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Plusnet blocking Wikipedia

MD1500
Newbie
Posts: 3
Registered: ‎08-12-2008

Plusnet blocking Wikipedia

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/07/brit_isps_censor_wikipedia/
According to the above article, PlusNet is one of six UK ISPs blocking access to a Wikipedia page about The Scorpions album "Virgin Killer", because the Internet Watch Foundation claims that the cover contains "potentially illegal" child porn.
This concerns me. While I understand the need for sites hosting sick paedophile material to be blacklisted, I hope most people can see that the posed cover of a 30-year old album still freely available on the shelves of HMV doesn't fit the definition.
To cap it all, the image is still easily accessible on other sites like Amazon, Play.com, and basically anywhere that sells the album, not to mention Google Image Search.
The fact that this was done in such an underhand way by the ISPs (faking a 404 error) also worries me. if it wasn't for Wikipedia spotting it, we'd be none the wiser. It makes me wonder what other sites will be censored in the future, as let's face it, "potentially illegal" can cover anything.
There's a lot of UK Internet customers unhappy about this issue. Could you please clarify your position?
3 REPLIES 3
community
Grafter
Posts: 666
Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: Plusnet blocking Wikipedia

Your comments make a lot of sense to me.
I agree with your concerns
Mark
Grafter
Posts: 1,852
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet blocking Wikipedia

Hi there.
A thread is currently running here discussing this issue and we have commented there.
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,71553.0.html
Rather than duplicating the discussion and covering the points in two seperate places, can I suggest keeping the discussion, which we welcome, to the original thread?
zubel
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,793
Thanks: 4
Registered: ‎08-06-2007

Re: Plusnet blocking Wikipedia

Moderators Note
Locking in favour of the current running thread, as linked by Mark.
B.