Internet Censorship: What do Amazon and Wikipedia have in common?
Your first answer might be “nothing at all”, but that is not entirely true. Both Amazon and wikipedia.org host an image of the album cover of the Virgin Killer album by The Scorpions. The image has been on Amazon.com for at least 10 months and on wikipedia.org since april 2007, but somehow it’s become big news all over the internet since access to Wikipedia was blocked in parts of the UK because it was hosting the image.
The Guardian first wrote about the copy of the image at Amazon.com yesterday:
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is reviewing its decision to list as “child pornography” the image on one version of the album “Virgin Killer” by the rock band The Scorpions hosted on Wikipedia – and might yet add Amazon US to its list of “blocked” sites for hosting the picture.
Amazon didn’t take any chances and no longer shows the image, but at the time of writing the image was still available on their servers. But Amazon doesn’t actually risk being blocked: the system used in the UK forces traffic to sites that contain suspicious images through a proxy server that only blocks access to the specific image and/or URL that links to the image. This is a bit inconvenient for Wikipedia, but shouldn’t cause too many problems for Amazon.
The article at the Guardian does provide some interesting information about the Internet Watch Foundation:
A team of four police-trained “analysts” plough through 35,000 URLs sent to them each year that are under suspicion of being obscene. […] That works out to an average of 700 per week, or 140 per working day, or 35 per working day per analyst – giving each an average workload for a seven-hour day of 5 URLs per hour. Typically about one-third of the URLs are deemed illegal.
The Scorpions image was deemed to be “1 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the least offensive”, said Robertson. The image was judged to be “erotic posing with no sexual activity”. It depicts a young naked girl with her genitals obscured by a crack in the camera lens.
Right. An image that depicts “erotic posing with no sexual activity” is blocked in most of the UK? And they only get 35.000 of those in an entire year? Here’s an idea: let’s turn the content rating system into mturk HITs. If you pay everyone that categorizes an image $0.05, and verify the ratings by having at least 5 people rank it, that would result in a cost of $0.25 per image, or $8.750 per year.
Update: The IWF has a statement about the blocking of Wikipedia. It looks like Amazon is safe:
Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.
Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.
Update 2: Google has decided to point people looking for a high-resolution version of the Virgin Killer album cover this way. Here’s a hint: Google Images. The largest scan currently available is this one (mirror); higher resolutions have yet to appear.
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:37 am
When was this album art made? If made before 1978 (when the law was made) then it can’t be illegal. While making that specific image these days would be legally questionable, there is no way that a new law can outlaw something that was made BEFORE that law was passed. If the law made the cover art illegal, then it would make the CD being sold (which was recorded with the intent this art would be the cover art) would Become illegal for stores to sell. As you know, this CD can be found in almost any music store. If it was an outlawed CD it would have been pulled from store shelves. The music stores would lose money, and eventually the music store industry would lobby congress enough to get the law repealed. The congressmen making the law (the Child Protect Act) knew this and made the law ONLY apply to stuff that would be made AFTER the law was passed. Making it so the ban would criminalize album art for currently sold albums would be political suicide. The music industry (including the musicians, cover art artists, and the music store industry) would make such a stink that the law would have to be repealed later anyway (plus the moron that voted for a law that would have this effect would never get reelected). It therefore does NOT ban this album art, or ANY such album art(or otherwise art) that was made in the past. TRUE child porn has always been illegal. This 1978 law just added “underage nudity” (even non pornographic nudity, even if all the “important parts” are censored or covered) to the list of what’s illegal. But the KEY is that law applies to ONLY stuff that was made AFTER the passing of the law. Stuff that was produced that was legal BEFORE the law was passed (nudity as long as it wasn’t porn), these specific works made BEFORE the passing of the law are still legal. This means music stores do NOT have to (under force of law) throw away these CDs, or even change their cover art (though in some cases, the cover art has been switched to something that many would feel was more appropriate). However with this law in effect any FUTURE attempts to make such nude art involving an underage person (even if not pornographic) would be met with fines, and arrests of anyone involved in the making of this art, or at the VERY LEAST would result in the police confiscating and destroying any copies of this illegally made art (or requiring the maker of the art to destroy it under threat of arrest if the art wasn’t destroyed).
What does this mean? It means that since this album art is PERFECTLY LEGAL (it was made before 1978) there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for Amazon.com or Wikipedia to feel the need to remove, block, etc it from their website. If they do, it means they are being wusses who can’t stand to see a bit of nudity.
July 11th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I seem to be having a hard time , subscribing to your RSS feed. It comes up with error 451. Let me know if its a known error or if its just me . Ive tried firefox and IE. Im using AVG Firewall and im not sure if its turned on . Im not educated with Netbooks. Ill bookmark your site and see if you have responded. all the best