Scott
8th December 2008, 01:42 PM
Interesting Read.
Ethical Issues
ISP issue: Users of several ISPs are receiving fake 404 or 403 errors when visiting the article. The first rule of thumb for tolerated censorship should be that people are made aware of when they are being censored.
IWF issue: Albums bearing the image are currently on sale in the UK and have been for many years. The image is readily available on the internet (http://images.google.com/images?&q=virgin+killer) for everyone. This clearly did not factor into the decision of the IWF. They say they act only on the individual reports they receive. This case shows how shortsighted such an approach can be.
IWF issue: The IWF blocked the text of the article that includes the image. This is an encyclopedia text that discusses amongst other things, the controversy surrounding this image, which puts the image into context in an academic way and educates the readers.
IWF issue: The image is likely not child pornography. No one has ever been sued over the image as far as is known, with it being for sale for over 30 years. The FBI has even investigated this album cover in spring 2008 and flatly declined to take action on it.
IWF issue: The IWF blocked access to a page on one of the world's most-visited websites without informing its owners. We understand that their policy is not to contact any of the hosts they block, but common sense should have told them that blocking such a website might have some unforeseen consequences.
IWF issue: It is well-documented that actions such as the IWF's frequently have the opposite effect to that intended, something known as the Streisand effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect). The visitor statistics (http://stats.grok.se/en/200812/Virgin%20Killer) of the Virgin Killer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer) article show that even with the block in effect, the page received 200 times as much traffic as usual in one day.
Scorpions issue: Most Wikipedia editors think that the image, to put it mildly, is not really making their individual "Top 10 of tasteful images".
Wikipedia community: Though the official stance is that we do not censor unless something is illegal in the US, the community itself does often censor itself, when its editors think the image is over the top, or simply not required in the context of an article. Some editors feel that the image has no place here. Though the image has (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_November_17#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) been (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_November_27#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) discussed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2008_May_8#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Virgin_Killer) length (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2008_December_6#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) even before the UK censoring, so far there is no consensus among the community to remove the image.
Wikipedia community: Questions have been raised as to why Wikipedia is putting so much effort into this censorship case, compared to Chinese, Iran and Syrian censorship cases. The reason is that our influence in the UK is much greater. If we cannot deal with these kinds of problems in the UK, then we will definitely not succeed in China.Technical
ISP issue: Several ISPs seemed to be unprepared for the amount of traffic that Wikipedia generates. Their filters act slow and sometimes simply error out on the load.
ISP issue: Several ISPs are using proxies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/2008_IWF_action#IP_addresses_of_the_proxies) that route all Wikimedia traffic through a single IP address. This makes it much more difficult for Wikipedia to administer the website, because thousands of users are all sharing the same identifier. Because of this and a small number of vandals amongst the thousands, these IP addresses are blocked from editing anonymously. This harms both the project itself and UK users' experience of it.
ISP issue: At least some of the proxying ISPs (TalkTalk, Virgin Media/Tesco, Be/O2/Telefonica) do not add X-Forwarded-For headers to their HTTP requests. This effectively anonymizes all the remaining requests to Wikipedia, making it more difficult to handle any other case of illegal activity from an anonymous contributor behind the proxy.
IWF issue: The IWFs decision has been carried out very ineffectively. Two URLs—the article and the description page of the image—were blocked. This unnecessarily censored the text of the article and the image's description page while leaving the image itself easily accessible by varying the URL slightly or using a direct link to Wikimedia's image server, upload.wikimedia.org. The IWFs actions have thus greatly inconvenienced thousands of contributors who have never even heard of Virgin Killer, while doing nothing to prevent anyone wishing to view the image for whatever reason from doing so. A more appropriate course of action would have been to block the image file itself, and the directory in which generated thumbnails reside, rather than two pages that happen to contain it. Had the IWF contacted the Wikimedia Foundation before acting, this could have been explained to them.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Martin_Niemoeller.jpg/350px-Martin_Niemoeller.jpg
Ethical Issues
ISP issue: Users of several ISPs are receiving fake 404 or 403 errors when visiting the article. The first rule of thumb for tolerated censorship should be that people are made aware of when they are being censored.
