Internet Censorship by Stealth UK Style

[Disco_Destroyer]

Saturday 6 December 2008, 11:50 PM
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009938o-2000331777b,0 0.htm
UK ISPs switch on mass Wikipedia censorship
Posted by Rupert Goodwins

The following notice has appeared on Wikipedia today when many UK users attempt to edit content:

"Wikipedia has been added to a Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well."

According to discussions on the Wikipedia administrators noticeboard, this is because a transparent proxy has been enabled for customers of Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal. This has two effects: users cannot see content filtered by the proxies, and all user traffic passing through the proxies is given a single IP address per proxy. As Wikipedia's anti-vandalism system blocks users by IP address, one single case of vandalism by a single UK user prevents all users on that user's ISP from editing. The effect is to block all editing from anonymous UK users on that list of ISPs. Registered users can continue to edit.

The content being filtered is apparently that deemed to meet the Internet Watch Foundation's critera for child pornography – in one case, this involves a 1970s LP cover art which, although controversial, is still widely available.

Reports on the admin noticeboard say that this filtering is easy to circumvent, either by using Wikipedia's secure server or by sending a request to find the page via parameters in the URL. However, no fix has been found – nor is one expected – for the proxy address problem.

"This is the first I've come across UK wide internet censorship, and I'm shocked. I had no idea until now that like China, we too have built a great firewall - only we keep quiet about ours.", user Hahnchen said, on the noticeboard.

[Disco_Destroyer]

One of the two URLs that they've blocked is that to the image page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg

I should probably point out that the reason it's blocked is that the IWF considers that it would be illegal to view that image under English law. Personally, I don't consider the image to be pornographic and I'm quite angry that my ISP is censoring my Internet connection, but it is not impossible that there could be legal consequences to viewing that URL.

If you can see a Wikipedia image page at that URL, you're not being blocked. If you get anything else (I get a proxy error that Google Chrome displays as a page not available message), but can see the main page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, then your Net connection is being transparently proxied and censored by your ISP.

The IWF has a press release linked from their homepage (at www.iwf.org.uk ), which gives their explanation of the circumstances surrounding the recent controversy.

[scienceplease]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7774102.stm

[Disco_Destroyer]

Cheers they are obviously testing the water!!!

[Disco_Destroyer]

From The Times December 9, 2008
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/arti cle5315345.ece
Wikipedia victory in Scorpions censorship row


An edited version of the album cover

Mike Harvey, Technology Correspondent
An anti-child abuse watchdog has reversed its decision to blacklist a Wikipedia page showing a controversial 1976 album cover after protests over censorship.

Most British internet service providers had blocked users from accessing the image of a prepubescent naked girl on the cover of the Virgin Killer album by the Scorpions, a German band, after the Internet Watch Foundation ruled it was a "potentially illegal indecent image".

But the picture was accessible on many other sites and some argued that, while provocative, it was an artistic historical artefact and should not be banned.

Last night the IWF accepted that its ban had been counter-productive after the controversy had prompted millions to view the image.


It said in a statement: "The IWF Board has 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.

"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. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users. Wikipedia have been informed of the outcome of this procedure and IWF Board's subsequent decision."

The IWF said that any further reported instances of the image which are hosted by ISPs outside Britain would not be blacklisted. But it reserved the right to reconsider other instances of the image hosted in the UK.

Wikipedia had sharply criticised the IWF decision which had the side-effect of leaving many British internet users unable to edit Wikipedia entries and affected the website's performance.

The IWF is funded by the European Union and the British online industry to gather reports of instances of child abuse pictures on the internet and issue 'take down alerts' to ISPs. Its blacklist is used on a voluntary basis by 95 per cent of British-based residential ISPs.

In its statement the IWF said that it still considered that the image was "potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978" in the UK. The image shows a naked girl, aged about 10, with a cracked glass effect covering her genitals.

