[Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

Phil Nash phnash at blueyonder.co.uk
Sat Sep 24 22:00:25 UTC 2011


Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 11:38:18AM +0100, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>>> Wikipedia was also briefly blocked in Pakistan, because of the
>>> Mohammed cartoon controversy. So there might be a scenario where
>>> countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan figure out how to block
>>> access to adult images and images of Mohammed on Wikipedia
>>> permanently, using methods like the ones you describe, based on the
>>> personal image filter categories.? That might be a concern worth
>>> talking about.
>>
>> Quite so. Welcome to the discussion. :-)
>>
>>> Of course, it has to be balanced against the concern that these
>>> countries can block Wikipedia altogether.
>>
>> Our strategy so far is to indeed give people the choice of all or
>> nothing. Most people will choose for "all", and thus we practically
>> remain uncensored worldwide.
>>
>> If we create filter categories, our current anti-censorship strategy
>> will likely no longer work.
>>
>
> Funny how nobody is mentioning the Virgin Killer farce. The
> organisation that made that happen might just ask British ISP's to
> *silently* use the filter-tags to prevent British viewers to ever
> know there was such tagged content at all. And just to prove I am not
> being anti-British here, the Finnish police did even worse things,
> but the margin of this e-mail is
> too narrow to explain them.

The IWF just did not understand how access to Wikipedia works; a strange 
situation, given their mission. And it wasn't helped by their publicity at 
the time, IIRC. Fortunately, they seem to have shut up since then, and 
possibly got their act together in targetting stuff that really does need 
action by law enforcement. However, if that is the case, I would have 
expected them to have shouted it from the rooftops, but I haven't seen it.




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