"Amazon temporarily gags Spore critics, deletes and restores all customer reviews" [ArsTechnica] (Thanks to Nathan!)

Credit card companies successfully nixed a Mythbusters segment exposing RFID's security flaws, according to Arbiter of Truth and Mythbusters co-host, Adam Savage.

Despite increasingly widespread use in passports and credit cards, radio-frequency identification is notoriously insecure. Hackers have successfully hijacked RFID-enabled credit cards from almost 70-feet away. Mythbusters had arranged a conference call with Texas Instruments to explore a similarly depressing demonstration.

Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They were way, way outgunned and they absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it.

In related news, here's a post showing how to steal RFID credit card information with $8 worth of equipment from eBay.

Arphid Watch: Mythbusters and RFID [Wired via BoingBoing and Caveat Emptor]
(Photo: Getty)

Gil was stuck in an American Airlines Admiral's Club for 5 hours waiting for his flight back to L.A., so he tried to access the South Park website to help pass the time. What he got instead was the screen here, saying that the site had been blocked because it's considered "tasteless." We've seen the same message at a Cosi restaurant in NYC. Thanks, companies, for protecting our delicate sensibilities! We're going to go get the vapors now.

Here's Gil's account:

I'm stuck in the Admiral's Club in Narita Airport for another 5 hours in Japan because AA cancelled my flight to LA. To kill time I figured I catch up on my South Park episodes and watch the last few shows. I type in www.southparkstudios and settle in for some quality comedy and satire, but then I get the attached message from AA's network nannies.
 
Tasteless? Who decided that? What makes this almost sublimely ironic is the picture of the naughty Japanese lady cop they use as an image for the blocking page. They apparently consider that tasteful.
 
I went through to see what else they block but couldn't find anything else. Apparently serial killing (Dexter), selling dope (Weeds), trashy evening soaps (Desperate Housewives), and crappy South Park wannabees (Family Guy) are considered acceptable.

Just for the hell of it, we went to the Fortinet website (fortiguardcenter.com) and requested a review of their classification on southparkstudios.com. Their drop-down list of possible categories for web content is amusing all by itself—it's a compendium of Things That People Take Offense At, from abortion to homosexuality to marijuana to tobacco.

Mr. [redacted]:

The situation with the Web site RateMyCop was absolutely NOT about censorship in ANY way.

The site's operator has publicly disclosed the concerns were over bandwidth. More accurately, Go Daddy's concerns were about how the RateMyCop site was far exceeding the amount of server usage for which it had contracted.

This customer paid for a shared server plan. The connections to his site were six times more than an entire 'shared server' accommodates. While he was paying for a service that cost $14.99 a month, his site actually required a much more extensive set-up.

Basically, he was paying for compact car, when he really needed a semi-truck.

The customer was not willing to work with our staff to resolve the issue.

While the "censorship" allegations certainly make for an edgy "story," they simply had nothing to do with this situation.

- Go Daddy
Office of the President

(Thanks to Mike!)

"Go Daddy Shuts Down RateMyCop Watchdog Site"
"GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com" [Wired]

RELATED
RateMyCop.com

One Consumerist reader sent Go Daddy the following letter this morning to voice his concerns that the company might be selectively censoring content (which certainly is within Go Daddy's right, but might turn off some customers):

I am writing to express my concern over Go Daddy's recent action in taking down the "RateMyCop.com" site hosted for one of your customers. Recent media attention has raised some controversy and your action was to suspend the site and post an "oops" page asking for the site's owner to contact you.

While I'm not necessarily a fan of "RateMyCop" or its message, the content of this site did not violate any laws, nor did it violate any normal standards of decency. That Go Daddy would censor this site, without warning or consultation to the site's owner, is deeply troubling to me.

I have been a Go Daddy customer for many years, and recently went through significant steps to transfer the last of my domains from previous registrars/hosts to consolidate under Go Daddy. I am now seriously considering taking my business elsewhere.

My domains are "hobby" websites, which I'm sure makes them very profitable for Go Daddy because I pay for Premium level services but place very little load on your systems, in that traffic is steady but not massive. I pay for this type of hosting so that I have absolute control over the content and presentation of my domains, free from advertising, bias, or other restrictions.

If Go Daddy is going to insist that constitutional protections extending to publications on other media do not apply when published on Go Daddy's servers, then I'm afraid I will feel the need to publish my speech elsewhere. And I promise to do so in as noisy and spectacular a manner as possible.

I look forward to hearing your response, and furthermore hope that you will reconsider your policies regarding censoring the content of the sites you are paid to publish.

"GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com" [Wired]

RELATED
RateMyCop.com

The drawings, of a scene in an art museum, feature cartoonish depictions of a nude painting and statue. Hardly anything to freak out over, but the publisher, Boyds Mills Press, was so afraid of angry parents that they sheepishly asked the author to censor herself.

This didn't go over so well in Germany. From Spiegel:

American kiddies, obviously, could never be expected to handle such a depiction of the human body. The US publisher, somewhat awkwardly, asked if they could be removed.

