Recently, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stated he was planning to sue the group Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which blacklisted the website in the United Kingdom for a nude photo on an album cover that was featured alongside an article on the site.

Nevertheless, since the IWF is not a governing institution, a legal action could be impossible to file against it, as Wales himself told Britain’s Channel 4 he had been informed, during an exclusive interview with the broadcaster.

This week-end, the Internet Watch Foundation added Wikipedia to a list of websites containing potentially illegal material, after a user notified them about a picture of an underage nude girl who appeared on the cover of the Scorpions’ 1976 album „Virgin Killer.”

The Wikimedia Foundation, which is a nonprofit charitable organization that operates the Wikipedia website, has informed that 90 percent of ISPs in the United Kingdom usually blocked the websites that appeared in the IWF’s list.

Nevertheless, Jimmy Wales said he believed that the Foundation had over-reached their authority regarding the photo and that he was less concerned about the image per se than about the way the IWF had acted in the matter.

The IWF revealed that their intention had not been to block access to the online encyclopedia, still U.K. volunteers were prevented from editing articles on Wikipedia, while many users complained about not having been able to surf the site at all.

During the interview with Channel 4, Wales said that online retailers also published the photo on their websites, claiming that having taken aim at Wikipedia had been unfair of the IWF.

Moreover, he stated that 25 percent of Wikipedia’s content came from United Kingdom Internet users, which rendered the blacklisting a form of censorship.