Wikicensored
UK Wikipedia users are encountering the following notice when they 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 among the site’s administrators, this is because a transparent proxy has been enabled for customers of Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal. The effect is twofold: users cannot see content filtered by the proxies, and all user traffic passing through the proxies is given a single IP address per proxy – which means that anonymous users fall foul of Wikipedia’s anti-vandalism measures.
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.
The Melon Farmers have identified the 1970s LP is question as being Scorpion’s Virgin Killer.
“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.
1 comment Sunday 07 Dec 2008 | Paul | UK
[...] But it gets worse: “If they are not prepared to act responsibly, they should be compelled to do so.” When railing against piracy, ISPs are an easy target to go for – they are visible and there is only a limited number of them – but this doesn’t make them an appropriate target. And demanding that ISPs should somehow be obliged to become the unaccountable watchdogs of our online behaviour is both unreasonable and dangerous, as the Internet Watch Foundation has so recently demonstrated. [...]