The author, not surprisingly, considers the request to be absurd. The statue's mini-willy, the author points out, is hardly even a half-millimeter long. And the naked woman hanging on the wall? Hardly a realistic depiction of the female anatomy. The US publisher, says Berner, was embarrassed to ask for the changes, but they were even more afraid of how American mommies and daddies might react if junior were exposed to such pornography.

For the author, any kind of self-censorship was completely out of the question. She said she could maybe have lived with putting black bars in front of the problem spots, but "invisible censorship" was out. "If you're going to censor something, then the reader should be aware of it," she told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

It's sad but not surprising that the publisher reacted the way they did. A tiny drawing of a wang in a kid's book is just the sort of unsubstantial, yet mildly controversial issue that local TV news teams really enjoy. In a country where you can get your 15 minutes of fame from complaining about talking dolls that "swear" if you listen really, really hard, and the use of the word "scrotum" in a Newbery Medal winning children's book causes apoplexy in librarians, the publisher was probably less concerned about offending your average parent than it was about having to "take tiny penis drawings seriously" on the nightly news. So it goes.

US Publisher Turns away from Cartoon Nudity [Spiegel]
US publisher relents on German children's book [EarthTimes]

[Here's the rest of the original post.] The second problem is that, instead of temporarily locking her pics away from public view or otherwise disabling them, Google removed them entirely from its servers, including all the comments and corresponding sense of community that had been built up around them. This is why you should never trust a corporation to be the primary steward of your personal info, and why we distrust services like Google Docs for anything more than temporary uses.

Here's what Laura received from Google after the photos were deleted:

Please be advised that we have recently received reports that inappropriate content has been posted to your Picasa Web Albums account. One or more photos displayed in your gallery violates our Program Policies and has been removed.

Our Policies state that images displayed on picasaweb.google.com cannot contain obscenity, pornography, promotions of hate, incitement of violence, or spam, malicious code, or viruses. Please note that if you continue to violate these Program Policies, we may suspend your Picasa Web Albums account.

I looked at their policy & the only thing I can think of that they must think I violated was nudity. Not even all of my pictures showed the chest area; some of them were just closeups of incisions, drains, and stuff. But they zapped the whole album. There aren't even any nipples in my pictures!!!

And I even had a warning on the click-through to the album saying these are post-surgery pictures, they may be disturbing, etc.

Amazingly, I was able to find plenty of pictures of 'normal' breasts on Picasa, some that show nipples, some where the nipple is barely concealed by a hand or clothes or something.

Some friends suggested Picasa might still have backups of my captions and comments. I have sent a letter asking for my stuff back, and I posted this info to my breast cancer support community in case they want to remove or backup their own albums.

My husband called Google's main telephone number and got an operator who would only give him the email address of the Google legal department. He would not give us even the name of anyone who works in the legal department, any contact info for the public relations department, or indeed, even his own name. Just that he was a "general operator." I don't understand the secrecy. Isn't this a publicly-traded company?

"AT&T respects freedom of expression and believes it is a foundation of our free society to express differing points of view. AT&T will not terminate, disconnect or suspend service because of the views you or we express on public policy matters, political issues or political campaigns."

That's very sweet of them to say. Really. Though, we're skeptical of how well, "But it says right here, they respect the freedom of expression as a foundation of a free society!" would hold up in court...

The new language doesn't seem to fully constitute the "make[ing] clear that we do not terminate service because a customer expresses their opinion about AT&T" they promised last week. The term "Public policy" always refers to government actions. We don't see where it explicitly says AT&T will not terminate your contract if you criticize aspects of AT&T's service.

5.1 Suspension/Termination. AT&T respects freedom of expression and believes it is a foundation of our free society to express differing points of view. AT&T will not terminate, disconnect or suspend service because of the views you or we express on public policy matters, political issues or political campaigns. However, AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; or (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines. Your Service may be suspended or terminated if your payment is past due and such condition continues un-remedied for thirty (30) days. Termination or suspension by AT&T of Service also constitutes termination or suspension (as applicable) of your license to use any Software. AT&T may also terminate or suspend your Service if you provide false or inaccurate information that is required for the provision of Service or is necessary to allow AT&T to bill you for Service.

[AT&T TOS]
AT&T changes Terms of Service — "Freedom of expression is a foundation of a free society" [BoingBoing]
AT&T is OK with you saying they suck [Valleywag]

PREVIOUSLY:
After Blogs Cry "Censorship," AT&T Says It Will Change Terms Of Service
AT&T Promises To Not Terminate Your Service For Criticizing Them
AT&T And Verizon Can Cancel Service Of Subscribers Who "Damage" Their "Reputation"
(Photo: Charlie Brewer)

We are revising the terms of service to clarify our intent. The language in question will be revised to reflect AT&T's respect for our customers' right to express opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. And we will make clear that we do not terminate service because a customer expresses their opinion about AT&T.

