Channel 4 was fun. I recorded a sequence of soundbites for them to pick’n’choose from. News story with video — their Flash player is crappy, crappy, crappy shit and doesn’t buffer. I look dead. “UNBLOCK WIKIPEDIA OR TEH INTARWEB ZOMBIES WILL EAT YOUR BRAINS.” The IWF head came across as a curtain-twitching weasel.
A small amount of gleeful dancing on the skulls of the IWF today. Next trick is to get a better UK press corps together for Wikimedia. Mostly it’s reserve duty. I’m really annoyed we didn’t have someone spare for Sky News (I was doing Channel 4 at the same time) as the reporter was actually technically clueful. Any Wikipedia editors here who think they could talk in soundbites on telly if needed?
By the way, the really massive IWF fail, which didn’t come out in the press coverage: they blocked the page about the album, and they blocked the page for the image, but they didn’t block the image itself.
The next question is what happens next. The filtering infrastructure melted when faced with filtering a top 10 site; they’re not going to give up and go away, so I expect them to (a) beef it up (b) make it less evident — we spotted this by the collateral damage.
I also predict a flood of helpful citizenry going to the IWF reporting page and entering any image on any top 10 website that might be “potentially illegal.” Much as the head of the IWF is “potentially a fabulous drag queen.”
I wasn’t aware before going on it just how important Radio 4 Today is. In fact, I’d barely heard of it. Do I get deported now?