Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Internet Watch Foundation has now removed its block on the Wikipedia page for The Scorpions album Virgin Killer, but the episode has provided an interesting insight into the ways in which access to the internet can be controlled.
The Register reports:
The IWF received a complaint about the image earlier this month, and after deciding it may violate the law, the British net censor added Wikipedia to a blacklist designed to protect the customers of ISPs and other companies "from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child."
In order to block the image, six ISPs - Virgin Media, Be Unlimited/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon, and Opal - began routing all Wikipedia traffic through a small number of transparent proxy servers. In some cases, the ISPs also blocked the entire Wikipedia article - not just the image.
Cory Doctorow highlights one implication of this process: "a third party now monitors every request made to Wikipedia from the six ISPs that participate in the Great Firewall of Britain."
