bRanes - The Iceberg on the Road to my Brain
• Cognitive Conga — Virgin kills Virgin Killer including telephone interview with the IWF's Sarah Robertson
• Ipatrol - Hadrian's Firewall: Why Britan isn't Free

Blog Searches

• Google Blog Search — Blog posts about the situation
• Technorati — Blog posts about the situation
• Twitter — Tweets about the situation

Social news

• Digg — UK ISPs censoring Wikipedia (frontpaged at 1:30am 2008-12-08 UTC, reached #3 in Top 10 in All Topics)
• Reddit — UK ISPs filtering access to Wikipedia
• Slashdot — UK ISPs Are Censoring Wikipedia
• Wikinews — British ISPs restrict access to Wikipedia amid child pornography allegations & Wikimedia, IWF respond to block of Wikipedia over child pornography allegations & IWF reverses censorship of Wikipedia

See also

• Internet censorship in the United Kingdom

{{Wikipedia}} [[Category:2008 controversies]] [[Category:Internet censorship in the United Kingdom]]