A Wikipedia article was censored for the first time in UK because of an article describing the fourth studio album of German rock band Scorpions, Virgin Killer. The cover art shows a young girl, possibly under aged, posing nude with her intimate parts covered by a broken glass effect that is part of the picture.  

The cover is very suggestive, as the young girl is sitting in an almost sexy pose and the words “Virgin Killer” in red just make the image complete and ultimately offensive. The cover art for this album was pretty controversial at its time too, as in 1976 it managed to attract attention outside Europe and in the US.

The broken glass effect covering the girl’s genitals is of very bad taste, as the whole picture is. When asked about the cover art for this album, member of Scorpions declared that they didn’t come up with the idea, as their covers were designed by someone else. The album is among the attempts of the band to switch from psychedelic music to hard rock and it contains tracks like “Pictured Life”, “Catch Your Train,” “In Your Park,” “Backstage Queen,” “Virgin Killer” and others.

2008 Controversy

Recently, the article providing data about the album “Virgin Killer” has been blacklisted in the UK, because of the fact that it shows the offensive cover art, the album was initially launched with. Some have expressed their opinions regarding the blacklisting of the Wikipedia article, claiming that providing data of a controversy that happened many years ago is no way similar to showing child pornography.

 On the other hand, parents are doing the best they can to filter out all the dirty images and sites their children might encounter over the internet and Wikipedia seemed the last site they should have worried about. Maybe the perfect solution was that Wikipedia should have posted a disclaimer, announcing potential readers that the article may contain pictures that some may find offensive.

The Web site address of the article was added to a blacklist published by the Internet Watch Foundation a nonprofit group that works with law enforcement to block and remove child pornography from Web sites. Unfortunately, the measure taken has caused the entire site to malfunction, preventing UK users to edit articles, thus damaging the whole idea of an open source encyclopedia.

Censorship shouldn’t be taken lightly as any traces of it may lead to serious abuse of power and even though the picture is, indeed, offensive, other measures should have been taken, as the article’s main purpose is to offer information about a certain subject.