The album cover, which was replaced in many countries after an outcry when it was released in 1976, has been under discussion on Wikipedia for many months and has been deleted and reinstated. The page was reported through the IWF's online reporting mechanism on 4 December and assessed to be potentially illegal and indecent.

The IWF said: "As such, in accordance with IWF procedures, the specific webpage was added to the IWF list. This list is provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to help protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to potentially illegal indecent images of children. 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."

The Wikimedia Foundation behind Wikipedia had protested that the IWF had gone too far. "The IWF didn't just block the image; it blocked access to the article itself, which discusses the image in a neutral, encyclopedic fashion," said Wikimedia Foundation head Sue Gardner from San Francisco.

"The IWF says its goal is to protect UK citizens, but I can't see how this action helps to achieve that - and meanwhile, it deprives UK internet users of the ability to access information which should be freely available to everyone. I urge the IWF to remove Wikipedia from its blacklist," she added.




Have your say

I'd like too know what qualifications these poeple have on being able too decide what is wrong and what is illeagal and what isn't to view?

Jack, Glasgow, Scotland

In the UK the internet is not policed half as much as other forms of audiovisual media and that's a good thing. Once in a while the IWF is bound to seem to extend interpretting its mandate, when protection of this sort of subject matter is exactly why it was set up.

karl Irani, London, United Kingdom

This episode still shows up worrying things. We have no way of knowing what else is on the block-list. We are not told by ISPs when stuff is blocked. IWFs vetting procedures are clearly flawed. How do we know that politically undesirable material is not also blocked?

Robert, Oxford,

It was not just the image they blocked: the whole Wikipedia page, which contained useful information about the image and the controversy surrounding it, was blocked. However, it was still available in Google's cache, so there for all to see anyway, despite the temporary censorship.

Alan Henness, Glasgow,

Internet censorship by the state - blocking, redirection, censorship. It only happens in China?

Yeh!

Willie Mac, Arden, Scotland

This is hardly a victory. By reversing their decision, the Internet Watch Foundation have admitted that the blocked image was not illegal, and that they are not up to the job of deciding what is, and is not, illegal. How many other bad calls have they made over the past ten years?

Walker, Keele, UK

Hoooray for common sense.,

Charlie , High Wycombe, UK

[Disco_Destroyer]

US trial of Dangerous Cartoons starts 2nd February

Permalink full story: Sexting...Sexting: Persecuting young people for what comes naturally
Based on article from news.gotgame.com
See also Comic Book Legal Defense Fund


Iowa man, Christopher Handley, faces a possible 20 year prison sentence when he goes to trial this week over his possession of supposedly obscene manga. Handley had received a package of manga that he’d ordered from Japan in May 2006. The Postal Inspector intercepted the package and deemed its contents to be objectionable.

Without knowing that his package had been searched, Handley was followed home by the police. He was then arrested and the authorities confiscated seven home computers, over 1,200 volumes of manga, hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, and laserdiscs. He’s been charged with violation of the Protection Act, which prohibits the possession of sexually obscene material, including material that depicts sexual acts with minors.

This story has also sent shivers down the spines of comic book publishers like Dark Horse, who is one of the top distributors of licensed manga in the United States. They may now be more hesitant to bring other foreign comics to North America for fear of being charged with illegal distribution themselves. Dark Horse’s manga editor, Carl Horn, recently discussed his views, emphasizing that if Christopher Handley loses this case, then we as a people will no longer hold the right to make decisions on quality for ourselves; someone else will make them for us.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization founded on protecting those in need against censorship, has signed on to provide Handley with legal support. Famed writer Neil Gaiman has also spoken out publicly in defense of Handley, as well as anyone else whose First Amendment rights are in danger.

The CBLDF recently offered prints signed by Time and Mad magazine artist, Peter Kuper in order to raise funds for the case, which begins February 2.

http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/inus.htm#Cartoon_Persecutors_4573

[dawnzky05]

I guess this is not the right way to persecute a person. It is very humiliating.









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