Censorship online

[andygates]

The "wikipedia censorship" flap is over.  The IWG reversed their decision, saying, "Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question 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." (full statement here, including acknowledgment of the Streissand Effect)

This is right and proper, and happened in good time. 

But only one of the filtering ISPs - Demon - told users that they were being filtered and pointed users to the IWF's site.  The others gave a fake 404 error page.  This is really the nub of it: if we're to have filters, we need to know what they are and who runs them.  We need to know that there is an appeals procedure and it needs to work in a timely fashion. 

Wikipedia is an edge case, a high-profile and marginal decision.  It's by no means the only error by "decency" filters - I know of swimwear categorized as smut and kids' swimwear categorized as kiddy smut, and away from smut, political sites were being put on blacklists by their political opponents during the recent US election campaign.  You've got to know who's doing the filtering and it has to be quickly and easily reversible when it is wrong.

Ultimately, filters are broken.  John Gilmore, one of the great beardy gurus of the internet, described it most succinctly: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."  On a human level, "oh that page is broken, I'll google for another."  On a technical level, proxies and tunnels and encryption and innovation - just ask Chinese nerds. 

Comments

[despaer.livejournal.com]

I remember that album cover. It used to come up at the top of Kerrang's worst covers lists every time without fail. I have to say that although censoring it is a little futile as it has been knocking round since the 70s (or 80s at least - I forget when Scorpions released 'Virgin Killers' for that be the name), it should not, by today's standards, be deemed acceptable. Therefore there is a good case to filter it, although I agree that the body deciding on such should be open to public scrutiny.

We have a democracy, and we can therefore, as a society, decide on what we find acceptable. This will correctly change over time, hence why racism and homophobia are now not on, but I would be ever so surprised if that image, or others like it, were ever deemed acceptable to our society as a whole.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The image is sleazy and cheesy, but was produced when it was legal to do so and is so widely distributed that it's a cultural artifact now: one may as well try to ban an image of the Manikin Pis.

The same image would not be legal to take now; mind you, nor would Samantha Fox's first photoshoot (Sun, Page 3, aged 16).

I think the problem was that the image was considered outside that context.