After the Internet Watch Foundation banned a Wikipedia page containing the image of a nude girl, the civil society questions whether we should incline to content regulation or freedom of expression. The watchdog’s decision to block the URL of the article is opened to discussion also because the image hadn’t been officially flagged as illicit whatsoever.

The dispute started when the International Watch Foundation, a British NGO, had put an URL linking to Wikipedia on their blacklist. The URL pointed to an article about an album of a heavy-metal band, the Scorpions. The article contained an image of the album cover which depicted a nude girl. A Wikipedia contributor stated that, even though it’s easy to see why the image is considered to be distasteful, it is still not illegal. Also, he pointed that the image is available in books found in U.K. libraries and wondered whether “the police [are] going to go into those libraries and rip out the offending page.”

It seems that the image was investigated by the FBI in May, this year. Yet, the investigation didn’t reach any result and, thus, the image was never considered to be illegal. Also users are questioning whether it is appropriate that one nongovernment-affiliated organization should have the right to decide over the legality of the content on the Internet.

The IWF’s blacklist is constantly updated and sent to ISPs which automatically block access to those locations. The British users of Wikipedia argued that they were no longer able to access the editing feature following the IWF ban. The Internet Watch Foundation was reported about the image through a submission tool available on the organization’s website. The foundation’s blacklist blocks the access of approximately 95% of British residential Internet users.