Wikipedia blacklisted for child porn

Editors fight to keep illegal image online.

The British Government-backed Internet Watch Foundation has blacklisted Wikipedia for distributing child porn.

As a result of the move almost every internet user in Britain has been blocked from contributing to the site anonymously.

The problem was an article on the 1976 album Virgin Killer by German heavy metal band Scorpions. The popular beat combo had an album cover that featured a naked young girl with her genitals obscured by a simulated tear in the photograph.

While that might have been considered acceptable in the 1970s - the generation that spawned Gary Glitter - we are all a bit more sensitive to such things these days.

The image was shown to the UK's kiddy porn police who said it broke UK law and wanted to go and arrest this Scorpion bloke immediately. Britain's six main internet service providers blocked their users from accessing the article after hearing of the ruling.

But the web proxy systems used to block the page have the effect that Wikipedia sees everyone behind the proxy as having the same IP address.

It means that if the Wiki editors ban someone they don't like, the whole ISP will be banned too. It will only take six bans and nearly everyone in the UK will be unable to edit articles on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia administrators have emphatically refused to remove the album cover on the site, saying that they do not censor articles.

This also comes on the tale of a local Australian judge deciding that images of Bart and Lisa Simpson engaged in sexual acts is also child porn. Sure, it's in bad taste, but child porn? That might be too long a bow to pull.