Wikipedia suffers IWF block

It's unusual for UK ISP stories to be doing the rounds amongst the tech press over a weekend, as they do seem to work Monday to Friday in the main.

Today the exception is the wide scale filtering of Wikipedia by ISPs in the UK due to a page featuring a controversial album cover with a partially naked underage child being added to the IWF's child abuse images list.

Coverage so far includes ZDNet and The Register (who almost never do stories on weekends), although both Wikipedia and Wikinews have stories on the blocking as well.

ZDNet quotes a list of ISPs affected as including

"Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal"

PlusNet parent company BT also uses the IWF feed to filter URLs, as in fact do all major UK ISPs.

The issue's not with the ISPs, although they'll get all the blame and all the scandal will hit them no doubt. The Home Office has made it very clear that all UK ISPs must apply the IWF filter of URLs that are not to be allowed to be viewable by UK ISP customers.

To quote (then) Home Office minister Vernon Coaker at the time (May 2006):

"We are setting a target that by the end of 2007, all ISPs offering broadband internet connectivity to the UK general public put in place technical measures that prevent their customers accessing websites containing illegal images of child abuse identified by the IWF."

If a URL is on the list erroneously, then it's down to the IWF to resolve the problem.

Updated: Wikipedia is saying the following on their site for those attempting to login to update articles on the affected ISPs:

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