AT&T Changes its 'Terms of Service' [GigaOM] (Thanks to David!)
AT&T tells me it will revise "damage our name" language in TOS [ZDnet]
PREVIOUSLY: AT&T Promises To Not Terminate Your Service For Criticizing Them
AT&T And Verizon Can Cancel Service Of Subscribers Who "Damage" Their "Reputation"
(Photo: gorriti)

AT&T vows to use Terms of Service for good, not censorship [Ars Technica via BoingBoing]
PREVIOUSLY: AT&T And Verizon Can Cancel Service Of Subscribers Who "Damage" Their "Reputation"
(Photo: emerald isle druid)

"5.1 Suspension/Termination. ...AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes ...(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."

Verizon Online has a similar clause under their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP):"3. You may NOT use the Service as follows: ...(j) to damage the name or reputation of Verizon, its parent, affiliates and subsidiaries, or any third parties."

In other news, you can escape your AT&T DSL and Verizon Online contracts without early termination fee by talking smack about your ISP.

It's worth noting, however, that we can't figure out how to access the AT&T TOS from the main page, only by going directly to that link, so we have to wonder if it's actually the official TOS or something else.

New AT&T terms of service: We'll cut off your Internet connection for criticizing us [BoingBoing] (Thanks to Saiwen1)
(Photo: Yogi)

Verizon had initially claimed that the text messages violated their policy against messages that were "highly controversial." From the WSJ:

In a statement Thursday, Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said, "The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident."

He added, "Upon learning about this situation, senior Verizon Wireless executives immediately reviewed the decision and determined it was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy."

Verizon Wireless said Thursday its policy had been developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters "adequately protected customers from unwanted messages." It was designed, the company said, to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.

Verizon Wireless Ends Ban On Abortion-Rights Group [WSJ]
(Photo:meghannmarco)

"[The muting was] a major mistake by a webcast vendor and completely contrary to our policy. We are working closely with the vendor and the band to post the song in its entirety on this site and ensure that this does not happen again."

Pearl Jam, known for taking strong public stands on political and market issues, published the following on their website and are using the incident as an example of why we need net neutrality:

"This troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media."

Resources: www.pearljam.com

AT&T Silences Pearl Jam; Gives 'Net Neutrality' Proponents Ammunition [Forbes]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update
Several readers have correctly pointed out that net neutrality is not about either free speech or corporate censorship. Net neutrality specifically refers to the concept of an open network, one free of restrictions on the type of equipment used on it or the mode of communication. In practical terms, net neutrality is concerned with protecting the "last mile" of residential broadband networks so that individual ISPs can't block services or technology wholesale, without allowing for competition.

Instances such as the Pearl Jam censorship, even if they are accidental as AT&T says, serve as easy ammunition for net neutrality proponents because they remind consumers of how corporations and free speech don't always mix. AT&T is not obligated to give Pearl Jam an open platform to speak politically; the fear, however, is that if companies like AT&T controlled the last mile, they could effectively stamp out any competition—and then they could control what the customer watches, hears, or reads. The Pearl Jam incident is a weak argument since AT&T was the commercial sponsor of the webcast, but because censorship is such an emotional topic, we're not surprised it's being used. (And because it's being used, weak or not, the tag "net neutrality" remains valid.)

We're sure some readers have far more knowledge about this topic than we do, and we invite them to elaborate on the topic or politely correct us in the comments below.

Resources:
Wikipedia entry on network neutrality
ACLU page that explains some net neutrality issues in plain English
Public Knowledge Net Neutrality White Paper
3-minute video explaining net neutrality

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(Photo: Getty)

What's a "fleeting" swear word? Well, say Bono says, "Hey this is f*cking great!" on live TV, or a girl wears a shirt that says, "F*ck" a certain sports team and they show her on TV. A recent court decision said that the network could not be fined if they let it slip by accidentally.

Now this new bill is aimed at closing this "loophole."

The bill, called the "Protecting Children From Indecent Programming Act," seeks to assert that even "a single word or image may be considered indecent."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how your representatives spend their time. Good thing, too. We hear that 13 children who were watching that football game killed their parents after seeing that shirt. Not really.

S. 1780 (PDF) [via Ars Technica]
(Photo:Deadspin)

ReputationDefender also sent a takedown request to Consumerist, a Gawker Media blog that had written about a man who was briefly jailed for harassment after repeatedly calling online travel agent Priceline.com Inc. for a refund. The letter asked the blog to remove or alter the archived post, saying it was "outdated and disturbing" to its client. Consumerist editor Ben Popken blasted the request with a profanely titled entry, calling it an attempt at censorship. "It's not like we're spreading libel," he said. "They were trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube."

ReputationDefender's Mr. Fertik said the company is no longer sending letters to irreverent blogs like Consumerist, which may be more likely to mock the company's efforts. "We are no longer taking those kinds of risks with those kinds of outlets," he said.

Firms Tidy Up Clients' Bad Online Reputations [WSJ]

PREVIOUSLY:
Ronnie Segev & ReputationDefender Can Eat A Dick
Priceline Has Customer Arrested for Diligent Refund Attempt

— BEN POPKEN

RELATED: A good explanation of what this is all about, over at BoingBoing.
PREVIOUSLY: Digg Goes Ape$#@*!

