That image to the right, when uncensored, is the cover to German heavy metal band Scorpions’ 1976 album “Virgin Killer”. It was the centre of a storm yesterday after six British ISPs blocked their subscribers from accessing pages that featured it, including Wikipedia.

As well as the block of the offending page, another result was that Wikipedia editors and administrators in the UK became suddenly unable to edit pages when not logged in. This has prompted an uproar amongst users of the site – which relies on editing by volunteers for its content.