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wikinews-deleted-pornography-investigation.rtf (click to view full file)
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Analysis Wikimedia Foundation muzzles Wikinews
Suppressed Wikinews investigative article about pornography on Wikipedia from the week of May 12, 2008. The article was deleted immediately prior to publication after a call from the Wikimedia foundation head office. It is believed the article was deleted because it did not promote Wikimedia, although the excuse used to do so, by Wikimedia counsel Michael Godwin was that it might be defamatory towards the Eric Moeller, the Foundations own deputy director. Wikinews and Wikipedia are legally and physically controlled by the "Wikimedia foundation" (no relation to WikiLeaks or most of "Wiki's"). An easy to read text version of the suppressed article follows this summary at the end of the page. See also See also Wikinews suppressed article on Barbara Bauer vs. Wikipedia case
Saturday May 17, 2008
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Rich Text Format data, version 1, ANSI
SHA256 98f0c33e09b8554e6ecbaba463d8b702e830752ceecca45e5deacbfdb2dd673a
A scandal erupted on the website of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, after it was discovered that a CD cover with an image of a nude underage girl was uploaded to the site. As a result of recent media coverage surrounding the incident, the FBI will be stepping in to investigate Wikipedia for possibly violating United States federal pornography laws.
The cover is from a 1976 album of the Scorpions titled 'Virgin Killer' and has the image of an underage girl, posing nude, with an crack crossing over her genitals, but nothing blocking out her breasts. The girl appears to be around 10-years-old. The U.S. banned that cover, and the band later replaced the image with one of the group. The cover was uploaded in 2006, but Wikinews has learned, that on May 9, (21:17 UTC) despite a result of 43 to 12 in favor of 'keep' on a deletion request, the image was deleted from Wikipedia by an administrator known as Angusmclellan. The administrator states that the image was deleted because "outside pressure should never influence us, not to do what the pressure group want, nor to do the opposite just to spite them. We should base our decisions on Wikipedia's policies and values. Those policies and values say that we should only use non-free content under stringent conditions. This image didn't and doesn't meet those conditions and should be deleted. If it does meet them in the future it should be undeleted."
"Children use Wikipedia all of the time for reports for school, and this stuff is not just pornography, this is hard-core pornography. Much of it may even be in violation of our nation's obscenity laws," said Concerned Women for America's policy director for cultural issues and attorney, Matt Barber.
According to a report by WorldNetDaily, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Erik Möller, endorsed child pornography and even alleged that Möller was posting it on his website humanist.de. The image, since deleted, depicted two children, one male and one female, who appear to be much younger than 18, naked with the female giving the male a 'handjob'. The image can be seen in a cache of Google, and is clearly marked as having been posted to Möller's website.
"If there was any doubt, yes, I am defending that children can have sex with each other. Not only adolescents, but also children of earlier ages -- whenever they want to," stated Möller in 2001, although denies that he supports pedophilia saying "I have pondered putting a disclaimer into the article ("I am not a pedophile. I am a 22-y-o heterosexual white male") but I see no reason to give this concession to the child sex hysteria."
Wikinews has contacted Möller regarding the allegations, but has not yet received a response.
Child pornography is not the only concern, but also images depicting what some could label as 'hardcore pornography'. Several articles on Wikipedia, such as Autofellatio, which is self oral stimulation of the penis, and shows an image of a male applying oral sex to himself. The article fluffer, which is when a member of the crew who is filming a pornographic film is to sexually arouse the individuals performing in the movie, and shows an image of two males having anal sex, while a cameraman hands them a towel.
Wikipedia is not the only project to host questionable material. Wikimedia's 'Commons', a wiki dedicated to hosting images that could potentially be used on other projects, also has a variety of nudity and sexually explicit material. On the category of Striptease, dozens of photographs show females in total nudity on the front page, with some photos having several females posing nude. Through our investigation, Wikinewshas learned that most of the images are not used in articles on Wikipedia, but are used only on user pages.
Commons policy on what images are considered to be within the "projects scope" states that "files uploaded to the Commons have to be useful for some Wikimedia project. Media files that are not useful for any Wikimedia project are beyond the scope of Wikimedia Commons." This includes, but is not limited to "private image collections and the like. Wikimedia Commons is not a web host for e.g. private party photos, self-created artwork without educational purpose and such."
This raises the question as to whether or not Wikimedia should ask for age verification when looking at material which contains sexually explicit material. Wikinews spoke to ... who stated ....
Sources
On December 7, ''Wikinews'' first reported that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United Kingdom, were filtering access to an image and an article on the popular, free online encyclopedia ''Wikipedia'', amid allegations that they contain child pornography. The filter was brought into play by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which issued a statement regarding the filtering shortly after ''Wikinews'' published the article. Wikimedia, the host of ''Wikinews'' and ''Wikipedia'' oppose the IWF's actions, also issuing a statement.

"A Wikipedia web page, was reported through the IWF’s online reporting mechanism in December 2008. As with all child sexual abuse reports received by our Hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council (page 109). The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, but hosted outside the UK," said the IWF in a statement posted on their website.
Users attempting to access the page on the ''Virgin Killer'' album, or the image itself, have been subjected to it not loading, 404 pages, or messages explaining the block.

The image and article in question is that of the 1976 album ''Virgin Killer'', a studio album by the Scorpions, a German rock band.  The controversy began after the image of the album's original cover, which depicted a naked prepubescent girl, was reported to the IWF in early December. ''Wikinews'' first discovered the controversial image in May 2008 after there were several attempts to delete it on ''Wikipedia''. The image had been blocked because the IWF considered it to be "potentially illegal". As a result, the IWF have contacted authorities in the United States and in the UK.

The measures applied redirect ''Wikipedia''-bound traffic from a significant portion of the UK's Internet population through a small number of servers which can log and filter the content that is available to the end user. A serious side-effect of this is the inability of administrators on Wikimedia sites to block vandals and other troublemakers without potentially impacting hundreds of thousands of innocent contributors who are working on the sites in good faith.

Contributors or individuals attempting to view an affected image or file, depending on their ISP, may get a warning saying, "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." Other ISPs provide blank pages, 404 errors, or other means of blocking the content.
1976 album cover for the Scorpions which previously appeared on Amazon.com, and many other sites. 
Wikimedia was not informed that the image would be blacklisted because the IWF "does not issue takedown notices to ISPs or hosting companies outside the UK". The servers for Wikimedia projects are located in Florida in the U.S., and according to Jay Walsh, the head of communications for Wikimedia, the Foundation "opposes" the action taken by the IWF.

"The IWF has confirmed to the Wikimedia Foundation that it has added Wikipedia to its
blacklist, which also had the unintended consequence of rendering UK-based internet users
unable to edit the encyclopedia," said Walsh.

"We did advise one of our partner Hotlines abroad and our law enforcement partner agency of our assessment. The specific URL (individual webpage) was then added to the list provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child," added the statement by the IWF.

"We have no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been
held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world. We believe it's worth noting that the image is currently visible on Amazon, where the album can be freely purchased by UK residents. It
is available on thousands of websites that are accessible to the UK public," said Mike Godwin, legal counsel for Wikimedia. The cover has since been removed from ''Amazon.com''.

Wikimedia projects such as ''Wikinews'' state in their policies that they are "not censored". Wikimedia will continue discussions with the IWF in hopes of resolving the issue.