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Scorpions Land Amazon US In Trouble
Toby Cook , December 8th, 2008 14:21

Amazon US may be ‘blocked’ for hosting picture of Virgin Killer sleeve.

The Scorpions

Techies at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are said to be reviewing their decision to list as child pornography the image on one version of the Scorpions album Virgin Killer - which features a very young, very naked girl with a crack obscuring her genitals - hosted on Wikipedia, and might yet add Amazon US to a list of “Blocked” sites for featuring it.

Director of communications for IWF, Sarah Robertson, explained that the Scorpions image was deemed to be “one, on a scale of one to five, where one is deemed to be the least offensive”, and was judged to be classed as: “Erotic posing with no sexual activity.”

Friday’s decision to block the image prevented UK contributors from editing the Wikipedia site, and prevented some people from viewing it altogether.

Although the decision is under review, Robertson declined to comment as to weather Amazon would be blocked, although she did confirm that the Amazon page containing the image had been referred today. She added that no decision would be taken whilst the review of the original decision was in progress.

This scenario could prove disastrous for Amazon US, as next week is expected to be the busiest pre-Christmas week for internet shopping.

See the Quietus’ list of controversial and ill thought out albums here.