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Archive for the ‘Wikipedia’ Category

Wikipedia falls foul of British censors over alleged child pornography

08.12.2008

British internet providers have blocked access to parts of Wikipedia after accusations that the site was carrying ‘potentially illegal’ images of child pornography.

Reports from users suggest that Virgin Media, O2’s Be internet service and others have blocked access to at least one Wikipedia article after it was placed on a blacklist by the Internet Watch Foundation, Britain’s de facto online watchdog.

The offending article, about German rock group The Scorpions’ 1976 album Virgin Killers, included an image of the record’s controversial cover – which featured a young naked girl with her genitals obscured by a crack in the camera lens.

The image caused controversy when the album was first released, and was eventually replaced in most countries – including the UK and United States – by a shot of the band. However, the original album cover is still on sale in the UK as part of a double album deluxe boxed set.

Instead of seeing the article itself, blocked users receive a fake message saying that the page could not be found.

In a statement, the IWF said that the organisation had received a report claiming the page was pornographic through its website, and that after a review the decision was made that the page was ‘potentially illegal’.

‘As with all child abuse reports received by our Hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council,’ it said.

‘The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18… and the specific URL was then added to the list.’

The page itself has been the subject of hot debate among Wikipedia editors, some of whom objected to its use. However, after discussion the website’s administrators determined that the original cover image would remain.

The IWF – a self-regulated body that effectively operates as Britain’s online watchdog – runs the blacklist, largely focusing on images of child abuse.

The censoring system which uses the blacklist, known as Cleanfeed, was first launched by BT in 2004, but is now used by most of Britain’s main internet providers.

However, the system has not been without its critics. In 2005 researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered that Cleanfeed could easily be reverse-engineered to reveal a full list of all the sites containing illegal content – turning it into what lead researcher Richard Clayton called ‘an oracle to efficiently locate illegal websites’.

The proposed implementation of a similar system in Australia, also called Cleanfeed, has caused consternation among civil rights campaigners. They are concerned that the scheme – which plans to blacklist any ‘inappropriate’ content, not just images of child abuse, and will be enforced for all Australian internet users – represents a dangerous limitation on freedom of speech.

Electronic Frontiers Australia, an online campaign group, has previously attacked the ‘creeping scope’ of the plans, calling it ‘unprecedented interference in our communications infrastructure’.

· additional reporting by Wendy Grossman

· Is the ban acceptable protection or unwarranted censorship? Have your say on our Technology blog

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Wikipedia child image censored: “Wikipedia users express their anger after a page showing a naked girl’s image is blocked by some UK internet providers.”

(Via BBC News.)

Spiegel Online: Taking the Crowd to Court: Wikipedia Shutdown Backfires: “Wikipedia Shutdown Backfires”

17 November, 2008

German parliamentarian Lutz Heilmann asked a court to shut down the German version of the popular Wikipedia Web site, drawing a fast and furious reaction from users. Heilmann — no stranger to controversy — has beaten a hasty retreat.

After being closed for two and a half days, Wikipedia’s German home page again became accessible to users on Monday. A court ordered the German URL for the user-generated encyclopedia blocked on Friday after a left-wing politician filed a legal complaint in Lübeck against the popular site.

(more…)

German Wikipedia Back Online After Controversial Shutdown – ReadWriteWeb

Written by Frederic Lardinois / November 17, 2008

After it had been unavailable in Germany for more than two days, the Wikipedia’s German portal is finally back online. The local German version of the Wikipedia had become unavailable after a member of the German parliament, Lutz Heilmann, pressed charges against the German Wikipedia because of defamatory statements in his biography on the site. Heilmann argued that the article was “false and slanderous.” A German judge then ordered the closure of the German portal for the Wikipedia, wikipedia.de.

