Wikifounder reports Wikiparent to FBI over 'child porn'

Bingo

It's not real. In my experience, almost all internet savvy people know the difference. That Larry would act as if he doesn't is... interesting. It sounds to me like he's just out to get Wiki(p|m)edia.

Respect for Wikipedia +1

Respect for Citizendium -5

So what?

Are any of those images of pre-pubescent people? Otherwise, it is just the usual stuff of any sex manual or medical text book.

There is nothing wrong with adult pornography except in the dirty minds of some people. There are even some people who want children to know nothing about sex until they are 21, so that they can exploit them more easily (such as some infamous Catholic priests).

not really

"makes me puke a little in my mouth." - I've never had that unless I'm ill. Maybe you should see a doctor.

Listing qty of pics in a category isn't really much evidence is it? I had a quick look at the penis category and it's mostly medical or information orientated. I'm sure there's quite a few porn like images in there somewhere put it's a tiny percentage of the whole, and as a public image bin I'm not surprised. They do monitor posts but only for illegal images - sometimes some illegal images slip thru' and have to be reported by a third party. No one is perfect.

Wiki commons is anything but a porn server.

Tax Exempt Porn

Yeah, so? What's wrong with that? My favorite porn site is also tax exempt. In fact I've been meaning to donate this year. It's another site Reg readers may be familiar with, in that it hosted the infamous Girls (Scream) Aloud story.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/06/obscene_publication_girls_aloud/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/29/obscenity_trial_off/

Nakedness = porn?

"The evidence clearly indicates that what Commons is, is a porn gallery server."

And you are the idiot who thinks that nakedness = porn. Obviously you haven't seen real porn or you are also a hypocrite. Religiousness goes without saying with both.

Tell me, are you by any chance a muslim, too?

Sorry you're unable to "get" this

The problem is that there is no level of child protection on either end.

On the upload end, photos of children in compromised situations and poses are uploaded frequently, and even if they are "deleted", they are still available to volunteer administrators -- some of whom are... wait for it... children!

On the user/viewer end, Wikipedia's trustees often tout the usefulness of Wikipedia in schools. I have heard Jimmy Wales say that he's happy to hear if 10- or 12-year-olds are "just doing research" that might include a stop at Wikipedia. Well, I for one don't want the 10- to 12-year-old kids in my school district that my property taxes pay for "researching" this at their school library:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Model_in_bondage.jpg

Thumb me down all you want, you Free Culture types with no kids and no jobs and no substantial tax contributions to your governments.

Fanning The Flames Of A Moral Panic

It's also worth noting that while child salvationists in the 'charidee' sector and the public sector (step forward, CEOP) continue to gleefully fan the flames of a very profitable paedogeddon, the NSPCC themselves have admitted, in the wake of the Baby P scandal, that 80+ children are murdered every year in England & Wales by parents or carers. Just think about that. 'Trusted adults', not CEOP's beloved 'online predators' or 'stranger danger', but parents and guardians.

While western societies tie themselves in moral knots over the heinous crime - the utter filth - of child nudity (which must now surely rank as one of the gravest threats to modern civilization if the levels of funding directed at fighting this 'global scourge' are anything to go by), children are busy being murdered not by paedomonsters, but by parents and guardians.

Not that anyone seems to care about that.

The images must be obscene

The law has additional requirements beyond just the images being "visual representations of the sexual abuse of children". They must either meet the legal definition of obscenity, or they must *both* depict specific acts *and* lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". These additional requirements are needed because the Supreme Court has thrown out previous laws as unconstitutional. If push comes to shove, there's a decent chance the second option this one offers prosecutors will be thrown out too because it's laxer than the usual obscenity standard.

Complain about the law?

Don't mind if I do. At best it's a useless feel-good law invented as a face-saving maneuver after SCOTUS slapped down congresses prior attempt to outlaw virtual porn. At worst it's an end-run around the constitution dreamed up by the same cretin who hung curtains to protect us from the Spirit of Justice's boob.

And no, it was not adopted last year, that says "passed by Congress AS OF Jan. 5, 2009", as of means on or before. It was in fact passed in 2003.

