Richard says:

I have swapped several emails with Stephen Toulouse, the Microsoft staffer who seems to be responsible for the press briefings on this (he was the one who gave the followup story to Kotaku). Firstly, he confirmed my enforced change was /not/ because my tag is the same as my name and /was/ because my tag is deemed to be offensive. I've sent him the following as an email querying a few more details.

Ah, good. Thank you for clearing that up. I also noticed last night that I cannot enter my last name in the Real Name field of my Xbox profile, although I can put it in the Bio section — does it become less offensive a few inches further down the screen? I tried Heterowood and Homowood too (both were barred) but Straightwood was allowed, oddly. Even the words "Unix" and "Linux" seem to be barred from the Real Name field, which I find rather bizarre. I also note that this was a system generated response, and not the result of a complaint about me.

So, what about the international issues? Wanker is quite a common surname in Germany, and is very rude to British people but (I understand) doesn't have as strong a connotation to the Americans — I'm pretty sure I've heard it on the Simpsons. Would that be allowed? What about swear words in foreign languages, how do you handle that case?

Basically, because of the international issue I think Microsoft haven't thought this through. I am conducting a bit of investigative journalism along those lines: getting two friends to register a gamertag that is outrageously obscene but in an obscure-ish language, then getting someone else to file a complaint about it. Want to bet the complaint will be ignored? I think MS are adopting a US-centric point of view here and I don't think that is acceptable for an international service like Live. If you're going to start censoring words you have to do it in all the languages active on Live.

Ball's in your court, Microsoft.

Here's Varun's letter:

Today, I discovered I couldn't connect to Xbox Live. After calling "Shanya" at Xbox Live (could not understand her, despite trying very hard), I was told that the Xbox Live service was down. How odd - everybody else, including my flatmate, on the same console is able to connect.

So I called back and "Ryan" answered. Ryan spent 35 minutes diagnosing my issue, making me connect, disconnect, reconnect and otherwise delete, undelete and trash my account. All the while, I explained to him that it clearly was NOT an issue with the connection, and not an issue on my end. After struggling to read his script, he finally took pity on me and followed my instructions to see whether there was anything wrong with my account. Sure enough, there was.

The system had tagged my Gamertag as offensive. What was my Gamertag? First name + last name.

What?!

That's right - my first name + last name is an offensive combination to the people who run Xbox Live. I asked Ryan what to do and he suggested changing the name order around.

So I've been forced to change my Gamertag - which means all the time that I've been using Xbox Live (about 30 months), my name has been offensive and apparently in violation of their terms, but they didn't bother to check or notify me or... well, do anything, really, except disconnect me today. I note that they updated the terms in 2005, twice in 2006, once in 2007 and somehow, I was in compliance with those terms all this time. Yet despite no change in the terms since June 2007, I am now in violation of those same terms. Explaining all this to the supervisor, "Lawrence", on the phone resulted in long, unintelligible mumbles (it was as if he arbitrarily picked words and letters out of the dictionary, strung them together, and then ran the whole gibberish through a randomizer), I was told that it was for my own security and protection they had decided that my name was offensive. Oh and the name that I had spent a while building an identity around? Yeah, there's no compensation for that. Nor did my preferences transfer over. In fact, I'm completely SOL...

Oh, for pete's sake, Microsoft.

After that fuss t'other day when Xbox Live banned the gamertag TheGayerGamer, I wondered if this would happen; lo and behold it has. They've banned my gamertag too. What makes this funny is that my old tag is just my name — Gaywood is my surname, which they could easily verify from my Live profile etc. I can't decide if I'm amused or annoyed by this.

Thought you might like to note this in your coverage of the story. I'd suspect anyone with the string "gay" in their name is going to get a free new Gamertag soon. I haven't played much on public live servers of late, so I suspect this is more likely to be down to an automated script trawling the database rather than individual tags that have been complained about. So, where does this end? What if my home address is in Scunthorpe?

Our sister site Kotaku obtained Mr. Gaywood's driver's license, which is more than Microsoft bothered to do:

PREVIOUSLY: "Gay" Player Name Banned By Xbox Live

1. Trans fats
   Banned in: New York City
2. Raw milk
   Banned in: 21 states
3. Absinthe
   Banned in: The U.S. (sort of: Absinthe is legal in the United States, contrary to popular belief, as long as the spirit's levels of thujone - a toxic chemical present in wormwood, one of the herbs used to make absinthe - do not surpass the Food and Drug Administration's limit of 10 parts per million.)
4. Foie Gras
   Banned in: Chicago
5. Uncertified Chilean sea bass
   Banned in: The U.S.
6. Horse meat
   Banned in: California, Illinois and other states
7. Wild Beluga caviar
   Banned in: The U.S.
8. Shark fins
   Banned in: The U.S.
9. High-fructose corn syrup
   On the endangered list in: San Francisco

What do you think of food bans? Some people are willing to risk breaking laws to smuggle raw milk across state lines... only to get diphtheria. Are you among them?

9 forbidden foods [Fortune Small Business] (Thanks, Stacy!)
(Photo: Unhindered By Talent )

From the NYT:

Lawmakers said that if Mr. Reid had used a lighter, instead of matches, he might have been able to ignite the bomb, but Kip Hawley, assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview on Thursday that the ban had done little to improve aviation security because small batteries could be used to set off a bomb.

Matches have never been prohibited on flights.

"Taking lighters away is security theater," Mr. Hawley said. "It trivializes the security process."

The policy change, which is to go into effect on Aug. 4, applies to disposable butane lighters, like Bics, and refillable lighters, like Zippos. Torch lighters, which have thin, hotter flames, will continue to be banned.

Hey Hawley... what about sippy cups and water bottles?

U.S. Will Allow Most Types of Lighters on Planes [NYT]
(Photo:foorious)

flag8 - Sorry, the RIAA is not a law-making body.

somnambulist - PR flack for United/Star Alliance trying to spread disinformation and sow unrest in any United-related post. There's below the line marketing, and then there's below the belt. Don't you have some posterboard to feed into a composter?

Heymoe - If you hate Consumerist so much, leave.

The Tourist - Always takes retailer's side. Insults consumers. Get back to the floor, young man, there's VCRs to be sold. Take those hands out of your packet. We're instituting a new policy where if any other employee or manager catches you with your hands in your pocket, you have to drop a quarter in this jar. At the end of the week, we'll draw straws to see which manager gets to keep the jar.

scoobydoo - Responds to a post on a neat, consumer-positive, company policy, by half-joking that it will disappear because now thousands of people will abuse it. If that's true, why don't we just turn off the blog. Let's skin fish on Alaskan fishing boats because obviously what we're doing here isn't working.

joeylopez, wholzem, bestbuy-staff - Retail trolls. Digg's detritus.

— BEN POPKEN

BANNED

Miss_smartypants: Troll.
Ghost_of_Awesomist: Insisted that the $55 Mac and Cheese customer was a "rube" who got what he deserved.
goaway147: Don't rant about the immorality of the Morning Deals.
JB3: Saw no similarity between a swastika and a totenkopf. Disparaged those that did with a litany of hateful words and phrases. Go figure.

A flux of new commenters means axing the old; with the dawn so comes the duck! — BEN POPKEN