Monday, December 08, 2008

32 year old album cover censored in the UK

The cover in question. Covered by a mini version of the
alternative version of the cover ... just in case.


Censorship of the internet and who decides what should be stopped or not is being discussed in the UK today, after it became clear that up to 95 % of internet users in the UK can't read about the German heavy metal group Scorpion's 1976 album Virgin Killer on Wikipedia.

The Internet Watch Foundation has for the past 12 years worked at protectng the public from illegal material online through a constantly updated blacklist that internet service providers in the UK can choose to use or not.
According to a BBC blog post the album cover image had been referred to the IWF by a member of the public. After consultation with the police it was assessed as "a potentially illegal image" and put on the banned list that is given to internet service providers, who then block the page.

The cover image is widely available elsewhere, and regardless of what you think of the picture of a naked girl, the photo has not been judged illegal. But it has been blacklisted together with all the text on the page in question, and apparently the internet service providers have no separate check up of new pages/sites added to the IWF blacklist. They just implement it.

Read more over at the BBC .

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