I made an anonymous complaint to the IWF against google last night as google.co.uk definitely hosts these images as an image search of Virgin killer makes abundant and targeting wikipedia is not fair.
I hope this helped tip the balance.
As someone committed to not having pedophile activism promoted on wikipeia I fully agree with Gerard that blocking the VK article text, which in no way advocated child porn
Thanks, Richard Weiss +(504) 3298 6511
What's On? Ask the TV Genius! www.tvgenius.net
(TV Genius SA is a company registered in Honduras. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately.)
Presumably Google performs a search of image descriptions and surrounding texts, and gives results showing where other sites host the images. I don't think that Google hosts these images itself - but it would be interesting to see if the IWF would take the enormously public step of blocking access to Google in order to block access to a particular file.
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Richard Weiss richard.weiss@tvgenius.netwrote:
I made an anonymous complaint to the IWF against google last night as google.co.uk definitely hosts these images as an image search of Virgin killer makes abundant and targeting wikipedia is not fair.
I hope this helped tip the balance.
As someone committed to not having pedophile activism promoted on wikipeia I fully agree with Gerard that blocking the VK article text, which in no way advocated child porn
Thanks, Richard Weiss +(504) 3298 6511
What's On? Ask the TV Genius! www.tvgenius.net
(TV Genius SA is a company registered in Honduras. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately.) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
This leaves several outstanding problems: 1. How many other of the 10,000 censorship decisions IWF censored this year were equally dubious? 2. How does anyone find out about them, much less contest the mistakes? 3. What do we do about other sites that censor useful material in an arbitrary manner?
I blogged today about the IWF and about Facebook. Facebook has censored one of the featured pictures I restored for Wikipedia. The image generated zero complaints from 17.3 million page views when it ran on Wikipedia's main page, and I presented it in my profile merely as one of dozens of examples of featured content work.
Yet Facebook provided no means of appeal, and my own efforts to contact them and seek reconsideration fell on deaf ears.
The problem is bigger than IWF.
http://durova.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-watches-watchers.html
-Durova
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Presumably Google performs a search of image descriptions and surrounding texts, and gives results showing where other sites host the images. I don't think that Google hosts these images itself - but it would be interesting to see if the IWF would take the enormously public step of blocking access to Google in order to block access to a particular file.
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Richard Weiss <richard.weiss@tvgenius.net
wrote:
I made an anonymous complaint to the IWF against google last night as google.co.uk definitely hosts these images as an image search of Virgin killer makes abundant and targeting wikipedia is not fair.
I hope this helped tip the balance.
As someone committed to not having pedophile activism promoted on
wikipeia
I fully agree with Gerard that blocking the VK article text, which in no
way
advocated child porn
Thanks, Richard Weiss +(504) 3298 6511
What's On? Ask the TV Genius! www.tvgenius.net
(TV Genius SA is a company registered in Honduras. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately.) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Yet Facebook provided no means of appeal, and my own efforts to contact them and seek reconsideration fell on deaf ears.
The problem is bigger than IWF.
http://durova.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-watches-watchers.html
Facebook is a private company. They can do what they want. The same ability that allows them to censor your gallery allows Wikipedia to give Archimedes Plutonium the boot. If you don't like it you can leave or fork.
Oh wait. You can't fork. The data you and your friends have submitted into Facebook is stuck there. You don't have a realistic choice, just like most UK residents don't have a realistic choice to choose an uncensored ISP.
I don't have a solution for the UK's censorship other than to point out that perhaps sites like ours ought to find ways to be more friendly to user-controlled truly voluntary filtering if we want to avoid outright censorship.
But for facebook, there is a path out of that: http://opendefinition.org/ossd?action=show&redirect=osd
I don't have a high opinion of facebook, so I can't suggest an open alternative… there may not be one yet. I know there is identi.ca vs twitter.
Of course, an open service doesn't change the fact that you are already invested in facebook, nor does it resolve all the problems, but it's a necessary start. The [[network effect]] of sites like facebook means that breaking from them is hard, but when you use it you're adding to the problem, compelling others to join in giving up control to the faceless-website-company. But… Change has to start somewhere, someone needs to raise concerns and advocate it. To me it looks like facebook as nominated you.
Fair enough, up to a point. Facebook is a private company and they publish terms of service. I complied with those terms, but someone mistakenly thought otherwise. When Wikipedia makes a mistake there's a means of appeal (sometimes faulty, but we do remain open to the idea that our decisions are open to revision). Not with Facebook. And not, by commonsense understanding, with IWF either. Both organizations operate from a presumption that all of their decisions are correct, and minimize the means for appeal.
Think about it. Do you really suppose that none of the other 10,000 censorship decisions IWF made in the last year were less than perfect? Proper feedback loops don't exist. And they should.
-Durova
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Yet Facebook provided no means of appeal, and my own efforts to contact
them
and seek reconsideration fell on deaf ears.
The problem is bigger than IWF.
http://durova.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-watches-watchers.html
Facebook is a private company. They can do what they want. The same ability that allows them to censor your gallery allows Wikipedia to give Archimedes Plutonium the boot. If you don't like it you can leave or fork.
