Censorship and Social Media: The Wikipedia Affair
There has been a fierce debate following a decision to censor popular social media site Wikipedia by the Internet Watch Foundation.
The IWF specifically tracks illegal material on the Internet and helps UK ISPs block access to it. Most Internet users unsurprisingly agree that censorship of child pornography is an important and valuable role of the IWF and does not constitute censroship of the Internet as many of us would hope to avoid.
The controversy this time raged around censorship of Wikipedia – one of the most used social media sites on the Internet. This was not an obscure, shady offshore porn site: this is a mainstream site used as an information and research tool by millions. The encylopedia is the biggest in the world and consists of content researched, uploaded and edited by the users of Wikipedia themselves. The offending image, censored by the IWF but defended by Wikipedia, was an album cover from the mid 1970s. Under current UK legal definitions it would appear that this image does constitute child pornography. Many have argued, however, that is it wrong to censor a tool which mearly reports what has been, there is artistic freedom to consider, you cannot change history and no legal action over the album cover has ever been taken.
The band’s rhythm guitarist Rudolf Shenker has since said “Looking at that picture today makes me cringe. It was done in the worst possible taste. Back then I was too immature to see that. Shame on me — I should have done everything in my power to stop it”. Perhaps there’s not much artistic freedom to defend.
This view of this as unnecessary censorship is rebuffed in a well written article by legal director Struan Robertson in the Financial Times. Read more here. What do you think?
FT.com / Technology / Digital Business – Was it right to censor a Wikipedia page?.
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