On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:56 PM, Isabell Long isabell121@gmail.com wrote:
I do see why they have censored it, it could have been offensive in some way to certain people, but I think that there are many more potentially offensive things on en.wikipedia than that.
http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.35.htm
They block:
- images of child sexual abuse* hosted anywhere in the world - criminally obscene content hosted in the UK - incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK
I'm not aware of any other images of child sexual abuse in Wikipedia.
Does this image qualify as such? I'd have to say it does. It may not be illegal, I don't know UK law, but I do believe that telling a minor to pose that way for a photograph is child sexual abuse.
On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The editing problems are purely from the technical incompetence in the manner in which the UK censorship is being performed, and not from the censorship itself.
C'mon, what about the technical incompetence in the manner in which the Mediawiki software identifies unique individuals?
IP addresses aren't people.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 8:39 AM, techman224 techman224@yahoo.ca wrote:
He right. Wikipedia has to respect other cultures and not harm them. If we did harm them, wikipedia wouldn't be neutral anymore.
There's a difference between neutrality and moral relativism.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 8:51 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2008/12/9 techman224 techman224@yahoo.ca:
He right. Wikipedia has to respect other cultures and not harm them. If we did harm them, wikipedia wouldn't be neutral anymore.
There is a difference between respecting a culture and going against our own ideals in order to fit with theirs. If we want to be neutral and protect certain people from things that would offend them then we have to protect everyone from things that might offend them which means deleting the entire project.
On the other hand, accepting absolutely anything would quickly get Wikipedia blocked everywhere.
You can't form ideals by having a bunch of people randomly throw together a list of things they like on a wiki page. There are specific reasons why this image in particular was considered unacceptable, but other "offensive" images were not. In the view of the IWF, this is an image of child sexual abuse. They are saying, and I have to agree, that telling a young child to strip down and pose for an album cover is an act of child abuse, and this image is the result of that act. To defend this image, I think you have to go beyond "respecting other cultures" and really think about whether or not you agree with that description. And if you do, then you've got to take the next step and explain why it is right for Wikipedia to distribute this image anyway.
I think I could come up with a justification for the distribution of this image, if it is distributed solely for the purpose of reducing child sexual abuse (such as through education), and is done so with the explicit permission of the now-adult victim. But I don't think Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is capable of fulfilling that purpose.
For all the arguing back and forth, so few people seem to be bringing up the true questions posed by this image.
Anthony