Over the weekend, six of the UK's largest broadband ISPs began inadvertently filtering user access to Wikipedia for all users. Why? The image of an under-aged nude girl on the cover of a 1970's Scorpions album was flagged by a child filtration watchlist created by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Because the system uses six proxy servers, Wikipedia can't verify unique IPs, resulting in the system being unavailable for many users. After a weekend of contentious debate, the IWF posted this to their website:That's code for they were wrong to censor art (albeit very bad art) being used in the context of historical reference. The decision highlights the inevitable problems created by Internet filters, which more often than not don't work properly and cast too wide a net in a quest to eliminate disgusting content like child porn; content which is often more successfully targeted at the source by law enforcement. While in this instance the IWF corrected their error, it makes you wonder what would have happened if the site in question didn't have the influence of Wikipedia.

The IWF scuff up comes just as Australia begins testing one of the largest and most complicated Internet filtering systems ever devised. As it stands, the filtration of child porn is being used as a global rallying cry by entertainment industry lobbyists and execs (and folks like NY AG Andrew Cuomo), who'd like to see ISPs saddled with the expensive and potentially futile responsibility of playing Internet content nannies.