BEFORE

AFTER

Now, every single story on the front page contains the cracked number in some way.

The madness began after not only was the initial story deleted, but the user's account was deleted as well. Other people who submitted stories linking to the number also got their accounts deleted and their sites received takedown notices. Even people who submitted stories about the deleting of other accounts, stories which did not contain the number, also got deleted. That's when things really got bonkers.

Users are hiding the number in all sorts ways. One story claimed that a new Jules Verne manuscript was found, entitled, "09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:... Leagues Under the Sea." Others link to pictures of the number. A new one says Jesus has "the secret key." Others coyly ask, "anyone know what this number is?" Diggers are digging the stories like crazy, trying to keep the number on the front page and thumb their nose at Digg and the MPAA.

Screencap of the chaos, inside...

Fostering internal civil disobedience cements Digg's status as a democratic news site. The question is whether it can endure what it created. Will all the stories get removed? Will all the users that submitted them get banned? Will Kevin Rose get his panties sued off if they don't fully comply with the MPAA's directive? Will people ever understand that trying to ban something on the internet only ends up making it propagate like meth bunnies?!?!

It'll probably be all over by morning, with only a top-ranked Digg story to recap the memories. — BEN POPKEN

RELATED: The New HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Hack: What It Might Mean For Us [Gadget Lab]

I am a librarian at the University of Dallas. We have not received our issue of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition even though we have an active subscription. The serials discussion list I am on has been abuzz on this topic. It turns out no libraries have received their issues. The publisher has decided not to send it to any institutions. Librarians who call in to complain are being offered an subscription extension of two issues. That will not satisfy patrons who are looking for the swimsuit edition. They'll just have to go buy it on the newsstand (surely that's not the publisher's intent!)

It should be up to the institution to decide whether or not they choose to make the issue available to patrons. The publisher should send the issues we've paid for. If we throw them in the trash, that's our prerogative.

Anyway, this is shady behavior by Time, the publisher of Sports Illustrated. Boo. If libraries want to provide the swimsuit issue then that's their business.—MEGHANN MARCO

Message Board Full Of Pissed Off Librarians

Sports Illustrated Withholds Swimsuit Issue from Libraries, Schools [Library Journal]

Maxim's Pete Hammond embarrassed himself and all other film critics by playing along with the Weinstein Company's finagling over a TV commercial quote blurb. According to a story in the Daily Variety, the studio planned on using Hammond's quote "the most terrifying thriller of the new year."

This blurb is awful and quote-whorish to begin with - just how many terrifying thrillers can be released in the first five weeks of the year anyway? But what happened next is even worse. Big boss Harvey Weinstein made the admen change the commercial, which ran during the Super Bowl, excising the word "terrifying" because it might offend audiences. (Huh?) So the Weinstein Co. asked Hammond to change his quote to "the year's most electrifying thriller," not only taking out the offending "terrifying" adjective but also "the new year" reference.

Weinstein addressed the issue while speaking at a panel discussion:

"Les (Leslie Moonves, CBS) said he was concerned about the word 'terrifying' given how many families were watching the game, and so we called (Hammond) and asked if we could change it to 'the year's most electrifying thriller' and he said, 'OK,' and that's how it ran."

CBS tweaks 'Hannibal' ad [Variety via Philmguy]

After our post, "Ronnie Segev & ReputationDefender Can Eat A Dick," Alex, a Consumerist commenter updated Ronnie Segev's Wikipedia entry to reflect his arrest and his hiring of Reputation Defender to delete all internet traces of that arrest.

Then, two anonymous IP users came along and deleted Alex's additions. They marked Alex's edits as "slander." Their username's only actions have been to revert Ronnie Segev's wiki entry.

What's interesting is that "slander" is a favorite word of Reputation Defender, appearing repeatedly in their About page.

The revision comments seem to escalate in anger, as Alex keeps replacing the text they undo, so far peaking at, "slanderous bloggers are not a valid source." Ouch!

Alex writes, "If anyone wants to help me keep the page updated to its most accurate version, I'd appreciate it."

UPDATE: Reputation Defender denies any responsibility for Wikipedia deletions.

How's this for a valid source? A direct copy of the original NYPOST article, which seems to be missing from their archives for some reason...

PIANIST THROWN IN PEN FOR HARPING

A meek but persistent concert pianist was tossed in jail after repeatedly demanding a refund from Priceline.com .

In a bizarre tale of "extreme customer service," Juilliard-trained Ronnie Segev sued Priceline earlier this month alleging the corporate giant billed him for a $953 plane ticket he never purchased, then had its top lawyer call the cops after he phoned 215 times to ask for his money back.

Segev, who has played Carnegie Hall, was handcuffed and hauled out of his Hell's Kitchen apartment building early one morning in May.

The cops hit him with 215 counts of harassment — one for each call he made to Connecticut-based Priceline from January until his arrest.

