On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
No-one knew about the IWF before this. Once people knew, they despised them and their existence.
You go too far. We censor actual child pornography out of Wikipedia too. There are limits and someone enforces them.
I agree with Fred. Not many had heard of the IWF before this except for the people who go looking for child pornography; probably one of the bad effects of their attempt to target Wikipedia is that if they were tracing UK internet users trying to look at blocked child pornography, the list has been swamped by the vast number of users who were just looking in to see if Wikipedia really was censored.
It may also have highlighted which UK ISPs don't act on IWF warnings, and in effect advertised them to people who are looking for an ISP which will allow them to view illegal material. It's done them severe damage on their public relations. The fact that an IWF mistake led to a brief struggle with them should not make us their enemy.