The Great Firewall of China the UK?

Once again the Internet throws a spanner in the works for 20th century, nation-based legal frameworks.

UK ISPs Filtering Access to Wikipedia
ZDNet is reporting that six British ISPs are filtering access to Wikipedia as a result of the site being added to the Internet Watch Foundation after accusations that it is hosting what some consider child pornography.

The filtered content involves the controversial 1970s record album cover from the German band Scorpions that features a naked prepubescent girl. The album, Virgin Killer, was banned in many countries when it was released until a replacement cover was created.

Unfortunately the filter has some side-effects. Besides not being able to see filtered content, all user traffic is given a single IP address per proxy. Since Wikipedia blocks vandals by IP address, if one person is blocked, everyone on that ISP is blocked. If one person on each of the six ISP’s are blocked, everyone in Britain (except those using BT apparently) will be unable to contribute to Wikipedia. Users are getting the following message when attempting to edit:

“Wikipedia has been added to a Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well.”

Registered users are still able to edit.

Censorship laws are always tricky and usually end up restricting all sorts of benign activity. The universality of the Internet and its refusal to comply with the boundaries and laws of sovereign states only compounds the problem. I think the spectacular utility of the Internet should trump all prudish laws of censorship.

Related: Map of Internet censorship from The Atlantic.