I'm sure many of you will already know that the IWF has added the URL of the Virgin Killer article on Wikipedia to their blacklist because it apparently contains "child pornography". This means that the 6 main ISPs in the UK have now restricted access to this article.

Most people will just shrug their shoulders and go on, as they weren't particularly inclined to read the article or would know it's a 30 year old Album cover from a German band already and generally don't care.

However because this particular article (yes not the image the text) is blocked the entire Wikipedia is now run through special servers (proxy servers) at your ISP so they are able to the block the content on the IWF list. This means that Wiki is no longer capable to detect who is actually visiting their site (as they get the IP from the server from the ISP). And although X_FORWARDED_FOR headers are sent these are easily enough spoofed.

This might all sound very technical but in effect it means that members of the UK's 6 main ISPs are no longer able to post or amend items on Wikipedia as Wiki has no way to verify the individual users any longer opening the site up to abusive postings.

The IWF says the following on the action: "As with all child sexual abuse reports received by our Hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council (page 109). The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, but hosted outside the UK"

The big question here is if the picture itself is illegal. If it not is should not be on the blacklist as if it's not illegal it's censorship. According the US law (where the servers are hosted) the picture is not illegal as it is considered to be art and not sexual. The IWF seems to be having a knee jerking reaction where nude child == sexual and has therefore put the entire article on it's blacklist!

The image is however widely available even on sites like Amazon and has been printed in books / magazines and has never been deemed to be illegal, but now 30 years after the fact the IWF apparently disagrees. So what's next? Banning articles on Michelangelo's statue of David (he was underage after all when he slew Goliath) or maybe Leonardo's painting of the Madonna and Child?

I can fully understand that people would prefer not to see such images however nobody is forcing you to click on anything and you can always use widely available blacklists to ban these things yourself. But blocking the content (the TEXT) and leaving the image unblocked (as if you know the link it's still available, even by providers that use the IWF blacklist) just seems stupid to me.

If it's illegal block it, if it's not don't. And if you don't like that it's not illegal, lobby to change the law. And as far as I'm aware we still live in a society where we are innocent until proven otherwise therefore "potentially illegal" is still legal. Until the time it is considered illegal it has no place on a blacklist which people have no choice to opt-in or out of.