Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Saturday 6 December 2008, 11:50 PM
UK ISPs switch on mass Wikipedia censorship
The following notice has appeared on Wikipedia today when many UK users attempt to edit content:
"Wikipedia has been added to a Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well."
According to discussions on the Wikipedia administrators noticeboard, this is because a transparent proxy has been enabled for customers of Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal. This has two effects: users cannot see content filtered by the proxies, and all user traffic passing through the proxies is given a single IP address per proxy. As Wikipedia's anti-vandalism system blocks users by IP address, one single case of vandalism by a single UK user prevents all users on that user's ISP from editing. The effect is to block all editing from anonymous UK users on that list of ISPs. Registered users can continue to edit.
The content being filtered is apparently that deemed to meet the Internet Watch Foundation's critera for child pornography – in one case, this involves a 1970s LP cover art which, although controversial, is still widely available.
Reports on the admin noticeboard say that this filtering is easy to circumvent, either by using Wikipedia's secure server or by sending a request to find the page via parameters in the URL. However, no fix has been found – nor is one expected – for the proxy address problem.
"This is the first I've come across UK wide internet censorship, and I'm shocked. I had no idea until now that like China, we too have built a great firewall - only we keep quiet about ours.", user Hahnchen said, on the noticeboard.
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PreviousComments on this post
The good news is that a lot of otherwise oblivious people well now be aware that their internet access is censored.
"in one case, this involves a 1970s LP cover art which, although controversial, is still widely available"
That's the *only* case. No other content is involved.
Sad to say it's not a great big surprise. I am disapointed to see my ISP eclipse listed on the facebook page though. I was always happy to be away from the corporate ISPs, Oh well I must say I haven't expierienced any censorship myself.
Roger,
One of the two URLs that they've blocked is that to the image page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg
I should probably point out that the reason it's blocked is that the IWF considers that it would be illegal to view that image under English law. Personally, I don't consider the image to be pornographic and I'm quite angry that my ISP is censoring my Internet connection, but it is not impossible that there could be legal consequences to viewing that URL.
If you can see a Wikipedia image page at that URL, you're not being blocked. If you get anything else (I get a proxy error that Google Chrome displays as a page not available message), but can see the main page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, then your Net connection is being transparently proxied and censored by your ISP.
The IWF has a press release linked from their homepage (at www.iwf.org.uk ), which gives their explanation of the circumstances surrounding the recent controversy.
And the IWF have backed down: http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm
They have realised quite how counter-productive it's been... and it has to be said, more people must have seen that album cover in the past few days than it ever sold copies.
This comment has been deleted at the users request
