http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone despises them. They aren't standing up too well under scrutiny. So I suspect they'll quietly unblock Wikipedia and not block again without at least telling us first. The censorship mechanism will stay in place - the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary" scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
- d.
2008/12/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
Well, it's probably the first decision of theirs anyone has ever noticed.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone despises them. They aren't standing up too well under scrutiny. So I suspect they'll quietly unblock Wikipedia and not block again without at least telling us first.
I agree.
The censorship mechanism will stay in place
- the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary"
scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
And I support that - blocking child porn on the internet is a good thing. What I'd like to see is a little more oversight in the system and them notifying blockees (they'll probably say they can't do that because the child porn people would then know to move their site, and there is a point there, but I don't see a workable alternative - they'll just have to work harder to find out where they've moved to).
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
In that case, the pressure will move to the ISPs, and the ISPs don't have the advantage the IWF has due to being a "Won't somebody think of the children?!" charity. People will be reluctant to criticise such a charity, but no-one has any qualms about criticising ISPs.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
And I support that - blocking child porn on the internet is a good thing. What I'd like to see is a little more oversight in the system and them notifying blockees (they'll probably say they can't do that because the child porn people would then know to move their site, and there is a point there, but I don't see a workable alternative - they'll just have to work harder to find out where they've moved to).
Well, everyone agrees that child porn is evil and should be combated (well, not everyone, but those who don't are fucked up), but their method is a spectacularly bad way of doing it. It's good that because of the wikipedia block there's a debate about the IWF.
--Oskar
2008/12/9 Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
And I support that - blocking child porn on the internet is a good thing. What I'd like to see is a little more oversight in the system and them notifying blockees (they'll probably say they can't do that because the child porn people would then know to move their site, and there is a point there, but I don't see a workable alternative - they'll just have to work harder to find out where they've moved to).
Well, everyone agrees that child porn is evil and should be combated (well, not everyone, but those who don't are fucked up), but their method is a spectacularly bad way of doing it. It's good that because of the wikipedia block there's a debate about the IWF.
Oh, sure, there are massive technical problems with their way of blocking, but that's a separate issue to the one of censorship. Censoring an encyclopaedia article is wrong regardless of how you do it.
2008/12/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
Not unexpected. The few cases we know who've previously been targeted have other bigger concerns (rapidshare with about 20 different legal issues and 4chan is well 4chan) or are not going to make a fuss because they know the IWF is right.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone despises them. They aren't standing up too well under scrutiny. So I suspect they'll quietly unblock Wikipedia and not block again without at least telling us first.
If that was the case they would have pulled the block at noon.
The censorship mechanism will stay in place
- the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary"
scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
Not all ISPs have signed up. While I feel that the IWF's aims could be better archived through more international police cooperation their overall aims are something most people would support.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
That effectively gives people a weapon to mess up the traffic to any site they feel like messing with (the image is on imageshack, it wasn't on youtube last I looked but would not be hard to get it on there myspace and facebook would not present major problems) really any site that allows user uploads is a potential target.
2008/12/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
The censorship mechanism will stay in place
- the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary"
scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
Not all ISPs have signed up.
Virtually all ISPs (in terms of market share, at least) have signed up to it; however, not all have *implemented* all of the recommended blocks - see for example that BT took 24 hours longer to institute the Wikipedia block, and Tiscali (as far as I'm aware) still haven't, but both of them are listed as members.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
That effectively gives people a weapon to mess up the traffic to any site they feel like messing with (the image is on imageshack, it wasn't on youtube last I looked but would not be hard to get it on there myspace and facebook would not present major problems) really any site that allows user uploads is a potential target.
Bear in mind that for most sites which allow user upload... well, their system would work quite well. URL blacklisted, disappears from view; the rest of the site is unaffected. Even were someone to spam youtube with abusive videos, they could be filtered without any significant adverse effects once reported. Not many sites deal with IPs of their visitors quite the way we do...
2008/12/9 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
Bear in mind that for most sites which allow user upload... well, their system would work quite well. URL blacklisted, disappears from view; the rest of the site is unaffected. Even were someone to spam youtube with abusive videos, they could be filtered without any significant adverse effects once reported. Not many sites deal with IPs of their visitors quite the way we do...