Oh wait. You can't fork. The data you and your friends have submitted into Facebook is stuck there. You don't have a realistic choice, just like most UK residents don't have a realistic choice to choose an uncensored ISP.
I don't have a solution for the UK's censorship other than to point out that perhaps sites like ours ought to find ways to be more friendly to user-controlled truly voluntary filtering if we want to avoid outright censorship.
But for facebook, there is a path out of that: http://opendefinition.org/ossd?action=show&redirect=osd
I don't have a high opinion of facebook, so I can't suggest an open alternative… there may not be one yet. I know there is identi.ca vs twitter.
Of course, an open service doesn't change the fact that you are already invested in facebook, nor does it resolve all the problems, but it's a necessary start. The [[network effect]] of sites like facebook means that breaking from them is hard, but when you use it you're adding to the problem, compelling others to join in giving up control to the faceless-website-company. But… Change has to start somewhere, someone needs to raise concerns and advocate it. To me it looks like facebook as nominated you. _______________________________________________ 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 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
This leaves several outstanding problems:
- How many other of the 10,000 censorship decisions IWF censored this year
were equally dubious?
Not our problem but the odds are not many.
- How does anyone find out about them, much less contest the mistakes?
By getting demon as your ISP then setting a bot to crawl the entire web.
- What do we do about other sites that censor useful material in an
arbitrary manner?
Again not our problem. What other sites chose to do is not of our business.
I blogged today about the IWF and about Facebook. Facebook has censored one of the featured pictures I restored for Wikipedia. The image generated zero complaints from 17.3 million page views when it ran on Wikipedia's main page, and I presented it in my profile merely as one of dozens of examples of featured content work.
Yet Facebook provided no means of appeal, and my own efforts to contact them and seek reconsideration fell on deaf ears.
The problem is bigger than IWF.
Private sites have every right to restrict what they allow on their sites. That includes wikipedia.
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I doubt that was a significant factor. Looking at their statement the decision was based on the pragmatic position that it would not be possible to filter the image due to it's very wide distribution.
2008/12/10 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I doubt that was a significant factor. Looking at their statement the decision was based on the pragmatic position that it would not be possible to filter the image due to it's very wide distribution.
And that no-one was saying "BAN THIS SICK FILTH" or "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", instead they were saying "MY ISP CENSORED AN ENCYCLOPEDIA" and "YOU CAN GET IT IN THE HIGH STREET". And "The IWF head looks like a curtain-twitching weasel."
No-one knew about the IWF before this. Once people knew, they despised them and their existence.
- d.
2008/12/10 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I doubt that was a significant factor. Looking at their statement the decision was based on the pragmatic position that it would not be possible to filter the image due to it's very wide distribution.
And that no-one was saying "BAN THIS SICK FILTH" or "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", instead they were saying "MY ISP CENSORED AN ENCYCLOPEDIA" and "YOU CAN GET IT IN THE HIGH STREET". And "The IWF head looks like a curtain-twitching weasel."
No-one knew about the IWF before this. Once people knew, they despised them and their existence.
- d.
You go too far. We censor actual child pornography out of Wikipedia too. There are limits and someone enforces them.
Fred
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.
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I hadn't realised he had said that - does anyone have a link?
2008/12/10 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I hadn't realised he had said that - does anyone have a link?
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/wikipedia+may+chall...
Alison Wheeler has an extensive press coverage list on her blog. alisonw.com appears down at present, but there's a copy on the LiveJournal RSS feed (which copies the Feedburner RSS feed):
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/alisonw_com/16398.html
- d.
- d.
2008/12/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Alison Wheeler has an extensive press coverage list on her blog. alisonw.com appears down at present, but there's a copy on the LiveJournal RSS feed (which copies the Feedburner RSS feed):
ah, back up and working now:
http://www.alisonw.com/2008/12/08/an-update-on-the-uk-blocking-of-wikipedia/
- d.
2008/12/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/12/10 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2008/12/10 K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au:
On the other hand, the IWF removed even the Wikipedia version of the file from the blacklist... So most likely they won't do anything about Google.
Don't forget that was after jimbo said he was considering sueing because even the IWF had it checked and it was only "possibly" illegal, they never got confirmation, it would the same in court say if someone was stopping people from entering a store and claiming their carrot cake had rat poison in it without checking.
I hadn't realised he had said that - does anyone have a link?
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/wikipedia+may+chall...
Cheers. That says his first thought was to sue but he'd been told it probably wouldn't work - that's quite different to him actively considering suing (for a start, its not his decision, either Sue or the whole board would decide on the advice of Mike). I doubt that report had any influence on the IWF decision to withdraw.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Presumably Google performs a search of image descriptions and surrounding texts, and gives results showing where other sites host the images. I don't think that Google hosts these images itself - but it would be interesting to see if the IWF would take the enormously public step of blocking access to Google in order to block access to a particular file.
Google takes the image and produces a thumbnail of it, which is what shows in their searches. They do host that. They've even been sued for it. For instance, this is their thumbnail version of the now infamous album cover from our site (regular warning apply, if you don't want to see the image, don't click the link):
http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:Amv-tAsRLR7b0M:http://upload.wikimedia.o...
Google definitely hosts these images.
--Oskar