The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt
to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the
information to be widely publicized. Examples of such attempts
include censoring a photograph, a number, a file, or a website (for
example via a cease-and-desist letter). Instead of being
suppressed, the information quickly receives extensive publicity,
often being widely mirrored across the Internet, or distributed on
file-sharing networks.[1][2]
The effect is related to John Gilmore's observation that "The Net
interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".[3]
Origin
Mike Masnick originally coined the term Streisand effect in
reference to a 2003 incident where Barbra Streisand sued
photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in
an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the
publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline
photographs, citing privacy concerns.[1][4][5] Adelman stated that
he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal
erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project.[6] As a
result of the case the picture became popular on the Internet, with
more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the next
month.[7]
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Examples
The Church of Scientology's unsuccessful attempts to get Internet
websites to delete a video of Tom Cruise speaking about Scientology
resulted in the creation of Project Chanology.[8] Similarly, the
church attempted to remove a series of OT document leaks from
Wikileaks during early April 2008. Wikileaks responded by vowing to
"release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material
next week", and promptly did so.[9]
On December 5, 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the
Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to a child pornography blacklist,
considering the album's cover art "a potentially illegal indecent
image of a child under the age of 18".[10] The article quickly
became one of the most popular pages on the site,[11] and the
publicity surrounding the censorship resulted in the image being
spread across other sites.[12] The IWF were later reported on the
BBC News website to have said "IWF's overriding objective is to
minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the
Internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the
opposite effect".[13] This effect was also noted by the IWF in
their statement about the removal of the URL from the black
list.[9][14]
An attempt at blocking an HD-DVD key from being published on Digg
caused uproar when cease-and-desist letters demanded that the code
be removed from several high-profile Web sites. This led to the
key's proliferation across other web sites and chat rooms, in
various formats, with one commentator describing it as having
become "the most famous number on the Internet". Within a month,
the key had been reprinted on over 280,000 pages, and had appeared
in a song on YouTube which had been played over 45,000
times.[15][16][17]
Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand, was portrayed with feet
superimposed over his head, an act extremely offensive to many Thai
people, in a video posted by a YouTube user named "Padidda". The
Thai government banned the site for lèse majesté, and many other
YouTube users responded by posting other clips even more offensive
to Bhumibol, leading to tens of thousands of views.[17]
Video clips portraying paparazzi footage of Brazilian television
personality Daniela Cicarelli having sex with her boyfriend on a
beach in Spain were uploaded to YouTube. Court injunctions, which
culminated in the blocking of YouTube in Brazil, proved
unsuccessful in preventing the spread of the video, and only raised
the ire of fans.[17]