The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation has been reviewing websites for illegal content and banning the offending webpages for years, but the IWF is now in the global spotlight after blacklisting the Wikipedia page for The Scorpions’ album “Virgin Killer.”
The Guardian reports the album cover, which “depicts a young naked girl with her genitals obscured by a crack in the camera lens,” was flagged last Thursday when their search engine found the image on Wikipedia. The IWF banned that page of Wikipedia the following day and is now considering possible ban of pages on the Amazon US website.
Sorry folks, you won’t be getting “Virgin Killer” for Christmas.
The band’s frontman, Rudolph (The red-nosed Virgin Killer) Schenke, responded to similar criminal allegations back in May, when the FBI in the U.S. did their own investigation into the album image’s legality on the internet. He told Loud! Magazine in Portugal (forgive me, my Portoguese is a little rusty):
“It was the publisher … we gave the lyrics to the publisher and then they told us that the idea was to put a broken glass in front of a naked girl. The most curious is that a few years ago we met the girl of the photo, who is now about 30 years old and she is very nice. In that time the publisher knew it would not have troubles with the album cover and the boss even said that the record would be published. Nowadays it would be impossible to make something like that especially with the outrage of children sexual abuse, and we wouldn’t do it again, in that time it was already complicated, but as we were young we thought we had the right to go farther.”
I hope that translation I copied is completely wrong because, if not, that has to be one of the worst responses possible. Is it just me or is Spinal Tap set to be the most truthful documentary ever made?
Smell The Glove.
