Internet censorship is here

There’s always been a sense that internet censorship was something that they did in other, less free countries, like Iran or China. Then the Australian government started talking about it. But I’ve never seen evidence of it in the UK until now.

Depending on your ISP, you may or may not be able to see a Wikipedia page about the album Virgin Killer by The Scorpions. This is not because of their well documented and varied crimes against music, but because of the album cover art reproduced on that page, featuring a censored photograph of a naked girl. It may be in poor taste, but it doesn’t seem to be illegal. If it were, we’d be looking at removing it from Wikipedia, surely?

There’s more information about it on the Wikipedia bug tracker—it looks as if traffic from certain UK ISPs to Wikipedia is being fed through a reverse proxy with the ability to selectively censor pages.

Just in case that’s not clear: some ISPs in the UK are censoring certain pages on Wikipedia. That’s a worrying precedent: which pages will they be censoring tomorrow? In a country where opposition politicians are apparently arrested for leaking embarrassing details, will information that inconveniences the government be next to disappear?

So far I’ve heard that Virgin (how appropriate!) and Be Un limited are censoring Wikipedia. Conversely, I’m happy to report that my ISP, NewNet, is continuing to give me an excellent and unfiltered service.

2008-12-07 01:11 UTC. Comments: 28.

Comments

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  1. Takla

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 03:48 UTC using Mozilla 1.9.0.4 on Linux:

    Works ok on Tiscali. Sometimes it pays to be cheap :-)

  2. PabloBM

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 05:09 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    I can confirm Be’s censorship. I get a suspiciously-looking 404 page, whereas any other Wikipedia pages loads fine.

    :O

  3. Daniel Hardy

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 10:15 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    TalkTalk which had been saying all the right things about net neutrality and other related issues have indeed blocked this page.

  4. Daniel Hardy

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 10:17 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    ... though apparently the censorship isn’t that clever, as I can load a google cache of the page (http://216.239.59.132/search?q=cache:wp_W9zBZXq0J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer+http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a)

  5. Alex MacCaw

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 10:19 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    We’re on One Tel (now Talk Talk) in Somerset, and Be in London – both can’t access that page. So, either they’re using the same censorship system or they’re using the same dodgy proxy that is being blocked by Wikipedia (though why it’s just Wikipedia’s traffic being routed escapes me). I hope it’s the latter, though both are rather worrying.

  6. Paul Battley

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 11:06 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    There’s more information on Wikinews (if you can get there!). Apparently, a large number of major ISPs are members of the IWF and route traffic to flagged sites through the IWF’s proxies. Whilst this may be well-intentioned, it has the result that the IWF gets to say what any customer of these ISPs gets to see.

  7. Paul Battley

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 11:17 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    The list of companies using the censorship list might be useful for those planning on switching ISP.

  8. Pratik

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 11:19 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    I’m on O2 and I get a 404 as well.

  9. Drew McLellan

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 11:30 UTC using Firefox 3.0.5pre) on Mac OS X:

    To be clear, the list you link to Paul is a list of companies being supplied with the data, not a list of companies using the data. We can be reasonably certain of the former, but not of the latter.

    For instance, the ISP I’m using at the moment are listed as being supplied with the data but are not using it to prevent access to the above Wikipedia page. They may be using it in other ways, but so far it hasn’t impacted my experience in using the service.

  10. James Darling

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 11:38 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    Good point Drew. Using what seems to be a strong pressure group as an information source probably isn’t a great idea.
    However, as it is currently unclear (for me at least) what is going on here, I’m going to be careful and avoid all the companies. If any of them publicly put out a statement of how they use this list, and I see it as reasonable, then that situation would change. For instance, I would probably deem it acceptable that they use this list for finding illegal content, or just plain interest.

    There definitely needs to be a guide on this stuff, giving a run down on the policies of each ISP on censorship, packet shaping and the like. It needs to be easy to be fully informed on these issues when choosing your ISP.

  11. tripu

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 15:11 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    This is outrageous. I can confirm what PabloBM says about Be.
    I’m wondering what the official answer will be when we write to Be or call them to ask about this issue…

  12. Jamie van Dyke

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 16:05 UTC using Safari 525.26.12 on Mac OS X:

    Post Office internet allows me to view it, for your information.

  13. Takla

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 16:10 UTC using Mozilla 1.9.0.4 on Linux:

    I lived in a country that censored the internet very heavily, even innocent news reports, sometimes even sports reports, as well as anything deemed unflattering to any of the military or political controllers or institutions. The ISPs were either state owned and controlled, or lacked the will to resist the government (in what was nominally a democracy until the tanks rolled in and clarified the issue).

    It’s a very good idea to have tor and privoxy installed in order to bypass crude ISP level censorship and also their DNS hijacking and session hijacking. If we absolutely rely on our ISP to be transparent and honest we can get very badly burned, or at least disappointed. Afaik it’s normal practice everywhere for ISPs to use transparent proxying to manage traffic so this story about Wikipedia is not exactly news but is a good wake up call. UK ISPs have an informal agreement with the govt that if they self censor they will avoid financially burdensome regulation.

    In some countries when you attempt to access a forbidden page you are redirected to an ISP/govt hosted page which actually tells you it’s forbidden. That’s been my experience in totalitarian/ultra conservative countries in Asia and the Middle East who are very clear about their policies. But because the UK is a Free Country we’re not supposed to even know were being censored (also lied to, manipulated, cheated, ignored and dismissed).