1) Their system was dropping connections under a wikipedia loads. Hitting them with youtube as well would cause issues.
2)while most sites don't use IPs to the extent we do most of them like having them available as a factor to work with and taking that away would annoy them
3)Depending on who is operating the proxies in question privacy issues start kicking in.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:53 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
No shock: Their blocking is conducted in secret.
While I can accept most of the blocking is probably russian kiddy-porn hosts, I do not see any reason why we should assume that we are the first questionable block.
It's just that with the fake error messages they managed to mostly keep people from finding out about them. You can't demand review if you don't know you're being blocked. The few that know realize the IWF is right in these cases, or simply don't give a darn about a UK audience.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone
[snip]
Even the expected Wikipedia haters have had had articles along the lines of "this case is stupid, but Wikipedia is bad anyways". The press is as good as we could have hoped for, I think.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
I doubt it. It wouldn't be good for their mission: Most things they block will probably never fight back even if they knew of the block, and most won't ever know. Unblocking us presents little danger in setting a precedent against the IWF's interests, unless there are immediate plans for the IWF become much more expansive in what they block. As it stands this battle endangers their core mission. They would be wise to back off.
2008/12/9 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
I doubt it. It wouldn't be good for their mission: Most things they block will probably never fight back even if they knew of the block, and most won't ever know. Unblocking us presents little danger in setting a precedent against the IWF's interests, unless there are immediate plans for the IWF become much more expansive in what they block. As it stands this battle endangers their core mission. They would be wise to back off.
Their core mission is to prevent their role being taken over by a government body. Back down in this case and there is a risk it will be used against them. The overrun could be due to unfamiliarity with the appeal procedures (which at best have only previously existed on paper). More worryingly it could be that they are currently stuck between the problems that kick in if they don't pull the block and the police not shifting their advice.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 12:42 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/9 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
I doubt it. It wouldn't be good for their mission: Most things they block will probably never fight back even if they knew of the block, and most won't ever know. Unblocking us presents little danger in setting a precedent against the IWF's interests, unless there are immediate plans for the IWF become much more expansive in what they block. As it stands this battle endangers their core mission. They would be wise to back off.
Their core mission is to prevent their role being taken over by a government body. Back down in this case and there is a risk it will be used against them.
Not when the public sentiment appears to be against what they are doing.
Gregory Maxwell wote:
I doubt it. It wouldn't be good for their mission: Most things they block
will probably never
fight back even if they knew of the block, and most won't ever know.
Unblocking us presents
little danger in setting a precedent against the IWF's interests, unless
there are immediate
plans for the IWF become much more expansive in what they block. As it
stands this battle
endangers their core mission. They would be wise to back off.
The IWF have been identified by the UK Government to provide similar services around the new "extreme pornography law", due to come in to force January next year.
2008/12/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone despises them. They aren't standing up too well under scrutiny. So I suspect they'll quietly unblock Wikipedia and not block again without at least telling us first. The censorship mechanism will stay in place
- the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary"
scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
Something I don't understand about this affair: BT set up Cleanfeed, the "ISP level content filtering system" that caused this problem. Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block?
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Something I don't understand about this affair: BT set up Cleanfeed, the "ISP level content filtering system" that caused this problem. Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block?
They were, just two days later than everyone else.
It's moot now: http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:53 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It's moot now: http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm
"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. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.
IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users. Wikipedia have been informed of the outcome of this procedure and IWF Board's subsequent decision."
Excellent.
2008/12/9 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
Something I don't understand about this affair: BT set up Cleanfeed, the "ISP level content filtering system" that caused this problem. Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block?
My understanding is that they were reported as being blocked, yesterday, but for some unknown reason it took a lot longer for BT to put the block in place.
"Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block? - We are!
Giano
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
This is apparently the *first* IWF decision *ever* to require review.
My prediction: they've been turned to mincemeat every media interview they've done on the subject, we've looked like stars. Everyone despises them. They aren't standing up too well under scrutiny. So I suspect they'll quietly unblock Wikipedia and not block again without at least telling us first. The censorship mechanism will stay in place
- the ISPs feel they aren't free not to sign up to this "voluntary"
scheme - and probably be refined to see if they can block sites like us again without breaking everything as they did this time.