The Wikipedia entry about Heilmann, who is no stranger to controversy, accused the politician of sending threatening text messages to his ex-partner and stated that Heilmann was about to lose his diplomatic immunity. There have indeed been rumors that Heilmann is under investigation by the German parliament because of these reports, though other statements in the article about the questionable status of his college degree and his involvement in an online pornography venture are rather questionable.
‘Unintentional’

heilmann_mugshot.jpgAfter assessing the damage he had done, Heilmann, according to a post on his own site, has now decided not to press any further charges against the non-profit organization behind the German Wikipedia project, though he might still press charges against the authors of the controversial statements in his Wikipedia entry. In this statement, Heilmann argues that he never intended for the whole site to be shut down because of this, but that he wasn’t able to stop the German bureaucracy from taking its course during the weekend because of a legal error in his request to have the ban overturned.
Streisand Effect

Of course, the whole affair spectacularly backfired on Heilmann and turned out to be a boon for the German Wikipedia, which collected donations worth over 32,000 Euros during the weekend. The controversial article about Heilman was read over half a million times since last Friday.

(more…)

Local Wikipedia Blocked by German MP – OhmyNews International

Left-wing politician obtains injunction in light of Web pages on his Stasi past
Published 2008-11-16 11:14 (KST) Reported by Hartmut Kaiser

[See further the English entry for Lutz Heilmann through Wikipedia]

Wikipedia is very popular in Germany. With some 825,000 articles, it is the second biggest edition after the English version. However, this weekend started with a shock for all German Wikipedia lovers.

Those who typed in www.wikipedia.de were redirected to a Web site which read:

“The county court of Luebeck (North Germany) has issued an order in the name of Lutz Heilmann, Member of Parliament (left party/post-communist) that the German Wikipedia (Wikimedia e.V.) must not allow linking its domain wikipedia.de to the Web site wikipedia.org, as long as the German language version of wikipedia.org makes certain statements.”

The county court of Luebeck has announced that wikipedia.de will be inaccessible for about four weeks.

The controversial statements include Heilmann’s past as a member of the infamous East German Secret Service — the Stasi — and allegations that he has threatened an ex-boyfriend.

The irony is that the servers of wikipedia.org , in all of its many language versions, including German, are hosted in Florida under United States law. The constitution of the US grants freedom of speech. The controversial article is still accessible to anybody who wants to see it, and has received many more clicks due to the publicity that the decision of the court of Luebeck has caused.

Clearly, these days attempts trying to hold back information from the Internet community by taking legal action seems to backfire.

Part of Heilmann’s legal studies were conducted at the Luebeck court, so some bloggers speculate that those judges wanted to do him a favour. Heilmann could have tried to solve his case the “Wikipedia way” by appealing to Wikipedia admins or by starting an edit war.

He chose another way: legal action.

This is not the first time that the post-communist “left party” has used lawyers to try to pull Wikipedia off the Internet.

Katina Schubert, vice-president of the left party filed a complaint against Wikipedia because she felt offended by the display of swastikas in Wikipedia articles dealing with the Third Reich.

It is ironic that the Web site of the left party www.sozialisten.de showed Neo-Nazi skinheads with swastikas. The left party had better cleaned up their own Web site before complaining about Wikipedia.

Extremism on all sides (communist, post-communist, skinheads and neo-nazi) has become very popular in Germany recently, due to economic problems (see my 2006 OhmyNews article Fading Fortunes Gives Rise to German Extremism).

The future will show which forces will prevail in Germany, the power of the Internet to give free and abundant access to information or the attempts of extremist politicians to attack the freedom of speech.

Personally, I am quite optimistic. As the saying goes, “Three things cannot hide for long: The sun, the moon and the truth.”

Court rules Wikipedia not authoritative: “

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Wednesday 3 September 2008. 15:13:00

You don’t say

A US APPEALS COURT has ruled that Wikipedia entries, which anyone might edit, are not authoritative sources of information suitable for federal judges to base their decisions upon. In particular, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided last Friday that the Department of Homeland Security should not rely upon…

(Via The Inquirer.)

Syria Blocks the Arabic Wikipedia:

According to anasonline blog, access to Wikipedia Arabic, the Arabic language version of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is now blocked by all ISPs in Syria.

(Via Global Voices Advocacy.)