    Useful tools to explore, as well as tor and privoxy, are dig and whois (should be on any Linux based system) and livehttpheaders Firefox extension. This one will show you the various redirects that occur when you (attempt to) navigate to a web page. Try it with your https banking and paypal sites too :-)

  14. lithiumx

    Wrote at 2008-12-07 19:47 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    I’m on Be and this attempt at censorship seems a bit cobbled together. Whilst the main wikipedia link is unavailable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer, the page about the IWF (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_amid_child_pornography_allegations) is still available, and that has the image in question. Plus other dubious pages like the Blind Faith page are uncensored.
    A quick search on Google Images also brought up the offending image with no problems.
    It seems as if Be/O2 and the other ISPs censoring this page, are creating a PR disaster for themselves for no reason.

  15. Irregular Shed

    Wrote at 2008-12-08 11:25 UTC using Firefox 3.0.1 on Windows XP:

    Zen are okay, but then they’re not on the IWF list anyway. I’ll be interested to see what happens at home, where I’m on one of the listed ISPs (PlusNet) – they tend to be pretty sane (much more so than their BT parents).

  16. kzap

    Wrote at 2008-12-08 16:10 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    Is this legal???
    Not that I agree with the image (I can’t see it, cos I get an ‘object not found’ error on the page).
    But I thought ISPs tried to get permission to do this but were turned down.
    Are they doing it anyway? using there morals as an excuse and using fake errors to hope we don’t realise.

  17. Takla

    Wrote at 2008-12-08 19:50 UTC using Mozilla 1.9.0.4 on Linux:

    >Is this legal???

    Yes. They don’t have to censor (just as the post office is not responsible for censoring the content of letters/parcels) but are scared of the government imposing more rules on them, particularly the job of policing web content which would be fantastically expensive to perform and impossible to do properly anyway. No industry wants the government imposing expensive (and often foolish) burdens on them. If they do enough to satisfy the government, and by implication the various pressure groups/lobbies who carry weight, and possibly even public opinion (though that’s just a utopian theory), then they can avoid mandatory, expensive and intrusive interference.

    I doubt you’ll find anywhere in your contract with your ISP any suggestion that they are obliged to guarantee your connection to all and any IP addresses or that you have any right to access legal content simply because it’s available. It’s up to them, if they don’t want to allow access to certain domains/addresses or types of content (or anything that is alleged to be, or appears to be, something “bad”) then they don’t have to facilitate your connection.

    Of course censorship exists in all forms of the media, whether self imposed or imposed by law (i.e. obscenity, incitement to racial hatred etc) or by government directive but in this case it’s being done in a deceitful and misleading way. Many of the most repressive regimes at least make it clear that a forbidden page/site/type of content is indeed forbidden with a redirection to an explanatory notice.

  18. Nick The Geek

    Wrote at 2008-12-08 20:25 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Windows XP:

    Yep, I’m getting a 404-looking page courtesy of BT as well.

    WOW, thanks for that BT … it’s a good job I have you to decide what I can and can’t see, since I don’t have a brain in my head.

  19. Rob Stiles

    Wrote at 2008-12-09 13:24 UTC using Safari 525.27.1 on Mac OS X:

    I can see the page ok from Zen Internet. I have to say I’m not surprised about this – they’ve already starting arresting opposition party members. Our Labour government behaves more like a dictatorship every day. Mr Brown can show his Magna Carta speech up his arse.

  20. Bob

    Wrote at 2008-12-10 21:58 UTC using Chrome 0.4.154.29 on Windows XP:

    Hmmm. I can see the page via Virgin now (worked fine at work at all times – via JANet) and there is a little info on the actual wiki page now…

    via Chrome…

    :-)

  21. Chris

    Wrote at 2008-12-11 00:23 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Windows XP:

    They have uncensored it!
    (virgin)

  22. Nick Grimshaw

    Wrote at 2008-12-11 13:08 UTC using Firefox 2.0.0.18 on Linux:

    Worked fine on AAISP.
    http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

  23. Ben

    Wrote at 2008-12-12 23:28 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X:

    Contrary to reports earlier… O2 doesn’t seem to have censored the image or page.

  24. thebrix

    Wrote at 2008-12-13 17:01 UTC using Firefox 3.0.6pre) on Mac OS X:

    Agreed. I can see the image and page from my Be Unlimited (02) account … and have been able to do so ever since this row blew up, an inconvenient fact which those shouting “censorship” have ignored elsewhere!

  25. Mike Trim

    Wrote at 2008-12-13 18:56 UTC using Firefox 3.0.4 on Linux:

    I am on O2 and was unable to view the page for several days; it is visible now because the IWF have removed it from their blacklist. Possibly those using an alternative DNS server such as OpenDNS are unaffected.

  26. Philip

    Wrote at 2009-01-03 00:30 UTC using Opera 9.62 on Linux:

    Now my ISP (Demon) appears to be rewriting the HTML of web.archive.org pages – the links to absolute URLs like http://web.archive.org/web/19981111184551/http://google.com/ are turned into http://iwfwebfilter.thus.net/web/19981111184551/http://google.com/ (which happens to be a 404).

    I find it hard to care much about a Wikipedia page that I’d never have looked at anyway, but when they start completely breaking useful services I realise why it’s really not a good idea…

  27. James

    Wrote at 2009-01-10 17:36 UTC using Firefox 3.0.5 on Windows Vista:

    As a Be user I was expecting this not to work, but I was able to link straight to the “virgin” page… So the censorship may not be as widespread as we fear. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m sure its coming….

  28. anon

    Wrote at 2009-02-08 12:28 UTC using Firefox 3.0.6 on Windows XP:

    .....it’s working fine on virgin.

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