Re-definition of pedophilia

"It showed an obviously very young girl about to start performing fellatio. "

A drawn character. Tell me again, what is the age of a drawn character?

Not in your opinion (we know that and it's wrong), but as a provable fact.

Hysteria has gone far too far when _drawings_ are "pedophilia".

Name the persons involved, and when you can't, because those are not persons at all, but drawings, whine a lot anyway.

Re-define pedophilia so it doesn't need _persons_ anymore, while you are at it.

Facts indeed

"If you complain about that, you're complaining about the law."

Yes, the law is an ass.

Criminalising not-real images is a farce. Why not make it illegal for people to have impure thoughts of any description.

"The damage done is to societal standards of decency, that is if we have any left"

ROTFLMAO. Priceless.

Age matters

"Shortly after the report was made, a manga image of a girl on the Lolicon page was removed. It showed an obviously very young girl about to start performing fellatio. That is OK then?"

How old was she?

Looks can be deceptive, which is why we have ID cards to get access to fun stuff like beer.

I work with a woman who is 22 but would easily pass for 15 (she is tiny and youthful in appearence). If she put a school unform on and performed a sex act, what law is being broken?

As others have said the problem with this idea of criminalising drawings as pedophilia is that a made up picture cant have an age. What if the drawing was simply of a 19 year old who looked a bit younger than her age. Should that be illegal?

Fear of drawings / computer generated graphics is comical. At least with photographs it is likely that a *real* person has endured something horrific, but not with a drawing.

Should we sentence anyone who draws a picture of a gun to jail for possession of a firearm?

Hats off to the Grump

Well said on all counts.

Way to go The Grump

I liked how you spelled "religeon" and "obcessed" and "baning". Thanks for proving my point. Law-abiding taxpayers, for the most part, aren't commenting or thumb-voting here, because they have jobs to go to and families to raise, and they wouldn't want to BOTHER debating people who are afraid of "religeon".

school kid porn

You are correct. The school encyclopedias were permanently dog earred to the "good" pages. Then there were the National Geographic magazines... The "native" bare breasted women pictures accompanying some articles were *very* popular also. I know the time I took a black marker and drew brassieres on all the naked women' didn't go over well at all. (I wasn't being a prude, I was just a little bastard!)

eh ? ? ?

Who is David Gerard? Who, other than the uptight, somewhat repressed person posting in this thread, is Greg Kohs?

Erm, no. Sorry.

Wow, way to do the moral outrage with concern.

Wikipedia is not "paedophile" friendly. There is no "signal" that it condones criminal behaviour and certainly not simply because it contais bios and descriptions of Porn related topics. I cant imagine for one second that anyone is going to upload a picture involving a real live child (for example) to wiki simply because its too easy to trace the source (and I am not going to look because that would make me a criminal as well).

This spoiled the attempt at balanced concern:

"(Wikipedia's coverage of pornography is astoundingly comprehensive, especially for a site claiming to be a general-purpose information reference.) "

Wikis coverage of any topic is an indicator of how people are interested in it. Its coverage of most things is astoundingly comprehensive - which simply indicates the broad spectrum of public interests - which is about right.

The problem is *you* dont like porn and dont think it should be covered, so *you* have decided it is not suitable for a general purpose encyclopedia. It is blatantly obvious that *most* people do not think of wiki as a porn respoitory and they are certainly not stopping using it as a result.

I dont understand your final point - are you saying that to prevent censorship, wiki should censor itself? Doesnt that defeat the purpose?

Not liking porn, or being weirdly offended by cartoons, is not grounds to claim moral rights over Wikipedia. If the government of your country is so oppressive that they will ban wikipedia because it has some naughty pictures on then there is a bigger problem to sort out and maybe you need the Shah back.

re: "thoughtcrime"

But unlike regular obscenity laws (which are despicable enough) this law criminalizes not only publication, but mere possession of certain drawings. And drawings, just like words, are nothing but thoughts in fixed form. If you took the same bunch of pixels/ink rearranged them to represent a different thought would it still be illegal? Of course not.

And so, I don't think it's unfair at all to call it a thoughtcrime.