Block Wikipedia until it drops porn

No, we're not for censorship. No, we're not for abandoning the First Amendment. But we do offer a bit of advice to the folks at Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia: Drop the kiddie porn from your site, do it now and don't let it reappear. If not, you'll lose the credibility you have with most of middle America if not face federal child porn charges.
We also offer some advice to parents: Block the Web site from your children unless and until it removes the "Virgin Killer" photo.

Yes, the Internet is host to an endless sewer of pornography, but it also offers a vast trove of useful information, and Wikipedia has played a role in presenting valuable information in a simple, organized and mostly credible fashion. But now the Web site has ventured into porn, and for some reason its administrators don't seem to know what to do.

What's stirring the furor is an entry for the 1976 album "Virgin Killer" by the German heavy metal band Scorpions, which was banned in the United States because its original cover featured a pre-pubescent girl - nude, in a provocative pose.

Confronted in the 1970s with accusations of using kiddie porn to peddle their album, the band claimed the cover was something sympathetic. What a bunch of mumbo jumbo,  rock star nonsense. The band, for its own selfish gain, decided to distribute music wrapped in kiddie porn.

The FBI is reviewing the image, as it appears on Wikipedia, to determine whether it violates U.S. child porn and obscenity laws today. Clearly it violated them in 1976, because the album was banned. If the FBI considers it OK today, that will only reveal that American standards have dipped so far that we now accept pornographic public displays of child exploitation.

And don't be surprised if that's the case, after decades of pop-star girls earning millions for parading themselves like tramps in the name of selling records. Even the Hannah Montana actress has gone sensual.

The picture is indisputably inappropriate for a general audience research tool. It may or may not be considered illegal by the FBI, which has to base its determination on our incredibly convoluted body of judicial precedent best summed up with the famous words of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."

But this isn't first and foremost about the FBI's opinion. For Wikipedia administrators, the mere fact FBI investigators have launched an investigation should tell them it's beneath their standards. And if it's not, parents should begin to immediately add Wikipedia to their lists of Web sites children must avoid.