As we have reported in British censor reverses Wikipedia ban, the Internet Watch Foundation has reversed its decision to blacklist a Wikipedia page that includes an image of a 32-year-old album cover by a German rock group, The Scorpions. The ban attracted widespread derision after it was publicised this weekend, and the strength of feeling is evident in comments to a Technology blog post below.
In a statement, the IWF claims the image, which shows a naked girl, "is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) 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."
The IWF also admits the extremely obvious: that in this case, it scored an own goal:
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.
Considering the same album cover image is widely available on Amazon and Google, is reproduced in numerous books (and almost certainly in the British Library etc) and has been sold in high street shops for decades, the decision to try to ban one Wikipedia page was either ignorant or stupid. It's absurd to try to ban a single example of an image when there are millions of copies in everyday circulation.
The more immediate problem is that millions of people now know that the IWF has been, in effect, censoring the public's internet without the general public's knowledge, supervision or consent -- though no doubt this has been well intentioned and for the public good.
The question now is whether the IWF can expect to receive more scrutiny in future, or whether the whole furore will quickly be forgotten. What do you reckon?