IWF issue: Albums bearing the image are currently on sale in the UK and have been for many years. The image is readily available on the internet (http://images.google.com/images?&q=virgin+killer) for everyone. This clearly did not factor into the decision of the IWF. They say they act only on the individual reports they receive. This case shows how shortsighted such an approach can be.
IWF issue: The IWF blocked the text of the article that includes the image. This is an encyclopedia text that discusses amongst other things, the controversy surrounding this image, which puts the image into context in an academic way and educates the readers.
IWF issue: The image is likely not child pornography. No one has ever been sued over the image as far as is known, with it being for sale for over 30 years. The FBI has even investigated this album cover in spring 2008 and flatly declined to take action on it.
IWF issue: The IWF blocked access to a page on one of the world's most-visited websites without informing its owners. We understand that their policy is not to contact any of the hosts they block, but common sense should have told them that blocking such a website might have some unforeseen consequences.
IWF issue: It is well-documented that actions such as the IWF's frequently have the opposite effect to that intended, something known as the Streisand effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect). The visitor statistics (http://stats.grok.se/en/200812/Virgin%20Killer) of the Virgin Killer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer) article show that even with the block in effect, the page received 200 times as much traffic as usual in one day.
Scorpions issue: Most Wikipedia editors think that the image, to put it mildly, is not really making their individual "Top 10 of tasteful images".
Wikipedia community: Though the official stance is that we do not censor unless something is illegal in the US, the community itself does often censor itself, when its editors think the image is over the top, or simply not required in the context of an article. Some editors feel that the image has no place here. Though the image has (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_November_17#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) been (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_November_27#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) discussed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2008_May_8#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Virgin_Killer) length (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2008_December_6#Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg) even before the UK censoring, so far there is no consensus among the community to remove the image.
Wikipedia community: Questions have been raised as to why Wikipedia is putting so much effort into this censorship case, compared to Chinese, Iran and Syrian censorship cases. The reason is that our influence in the UK is much greater. If we cannot deal with these kinds of problems in the UK, then we will definitely not succeed in China.Technical
ISP issue: Several ISPs seemed to be unprepared for the amount of traffic that Wikipedia generates. Their filters act slow and sometimes simply error out on the load.
ISP issue: Several ISPs are using proxies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/2008_IWF_action#IP_addresses_of_the_proxies) that route all Wikimedia traffic through a single IP address. This makes it much more difficult for Wikipedia to administer the website, because thousands of users are all sharing the same identifier. Because of this and a small number of vandals amongst the thousands, these IP addresses are blocked from editing anonymously. This harms both the project itself and UK users' experience of it.
ISP issue: At least some of the proxying ISPs (TalkTalk, Virgin Media/Tesco, Be/O2/Telefonica) do not add X-Forwarded-For headers to their HTTP requests. This effectively anonymizes all the remaining requests to Wikipedia, making it more difficult to handle any other case of illegal activity from an anonymous contributor behind the proxy.
IWF issue: The IWFs decision has been carried out very ineffectively. Two URLs—the article and the description page of the image—were blocked. This unnecessarily censored the text of the article and the image's description page while leaving the image itself easily accessible by varying the URL slightly or using a direct link to Wikimedia's image server, upload.wikimedia.org. The IWFs actions have thus greatly inconvenienced thousands of contributors who have never even heard of Virgin Killer, while doing nothing to prevent anyone wishing to view the image for whatever reason from doing so. A more appropriate course of action would have been to block the image file itself, and the directory in which generated thumbnails reside, rather than two pages that happen to contain it. Had the IWF contacted the Wikimedia Foundation before acting, this could have been explained to them.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Martin_Niemoeller.jpg/350px-Martin_Niemoeller.jpg