"I tried to talk to them," he said, shaking his head. "Now I get the chills every time I see a Priceline commercial."

A judge later dismissed the charges, but not before Segev spent 40 hours in a Manhattan holding cell with hardened criminals who laughed at him, threatened him and tried to steal his fancy watch and sneakers.

[via Comedian]

Ronnie Segev's recent wiki edit history:

22:58, 12 January 2007 Dogooder021 (Talk | contribs) ( Life - rev back. additions were not helpful, and libelous)
15:35, 12 January 2007 Hearty000 m ( Life - reverted...prev changes were not relevant, and were potentially slanderous (also not well sourced))
08:19, 13 January 2007 DanteComedy (Talk | contribs) (Undo revision 100322844 by Dogooder021 (talk) Revisions were acurate and well documented, therefore neither unhelpful nor libelous.)
14:44, 13 January 2007 Hearty000 (Talk | contribs) m ( Life - rev back to long-term content. slanderous bloggers are not a valid source.)
15:17, 13 January 2007 24.239.152.19 (Talk) (Added in history that Reptuation Defender keeps trying to delete and mark as slanderous.)

UPDATE: Just got this note from Reputation Defender, defending their reputation:

"We are writing to you with the aim of clearing up a few things. ReputationDefender does not delete content from Wikipedia. If and when ReputationDefender contributes to Wikipedia, we do so only by adding factually accurate and independently vetted information. We have not edited or sought to edit the Wikipedia entry for Ronen Segev in any way at any time. We are updating the FAQ on our site to state more clearly our policy on Wikipedia content. Again, no one on our staff has attempted to edit the Wikipedia article in this case."

— BEN POPKEN

"A judge later dismissed the charges, but not before Segev spent 40 hours in a Manhattan holding cell with hardened criminals who laughed at him, threatened him and tried to steal his fancy watch and sneakers.

A tough-looking cellmate asked him, "So, what are you in for?"

"Priceline refund," the musician sheepishly replied. It went downhill from there."

Hm, we can see how Segev might find that, "outdated and disturbing," and removing it might, "go a long way to help make the Internet a more civil place," as the letter states.

Perhaps Segev should try doing more interesting and newsworthy things that would push down his Priceline story in the Google rankings. Something more newsworthy than hiring a firm to finagle internet censorship and information blackouts.

Full letter, inside...

ReputationDefender writes:

"ReputationDefender, Inc. 2023 Cherokee Parkway Suite #18 Louisville, KY 40204

January 10, 2007

Dear Mr. Popken,

We are writing to you in behalf of Ronnie Segev. He has asked us to contact you and see if you will consider removing the content about him at:

http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/evil/priceline-has-customer-arrested-for-diligent-refund-attempt-150618.php

Please allow us to introduce ourselves. We are ReputationDefender, Inc., a company dedicated to helping our clients preserve their good name on the Internet. Our founders and employees are all regular Internet users. Like our clients, and perhaps like you, we think the Internet is sometimes unnecessarily hurtful to the privacy and reputations of everyday people. Even content that is meant to be informative can sometimes have a significant and negative impact on someone's job prospects, student applications, and personal life. We invite you to learn more about who we are, at www.reputationdefender.com.

When our clients sign up with our service, we undertake deep research about them on the Internet to see what the Web is saying about them. We find sites where they are discussed, and we ask our clients how they feel about those sites. Sometimes our clients express strong reservations about the content on particular websites. They may feel hurt, ashamed, or "invaded" by the content about them on those sites.

As you may know, more and more prospective employers, universities, and newfound friends and romantic interests undertake Internet research, and the material they find can strongly impact their impressions of the people they are getting to know. When people apply for jobs, apply for college or graduate school, apply for loans, begin dating, or seek to do any number of other things with their lives, hurtful content about them on the Internet can have a negative impact on their opportunities. At some point or another, most of us say things about ourselves or our friends and acquaintances we later regret. We're all human, and we all do it!

We are writing to you today because our client, Ronnie Segev, has told us that he would like the content about him on your website to be removed as it is outdated and disturbing to him. Would you be willing to remove or alter the content? It would mean so much to Mr. Segev, and to us. Considerate actions such as these will go a long way to help make the Internet a more civil place.

Thank you very much for your consideration. We are mindful that matters like these can be sensitive. We appreciate your time.

Please let us know if you have removed or changed the content on this site by sending an e-mail to: daves@reputationdefender.com.


Yours sincerely,

Dave S.
Reputation Defender Service Team"

Wonder if Gothamist and Dvorak received similar letters?

— BEN POPKEN

Several readers reported recently that they can't view our site as it's been labeled "pr0nography" by the SonicWALL filter. We'll contact them later today to try to resolve it, but in the meantime you can ping your sysadmins and ask them to manually unblock our site.

Knew we shouldn't have written all those posts about electronic devices stuffed with licentious imagery. — BEN POPKEN

UPDATE: SonicWALL tells us the only way we're getting blocked is by individual companies adding us to their blocklists. So, again, if we're being blocked at your work, give your sysadmin a cookie and ask them to unblock us.

