Wikimedia, Meet the U.S. Government

Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira on May 8th, 2008

Is anyone else getting the feeling that safe harbor legislation for sites that host user-generated content are going to be changing soon?

The uber-conservative World Net Daily (WND) is reporting that the FBI is investigating reports of child pornography on Wikipedia, starting with a nude album cover from the 1976 Scorpions album Virgin Killer. The original album cover was banned in the U.S. when it was released because of its depiction of a naked pre-pubescent girl. As of the time I'm writing this post (almost 1:00 PM EDT), the picture is still up on the site.

The Wikimedia Foundation, in their usual brush-off that will probably come back to haunt us later when it comes to safe harbor laws, claim that since the site is community-run, they have no control over the content posted, and that any complaints about inappropriate material are forwarded to Wikpedia editors, who then remove the content at their own discretion.

WND claims there are other images that would be far more controversial than even the image cited in the investigation, with images of hard-core pornography on certain entries on the site. Add to all this the recent controversy over the deputy director of Wikimedia, Erik Möller, after an article published on Valleywag suggested that his activity on Wikipedia often centered on topics of pedophilia and child sexuality, and that some statements he had made could be construed that either he supported pedophilia, or saw no problem with it.

The Geek Media went so far as to publish an editorial after the Valleywag article, and noted that no page for Möller exists on Wikipedia, and that a link to him sends the user on an automatic redirect to the page for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Of course, there's been no coverage from any mainstream press, and this could be the result of a lot of rumor-mongering. However, there hasn't been any huge denial on the part of the embattled Wikimedia Foundation, who have already been dealing with the negative press over co-founder Jimmy Wales' activities.

It may be time for some huge changes at both The Wikimedia Foundation as well as Wikipedia. If they want to be taken seriously as a source of information, they have to look like a professionally-run organization, and none of the news that's been made by the organization as a whole has done that. Wikipedia may end up forever tarnished by the perception, if not the actions, of the big names associated with it, and if they want to be anything more than an early footnote in the eventual history of user-generated content, they need to clean up their image. This isn't helping.

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