Internauts in the U.K. have been blocked from viewing a certain article about an album from the German rock band the scorpions due to the album’s cover depicting a nude pre-teen. Technical issues relating to the block have also rendered U.K. denizens unable to edit Wikipedia and log into their accounts.

The site was blacklisted by a U.K. regulatory agency, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) on Saturday on grounds that a user reported the article in question as child sexual abuse, and its hotline analysts determined that the picture indecent was possibly illegal due the girl appearing to be under 18.

''The IWF does not issue takedown notices to ISPs or hosting companies outside the UK, but we did advise one of our partner Hotlines abroad and our law enforcement partner agency of our assessment,'' the group stated on its Web site. ''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.''

The album with the controversial cover is Virgin Killer, which the scorpions released 32 years ago.

The ban resulted in performance problems with the entire site, as the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, said that 95% of U.K. ISPs use the IWF blacklist.

Wikimedia Foundation’s general counsel Mike Godwin said the organization has no reason to believe that the image had been found illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world, and currently visible on Amazon, where it can be seen and the album purchased by anyone in the U.K., not to mention available on any number of websites accessible to the U.K. public.

The Wikimedia foundation has requested that the IWF remove Wikipedia from its blacklist.