"I was listening to Friday's podcast this morning and I noticed the exact awkward cut that you specified: the Nightline segment cut out shortly after the Comcast technician was mentioned...Martin's last segment was also cut off and the podcast ended before the usual closing music. "

If Comcast is still watching this space, well, here's another piece of media for you to get repaired.

Adding Jason's observation to the statements given by Comcast's and ABC's PR offices, it appears more likely that the omission was due to an ABC technical error, rather than as deliberate Comcast censorship. Certainly if it had been censorship, it certainly wasn't handled very smoothly. However, the resulting outcry proves that there's a lot of people out there pissed at Comcast. Multiply seven missed appointments times several hundreds of thousands of subscribers... and that sharpening of kitchen knives gets pretty loud.

Previously:
• UPDATE: Comcast Censors Critical Nightline Story
• Comcast Censors Critical Nightline Story

We noticed your most recent post on the Consumerist about the Nightline segment and wanted to clear up the facts. Comcast receives thousands of news segments from ABC for our comcast.net site and has not edited any of those segments, including Friday night's episode about blogs. We post the segments as we receive them directly from ABC and Nightline.

We have called our contact at ABC and the producer of your segment and they told us that they believe that their encoder may have inadvertently shortened the segment at the commercial break in error. We asked them to re-encode the entire segment, which they agreed to do. We will post the entire segment on Comcast.net as soon as we receive it.

If this is true, it's strange then that the cut happens several seconds before the commercial and then we cut into a story that followed right after the rest of the consumer piece...

We don't know who encodes who, but we don't think episode producers actually have much to do with that process. Therefore, we find it odd that Comcast would declare the ABC producer affirmatively said it was an ABC encoder problem that cause the cut. Either way you slice it, it's certainly terribly convenient for Comcast.

Previously:

• Comcast Censors Critical Nightline Story
• Comcast Censored Nightline. Help Us Nail 'Em.

UPDATE: ABC said they confim it was an editing error on their part. If so, the gaffe should be seen at any of their ABC News Now vendors, which include which include AOL, Bellsouth, SBC/Yahoo and Verizon. We're still working on scanning and uploading the AOL manual, so if any readers want to go and try and corroborate with snagged video clips and send them to us, that would be awesome.

UPDATE: Comcast says the feed has been repaired and can be seen on their site here (requires subscription). They also say the problem was replicated for all their outlets, not just Comcast. Without any other verification available at this time, we'll have to take their word for it. No complaints were heard from users of the four other services.

MAYBREY: And what about that Comcast video?
VINCERT: (sigh) That Comcast video... was a classic...
—abrupt cut—-
BASHIR: That first crossed our attention when a million dollar Ferrari...

Compare this to the original.

See, Comcast was so sure the adamant the incident would never happen again that they didn't want anyone to know it happenned in the first place. How contrite can they truly feel if they can't admit their faults to their own subscribers?

Don't bother trying to delete it from YouTube, we've got a hard copy.

Previously: Comcast Censored Nightline. Help Us Nail 'Em.

(Ultra thanks to The Compulsive Shouter for the clip!)

UPDATE: Comcast and ABC say they have a reasonable explanation.

We want to nail Comcast in the act. But neither Ben (being poor) nor I (being in Ireland) are Comcast subscribers. So we can't go here to capture the Comcast version of the Nightline performance, then upload it to YouTube ourselves.

We need your help! If you're both a Comcast subscriber and a reasonably tech savvy Consumerist, we need you to go to this link and capture us the stream. It's in embedded flash, so you might try software like FRAPS to capture it. Then either email it to us or upload it to YouTube. We've been told the segment starts at 05:29; it does not feature a two-headed kitten.

We would really like to nail Comcast here. If you can help us, please, mail us and let us know.

Edit: One of our commenters claims that the exact moment of the cut is around 10:33. If you can give us 30 seconds in each direction of the cut, that will suit our purposes. Time's of the essence here... we don't want Comcast pulling it before we can! Help two brothers out.

UPDATE: The clips has been harvested and uploaded. Watch it here.

UPDATE: Comcast and ABC say they have a reasonable explanation.

It doesn't work over VoIP, which would be a mean bit of technology, but it does work in Skype chat, real-time filtering hot bed topics of potential political dissent. The chat censorship comes from a partnership with Chinese internet portal Tom. Needless to say, Chinese with a vested interest in the free exchange of ideas aren't happy:

I don't know or even can't image any government enforces a software to do text filtering unless they do self-policing first. Skype is misled by Tom, the useless partner. Basically Skype is different from Google or Yahoo online service, its standalone software.

Geeks in China ever regard Skype as the hero to play important role to conduct secure communication. They are very disappointed now to see Skype join the evil business list. Sigh!

It's probably hard to schedule a lunch date in Tienanmen Square over Skype Chat.

