Free speech wins a major victory today over the shadowy, un-elected, unaccountable IWF, the UK's secretive Internet 'Big Brother', an organisation which doesn't just block what you shouldn't be looking at, but also blocks what they think you shouldn't be looking at. This is quite disturbing to say the least, 95% of UK Internet users fall under the blanket of the IWF and most of us were completely unaware of the organisation until this week with the blocking of a Wikipedia page for the album 'Virgin Killer' by the German rock band 'Scorpions'. So what was the block about? Well, the image accompanying the page was a scan of the 1976 album featuring a nude girl on the cover which the IWF took objection to, therefore restricting all access to the Wikipedia page and also 'blacklisting' Wikipedia as an illegal website. After the blacklist was implemented, all UK traffic to Wikipedia went through just a handful of IP addresses belonging to IWF proxies, meaning it was impossible for Wiki administrators to differentiate between genuine Wikiers and vandals, so these IPs were prevented from editing articles on Wikipedia. And that's just the start... in an almost breathtaking act of Stalinist revisionism, the IWF forged a fake 404 error page, suggesting people trying to access the Wikipedia article were trying to access a page that didn't exist, an absolutely stunning act of censorship and cover-up designed to mislead visitors to Wikipedia. They could at the very least TELL visitors their access had been blocked instead of attempting to disguise it.


The IWF's incompetence was further highlighted when numerous people demonstrated different ways to access the Wikipedia article and the offending image itself from the UK simply by using a slightly modified Wikipedia URL. It should also be noted that the image can be accessed from numerous websites including Amazon, Google Image Search and others, the album has been legally sold in music stores for 30 years, ironically, the image has been brought into mainstream attention and has presumably been accessed by millions, which can only be great publicity for the Scorpions themselves.

So what have we learnt? Well, we've learnt that the IWF is a shadowy, unelected Internet censor which can block any material it pleases, illegal or otherwise with impunity, we've learned their IT people probably need to go back to school and learn how to effectively block content, we've learned that in trying to block access to this article and image, the IWF have gone and done the exact opposite and the article is now the most visited on Wikipedia and the image is being propogated and viewed across the Internet more than ever. We've also learned the IWF employ primitive deception techniques to attempt to confuse innocent Internet users like those who tried to access the Wikipedia page in question. We've also learnt that good Internet people like those on Wikipedia stand up for what they believe in and aren't afraid to stand up to tyrannical governments and oppressive organisations hell-bent on restricting access to and material on the ultimate medium of free speech - the Internet!

Right, now that's off my chest, I'm off for a shit and a shave, if that's ok with the IWF that is...