Four weeks after birthing a nationwide Wikipedia edit
ban, Britain's child porn blacklist has led at least one
ISP to muzzle the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine -
an 85 billion page web history dating back to 1996.
According to multiple customers of Demon Internet - now
owned by Brit telecom Thus - the London-based ISP is blocking
access to all sites stored in the archive. When they query
the Wayback Machine, hoping to retrieve archived pages,
customers are met with generic "not found" error
pages. But judging from their urls, these pages are generated
by a web filter based on the blacklist compiled by the
Internet Watch Foundation, a government-backed organization
charged with policing online pornography.
One Demon customer tells us he was unable to visit archived
versions of websites run by the BBC, Parliament, the United
Nations, the Internet Watch Foundation, Demon Internet,
and Thus. In other words, this customer points out, Thus
is blocking its own web history. "It is nuts,"
he says.
(Article continues below)
His experience is confirmed by other Demon customers
posting to a Demon newsgroup here.
We have contacted both Thus and the Internet Watch Foundation,
but they did not receive our messages until after UK business
hours. When they respond, we will update this story.