Skype ignores users concerned about China censorship [RConversation]

Check out this partial list of banned terms by Cingular. Keep in mind, this list is of words that can't be used in ringtones:

"Ass, balls, BJ, blowjob, breasts, condom, corn-hole, fart, fornicate, fudge packing, insemination, laid, lesbian, masturbate, naked, nipples, nutsack, orgasm, pee pee, penis, piss, porn, puberty, ruby red bag (!), scrotum, semen, sex, shit, sit on my face (!), sixty-nine, smegma, teabagging, testicles, uncircumcised, uterus"

As Popken frantically scrambles to find a new ringtone provider, we can't help but chuckle. Man, what we wouldn't have given to be at the board meeting that decided that list. We bet the air quotes were flying.

Verizon and Cingular Self-Regulate Ringtone Filth [WSJ] (courtesy of Avernon.com)

We don't buy it. When any mentions of a specific domain critical of the company scanning the email results in a bounced email, that's not a "software glitch." That doesn't happen in software glitches; that only happens when a domain wildcard has been deliberately entered into the spam guard filters. Since DearAOL wasn't sending out spam, it seems that this was done specifically to censor dissenting opinions from reaching AOL's users.

There's something rather intriguing about this incident. More and more, we trust ISPs to filter for spam, checking all of our incoming communications and scanning them to see whether or not they are "appropriate." But this puts a lot of trust in the hands of private companies not to add their own parameters to spam guard filters. It also raises questions on whether we're comfortable with major corporations analyzing our personal and business communications on a minute level.

Personally, we're a lot more comfortable with client-side spam filtering; even without AOL's attempts at using spam guards to censor, ISPs always seem to muck it up. But what about you guys? Are you concerned by the companies analyzing your emails on a server-side level? Or do you think it's not a big deal? Let us know in the comments.

AOL Denies Blocking Critics [Internet News]
Previously: AOL Blocks DearAOL Emails

On Wednesday, the EFF started getting complaints that emails sent to AOL customers with a link to the URL Dear AOL — a website devoted to fighting the proposed AOL email tax that would allow mass emailers who ponied up to get preferential delivery treatment over other senders — we being bounced. Copies of the same emails without the URL went through fine.

The EFF very quickly issued a press release about it. Within twenty minutes, AOL had "solved" the problem. But as the EFF put it: This incident only increases our worry about organizations who don't have the ability to seek instant press attention. The next time AOL's anti-spam filters fail for a small organization - or one without political muscle - will they move so quickly to fix them? Or will they push organizations to just sign up with Goodmail and pay to avoid the problem?

No, the real issue here is that AOL decided to censor email that it viewed "as harmful" to the company. No amount of subscription to Goodmail would have solved the problem, because AOL wanted to silently prevent AOL customers from getting emails that were not approved opinions of the bigwigs upstairs. This is really sleazy — less an illustration of the dangers of two-tiered email as the dangers of letting a company scan our communications and censor our thoughts and beliefs.

AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents [EFF]

We saw over at Boing Boing that Anonymizer, a company that provides solutions to Internet users who want to ensure their privacy, have released a new anti-censorship software aimed specifically at Chinese citizens. And not only are they giving it away free, but they are continuously rotating the domain name so the Chinese government can't block the site:

Anonymizer's new anti-censorship software enables Chinese citizens to safely access the entire Internet filter-free, while free from oppression and fear of persecution or retribution. The program expands upon Anonymizer's history of human rights efforts which provide a censor-free Internet experience for those in oppressed nations.

What they are depending on is that when the site is blocked by Chinese sources and they move to another one, Chinese internet users will tell their friends about it via the handy "Tell a friend" box on the front page.

We're really glad to see something like this, even as companies like Yahoo help the Chinese government prosecute bloggers. And instead of making a weak and spineless compromise to half-censor their search results, we really think Google should have released something like this themselves. Way to go, Anonymizer!

Anonymizer Anti-Censorship Software

Why? As Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wrote: "This site now exposes young people to a perilous cyber environment with people posting sexually explicit materials and looking for sexual relationships. In fact, children can still view pornographic images, links to X-rated web sites, 'clubs' involving adults seeking sexual encounters and webcam sex for sale offers. I ask you to adopt my proposed steps immediately even as you develop new technology offering better protection."

Right, Dick — what you're describing there is called the Internet. Although actually, we're completely on board with Blumenthal's proposal to block the website from minors. Now if only someone would start legislation to block it from adults as well.

Connecticut Asks MySpace to Provide Blocking Software [Consumer Affairs]

Although American officials are claiming the move is in the aim of China's ongoing censorship of Internet sites, it's worth pointing out that China already is fully censoring the Internet for its populace. It really doesn't need to have Chinese character domains to do so — really, it just doubles the work.

The real issue is probably China's objection to American control of ICANN — it's hardly as if the Chinese are the only people unhappy about that. Given the U.N.'s staunch history of effeminate hand-wringing, their wimpy pandering towards totalitarian regime and their history of ignoring problems until they are too big to solve, many of us are frankly skeptical that the U.N. should take control of anything, let alone the free flow of information. But we're also definitely positive that America shouldn't have total control over the Internet, especially given the gross breaches of privacy that we've seen lately.

