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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Simpsons and filters signal new era of Internet McCarthyism
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Simpsons and filters signal new era of Internet McCarthyism | Simpsons and filters signal new era of Internet McCarthyism |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 10 December 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 The girl in the photo, a niece of
one of the band members who is now a middle-aged woman, has gone on
record saying that she has never had a problem with the photo. Over the
past three decades and certainly during the Internet age, an image of
the album cover has reportedly appeared in many publications and on
many web sites.Featured Whitepaper
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Clicking on the Virgin Killer link takes a visitor to a Wikipedia page with lots of text about the album, the controversy surrounding it and a small pic of the original album cover. It is quite obvious that this is a page devoted to the history of this album and is not intended to be a page promoting child pornography. Yet this did not stop EU and UK Internet industry funded watchdog Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) summarily adding the Scorpions page on Wikipedia to its blacklist when it received a complaint. The effect was that a large proportion of UK Internet users could not access the Scorpions page on Wikipedia and some couldn't even access Wikipedia. The resulting outcry from the Wikimedia organisation and the general public over the blatant censorship has since forced the IWF to back down and remove the page from its black list. Thankfully in that particular instance common sense prevailed. However, it highlights the dangers of restricting access to information without due process of law. This is especially so when it has been reported that the IWF list is one that could be used in Australia, which then creates an even worse situation than our own Government censoring the Internet: foreign parties deciding what Austalians can or cannot see! Yet, as an even more recent case shows, the law itself can be a victim of hysteria. In a judgement handed down in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday, a man who was caught with cartoons on his computer depicting The Simpsons children engaged in sex acts was convicted for possessing child pornography. CONTINUED Page 3 |
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