Internet censorship in the UK

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British ISPs filtering Wikipedia
Posted by Rupert Goodwins

Internet service providers in the U.K. have begun filtering access to Wikipedia after the site was added to the Internet Watch Foundation's blacklist.

The following notice appeared on Wikipedia on Saturday when many UK users attempted 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 deemed to meet the Internet Watch Foundation's criteria 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 wrote to the noticeboard


http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-101165 ... 7-1_3-0-20

That is very worrying.
.

This is me being dismayed, yet unsurprised. I think an old joke about England can now safely be updated: "The UK time difference is so difficult to adjust to, when it's 9:00 in New York it's still 1984 in London".

Although i hate censorship, i don't think this rises to the level of any concern. Wikipedia simply has an imperfect method of preventing vandalism.

On "start the week" on radio 4 this morning they were discussing the ban of the Scorpians album cover which had a pic of a naked child on it from wiki. It is stiill available on amazon.

They said they were deeming it as child porn (not their words), it seems to mean that there can no longer be pictures of naked children anywhere without them being seen as pornography.

Personally I think censoring childrens pics in this way actually sexualises children as it is robbing them of their beauty and charm and making them be dirty and sexual.

The watch folk who do the censoring said that they also had a prob with nirvana and other albums with bare kids on them.

Or the aptly named 1984 by Van Halen (the one with the baby smoking a cigarette on). Naked babies weren't a taboo until they were censored, so what's the problem?

The record in question is Virgin Killer by the Scorpions


Cry like you feel,
Try like you feel, feel it ...!
Try to escape,
Cry to escape, escape it ...!
It's so hard to run away
He's a virgin killer ...

No, no, no, can't you see?
No, no, no, can't you see?
You're a demon's, you're a demon's,
You're a demon's desire!

Death on the screen,
Sadistic magazines, watch out
Suicides ev'ryday,
Political ways, get it
Well, you can't find new ways ...
But he's a virgin killer ...

No, no, no, can't you see?
No, no, no, can't you see?
You're a demon's, you're a demon's,
You're a demon's desire!

Garbage in the streams,
A-bombs in your dreams, look out
Sharks in the pictures,
Exorcist prescriptions, forget it
Try to get away from that,
Cos he's a virgin killer ...

No, no, no, can't you see?
No, no, no, can't you see?
You're a demon's, you're a demon's,
You're a demon's desire!

The picture contain a naked clearly pre-pubescent girl, there is a sort of glass crack jut intersecting her privates.

The image is reachable in the UK or at least my ISP. But I can see how they would classify it as child porn. It is not just a naked girl, it is sexualised. I guess the question is about intent. If it factual information her is a good argument not to censor it. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I mean are they going to have uncensored picture of sex between an adult and a child? These sites get blocked all the time, the US does it, stop trying to make out like it is just the UK, many paedophiles don’t use public networks anyway. Maybe they shouldn't be any blocking, but they should continue to gather intelligence about past and ongoing crimes. Young children shouldn't be surfing the web unsupervised anyway. I don't think that picture is going to make people into paedophiles. They either find is sexually arousing or not.

The song vaguely reminds me of the exorcist.

Its worst than that Skafather

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... abase.html

As usual its in order to tackle terrorism, (how so very fortunate for our coming dictatorship that some "Arabs" did 911 and 7/7 eh? ), they dont have to read every e-mail you write, just have a programme that picks up certain words, then its off to the camps for you.

Stalin would have loved something like this.

Still, if you will vote Labour!
or Conservative,
probably Liberal as well, dont come crying to me.

Time to vote BNP, perhaps?

No, Iam friends with too many Black people.

To be honest, I dont belive in Party politics, Parties get funding by big business, banking families etc.
When said party is in power, the whips insure every member votes the way those banking controls want the party to vote, (if they want to get in again next time they had better).
This means with party politics, that the voter is never represented exept on insignificant things like the closure of your local hospital.
Best thing is for all MPs to be independant, then maybe they will actually represent the people who voted for them.

Or I might vote Independant Party, they are against the New World Order

I'm not exactly enamoured with it, Nambo. I share your concern regarding that link you had in your previous post. I never thought I'd be in a situation where my communications were routinely monitored by the state, yet now I assume everything is. I think it's more realistic to attempt to change where we're going with the police state, than change the overall political system, though. But even that seems almost impossible at present.

Appears the ban was lifted a while back anyway: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... ban-lifted

lotusblossom, someone actually objected to young Spencer's state of undress back when Nevermind came out. I think Kurt had the right response to that on when he said the best move would be to plaster big yellow stickers over the baby's pee-pee saying 'If this offends you, you must be a pedophile'.

Seriously, though. We are really, really paranoid about this kind of thing in the UK now. A warning to anyone visiting: If you are taking photos of anything in public, be ultra careful that you wait until any mothers with children are safely out of view. Some mothers have been known to assume that anyone with a camera is a pedophile taking pictures of their little darlings, and innocent people have actually been arrested and their homes searched. Here's a summary of the law:
http://www.urban75.org/photos/photograp ... e-law.html
(It's bad enough that many photographers, including my husband, now carry little cards - one of the photo magazines gave them out - that summarize the law for anyone who asks.)
The danger is that a lot of our so-called 'community police' are less interested in the law and more interested in 'arresting' people (which, if ever approached by one, you should bear in mind they actually can't do, they have to find a 'proper' cop to do it) to fulfil quotas. We sorely need an equivalent of ACLU over this side the pond...

LOL! You do remember their response to their membership list being leaked right?

Be more specific, please, Kangoogle.

*cough* *cough*
http://www.bnpmemberslist.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/19/bnp-list

Well, the main objection I remember reading when this was going on was the fact that despite ample opportunity no government had actually declared this image illegal. I'm also not sure how much "Orwellian Nightmare" you can cry though; aren't the IWF as well as the ISPs who are voluntarily blocking the stuff private organizations?