Link: China seeks a US-free web full of new characters

After posting the mockups, the TBWA ad agency and Bic demanded Ad-Rag remove the images advertising a certain brand of corrective fluid. Furthermore, they required the blog to scrub out all mentions of a trademarked brand name from all the posts and even the comments. Full info here at Ad-Rag.

More of the offending images which you should steal and spread around the net before we're sued, after the jump...

Creatives will often mock up ads "on spec," that is, speculatively and without being in a client's pay, to try out ideas or demonstrate their skills. Here are three such ads exploring what would happen if we used White-Out on important historical events.

9/11

As commentors and Bic and TBWA later pointed out, this isn't really on-brand for Bic. Ads these days often dramatize one singular product benefit.

Saigon

What's the benefit here? That white-out type products are good for censorship?

Ninios

While visually dramatic and certainly shocking, the ads fail to communicate the product's real power. But we don't think Bic should be so heavy-handed in silencing the fine advertising blog, Ad-Rag.

Perversely, gagging Ad-Rag enacts the very anti-free-speech associations Bic feared the spec ads created.




(Thanks to Klaus!)

If any of our readers speak Chinese, could you point out to us where it says that Google has censored the results? This isn't a snarky question - we're honestly curious.

[Update: Thanks to Howie Wang and Steven Irizarry for pointing it out. From Steve's email: "At the bottom of the search page (below all the thumbnail results and above the enumerated Goooooooogle results pages links) there is an italicized statement "据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示," which means, roughly, 'Due to local laws and policies, not all search results can be displayed.'"]

Related:

• Google Blog Explains Google.cn
• Everyone Hates Google.cn
• Google Censors Its Chinese Service

On one hand, it certainly seems laudable in that there seems to be an actual understanding of the criticisms at hand here over at Google. On the other hand, it's about as internally contradicting as one would expect, given the hypocrisy of Google's position — for example, a sentence reading "Launching a Google domain that restricts information in any way isn't a step we took lightly" is followed a few paragraphs later with acknowledgment of the fact that Google's French, German and American services also censor information.

Here's a particularly interesting bit of wishful thinking on Google's part:

Obviously, the situation in China is far different than it is in those other countries; while China has made great strides in the past decades, it remains in many ways closed. We aren't happy about what we had to do this week, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. But how is that full access most likely to be achieved? We are convinced that the Internet, and its continued development through the efforts of companies like Google, will effectively contribute to openness and prosperity in the world. Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.

Unfortunately, we're not entirely as optimistic that instant capitulation to a government's censorship policy is going to lead to a revolutionary, information-free wonderland in China's near future. If such a society is in China's future, it certainly won't have anything to do with Google's pandering to censorship, but with the resolve of the Chinese people to change the way their government operates. And the most likely way they are going to start wanting to do that is by being exposed to uncensored information about other viewpoints - information Google is not providing. It's too bad Google didn't aim their ingenuity at some way for Chinese people to more reliably visit their other, non-Chinese domains instead.

To return to our point — Pajamas Media has started up a new blog on the current trend of American companies spinelessly capitulating to China's censorship-happy government. It's called China Syndrome. It appears to be a fairly objective look at the subject, posting an image of Google founders as Dr. Evil and Mini-Me right above a post pointing out that Google has also gone along with silent censorship of bomb-making instructions in the US. Which we at the Consumerist feel is just as bad, since planning for the violent overthrow of a tyrannical government is your constitutional right.

Slate also has a good round-up of the blogosphere's reaction to Google.cn. There certainly appears to be no shortage of opinions on this one. Not that there ever is on the Internet, but still.

Google, famous for its "Don't Be Evil" philosophy, is seeking to soften potential criticism by promising to inform Chinese users when search results are censored, something other China-based search services do not do. The decision to exclude results on sensitive topics such as democratic reform, Taiwanese independence or the banned Falun Gong movement has clearly been particularly difficult for a company dedicated to making information "universally accessible".

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information [or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information] is more inconsistent with our mission," a senior Google executive said.

Um, hold the phone. Not that Google censorship is new, but if your attitude is 'some information is better than no information,' you can pretty much justify any Orwellian nightmare scenario the murky, omnipresent Man dreams up. There's never going to be a scenario where all information is censored—merely a scenario where the only information that goes uncensored is government propaganda; where free speech is a luxury you can afford only in the gulag; where corrupt bureaucratic mobsters rape, kill, torture and destroy the silenced people whom they ostensibly serve. In other words, the exact same scenario that communism has been so very excellent at setting up for its citizens over the last century without Google's help.

We don't care how Google spins it. This is as evil as it gets. The world is getting smaller and smaller, largely thanks to the Internet. This is exactly the moment when Google should be encouraging the Chinese to take advantage of the open, dynamic exchange of ideas that the Internet can so wonderfully provide, not capitulating to an oppressive government just so they can make a buck. Of course, MSN and Yahoo have also done it—we here at the Consumerist just hoped Google might be the company to finally show some fucking chutzpah.