It is possible the IWF will try to make the decision stand. In which case, party on.
Something I don't understand about this affair: BT set up Cleanfeed, the "ISP level content filtering system" that caused this problem. Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block?
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2008/12/9 Giacomo M-Z solebaciato@googlemail.com:
"Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block? - We are!
It appears BT didn't switch on the filtering of Wikipedia for a day or so. Presumably they specifically exempted Wikipedia. But, who knows?
- d.
2008/12/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/12/9 Giacomo M-Z solebaciato@googlemail.com:
"Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block? - We are!
It appears BT didn't switch on the filtering of Wikipedia for a day or so. Presumably they specifically exempted Wikipedia. But, who knows?
Tiscali stayed out throughout. It'd be interesting to know how these decisions were made, but...
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 3:43 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/9 Giacomo M-Z solebaciato@googlemail.com:
"Why haven't BT subscribers been subject to the block? - We are!
It appears BT didn't switch on the filtering of Wikipedia for a day or so. Presumably they specifically exempted Wikipedia. But, who knows?
Eh, nah, lots of other reasons seem more likely to me:
(*) They only process list updates once in a while (*) The automatic update process got wedged (*) The route injection may have been a manual process (*) Perhaps they blocked it briefly but the traffic overloaded their filters so they turned it off until they could resolve the problem. (*) It's not like customers typically report that they aren't subject to censorship, it may have been broken for months without notice.
I think all of these are simpler and more likely than a special exemption.
My understanding is that the ISPs agreement requires them to not look and to block all. This makes sense if you consider that the ISPs are probably concerned about avoiding any legal liability for their blocking / failure to block.
::Shrugs::
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:53 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
In other news, their German counterpart now considers declaring the image as child pronography (or similar): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Indizierung-des-Scorpions-Albumcovers-Virgin-... (in German)
Stay tuned for our next eposide of "Attack of the Good People (TM)"...
Magnus
Out of interest given the IWF is not really official, has clearly messed up in a public way and only covers 95% percent of the ISP providers I am a bit surprised that the other 5% are not making more noise?
BozMo
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:53 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/09/wikipedia-censorship-iwf-re...
In other news, their German counterpart now considers declaring the image as child pronography (or similar): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Indizierung-des-Scorpions-Albumcovers-Virgin-... (in German)
Stay tuned for our next eposide of "Attack of the Good People (TM)"...
Magnus
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2008/12/9 Andrew Cates Andrew@soschildren.org:
Out of interest given the IWF is not really official, has clearly messed up in a public way and only covers 95% percent of the ISP providers I am a bit surprised that the other 5% are not making more noise?
BozMo
Likely because for the most part they are either specialist business operators or universities through JANET.
Well that and this was a case no one wanted to get involved in if they could possibly avoid it due to the risk of getting caught up in a moral panic.
2008/12/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/9 Andrew Cates Andrew@soschildren.org:
Out of interest given the IWF is not really official, has clearly messed up in a public way and only covers 95% percent of the ISP providers I am a bit surprised that the other 5% are not making more noise?
Likely because for the most part they are either specialist business operators or universities through JANET.
A&A expressly operate a no-censorship policy. (Site is http://www.aaisp.com/ , I couldn't quickly find the policy, but they're a geek-run ISP with a fantastic reputation and others have said they operate such a policy.) Zen didn't block - they cost more than others, but this again leaves me enormously pleased to pay them £5-10/mo over the going rate for quality service.
- d.
2008/12/9 Andrew Cates Andrew@soschildren.org:
Out of interest given the IWF is not really official, has clearly messed up in a public way and only covers 95% percent of the ISP providers I am a bit surprised that the other 5% are not making more noise?
The problem is, most people support filtering genuine child pornography so boasting about how you don't isn't going to look good. Until the IWF screwed up there was really no way to know how reliable they were, so you can't blame the ISPs (you can blame them for the sheer incompetence of their method of blocking, though). They went with the best option available to them. Now, hopefully, they'll pressure the IWF to improve its procedures so things like this don't happen in future.