Following the the IWF-Wikipedia fracas for the last week or so, will there be any lasting changes to internet censorship in the UK? I hope so.
Until the IWF saw to it that UK access to editing Wikipedia pages was prevented, I doubt that UK broadband customers were aware their internet service was subject to censorship. The revelations surrounding the banning of the Scorpions LP sleeve Virgin Killer pushed the activities of the IWF into the public spotlight for the first time, and will perhaps precipitate a change into their operations.
The Open Rights Group has an interesting review of the possible fall-out of this affaire:
Firstly - why are the IPPs claiming that blocked pages do not exist - this is what a 404 message means. Why not a 403, or perhaps an explicit description of why the page is not available - such as this from Demon:
We have blocked this page because, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), it contains indecent images of children or pointers to them; you could be breaking UK law if you viewed the page.
The second point is that we remain at the "could be" level of evidence, because despite the IWF investing in training four individuals to examine all reported incidences, they are not offering legal opinion, and all judgements are that images are "potentially illegal".
Thirdly, this is apparently only the first time that an IWF judgement has been reversed.
Fourthly, shouldn't owners of offending URLs be notified they have been blocked? It's astonishing that the those affected by the blocked Wikipedia editing had to figure all this out for themselves. Finally, ORG say:
Finally, we would support introducing judicial oversight to the IWF's decision-making processes. The IWF do have a trained team to assess images against sentencing guidelines, and IWF assessors can contact the police for their opinion. But this system can only ever decide whether an image is "potentially illegal" - it does not replace the independent scrutiny of a judge. This could be seen as an expensive imposition, but we believe it's worth it - censorship should not come cheap in a civilised democracy.
I entirely agree. The IWF isn't sufficiently overseen, and their judgements about what should and should not be banned aren't sufficiently regorous that they need not be questioned.