Google Suddenly Realizes That Maybe It Doesn't Need To Ban Adult Content On Blogger

from the oh-look,-we-have-policies dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about a really dumb move by Google to effectively kick out all of the bloggers who use its blogger platform to post "adult" content -- either text or images. Google gave such bloggers just 30 days to find a new home before it would make all their blogs private. It insisted that, going forward, the content police at Google would determine what photographs were "artistic" and allowed, and which were "dirty" and not allowed. As we noted, this move seemed particularly tone deaf and problematic, and could lead to other problems for Google. And a lot of other people agreed.

And... just like that, Google appears to have reversed course. Over in its product forums, someone from the Blogger Team announced that they had realized they already had policies they could enforce and didn't need to implement these new rules:

This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities. So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.

Blog owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as “adult” so that they can be placed behind an “adult content” warning page.

Bloggers whose content is consistent with this and other policies do not need to make any changes to their blogs.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

So, kudos to Google for at least hearing the feedback and rolling back the change -- though it's still unfortunate that it even had to come to that in the first place. It seems likely that many of those bloggers may go looking for alternate hosting anyway.

Filed Under: adult content, blogger, policies
Companies: google

Google Gets Prude: Says No More Adult Content On Blogger

from the paternalistic-nonsense dept

Apparently, Google is getting prude in its old age, suddenly deciding that it will no longer allow "adult" content on its Blogger platform, giving bloggers on the site just 30 days to find another home or have their content set to private. Here's the note that some bloggers received yesterday: Frankly, this is ridiculous. Yes, Google is a private company and has the right to do whatever it wants, but this sort of prudish, paternalistic role in determining what content is appropriate and what content is "artistic" or "educational" is a path with a lot of landmines that will lead to stifled speech on a platform that used to be celebrated for enabling free speech around the globe. On top of that, you have people who have used the platform to post this kind of information and content for over a decade suddenly being evicted with 30 days notice. Yes, this is always a risk that you take when you rely on someone else's platform, but it's a really unfortunate move from a company that one would hope would know better than to take such a hamfisted position on what content it "allows."

Of course, as Violet Blue notes, this is only the latest in a long line of moves by Google to stifle, hide or block any content that is sexual in nature. Here's just a snippet of a much longer piece by Blue, detailing the timeline of recent decisions by Google, all of which push content the company deems inappropriate further and further away:

It was one thing when Google Plus rolled out in June 2011 with a strict anti-adult, no sexual content policy for its troubled attempt at a social network; many of us just didn't bother participating, knowing how the content-policy ax always falls (not on the side of artists, writers, activists, LGBT people, or cultural outsiders who speak up).

But Google began its palpable aggression against erotic content in June 2013 when Google banned adult content from Google Glass apps, as well as enacting an affiliate porn purge across its Blogger platform.

December 2013 saw Android's Google Keyboard updated to exclude over 1,400 "inappropriate" words, returning no results for typing or swiping words including "intercourse," "lovemaking," "condom," "panty," "preggers" and "STI."

In February 2014 adult and erotic content was banned from Chromecast, followed by March 2014's ban and purge of adult and erotic apps from Google Play (Android's app and media hub).

April saw an ongoing series of Google Search algorithm updates that savaged existing adult website rankings, causing major disruptions in traffic and revenues for many websites.

So it's no surprise that many people believe that Google won't uphold its "freedom of expression" stance when it comes to organic adult search results.

I'm sure there are plenty of good business reasons why Google no longer wants to have this kind of content available on its site, but it's disappointing on multiple levels. It's not "censorship" in the classical sense, but it does seem like a really bad move by Google. It's a company that should know better, and often holds itself up as enabling more speech around the globe, and avoiding making any sort of "artistic" decisions on the worthiness of content. It is immensely troubling that this company now suddenly wants to determine which content it thinks is "appropriate" and which is not, not based on any legal requirements, but on a very subjective standard. Facebook did this sort of thing from early on in doing ridiculous things like banning "breastfeeding" images, and one would hope that Google would take a more reasonable stand. On top of that, giving people just 30 days to figure out where to go, when many have built up their blogs for over a decade just seems tremendously callous.

Google is a private company and can make its own choices, but this one seems like a particularly bad choice, which may have other consequences as well. For years, Google has pushed back on demands from copyright holders to magically monitor all its content, saying that it's just not possible. Yet, here it is now saying that it's willing to do exactly that, including making "artistic" judgments on the merits of whether adult content is purely prurient or done for a more artistic or educational reason. The company seems to be opening itself up to charges that if it can make such determinations for that type of content, it can also magically figure out what other content is "infringing" or not. This seems like a move that the company will regret.

Filed Under: adult content, blogger, blogs, prude, sexual content
Companies: google

Saudi Arabian Court Sentences Blogger To 7 Years, 600 Lashes Under Cybercrime Law

from the whipping-up-some-censoring dept

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia, still a chief American ally in the Middle East, has a horrible reputation on human rights, speech, and its policies regarding internet use. Most recently, they have attempted to put a stranglehold on internet communications via VoIP services. Don't forget as well that any citizen of Saudi Arabia that deigns to use Twitter has given up their claim on their immortal soul, which is sort of an odd stance to take given that members of the Saudi royal family have invested in the microblogging service. And, of course, as any conservative theocracy, they aren't particularly interested in having critical discussions about the state religion, despite having recently made statements suggesting otherwise.

Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes, and as one Saudi court has dealt an activist blogger 7 years and 600 lashes, I think we can say Saudi Arabia still sucks at free speech. Raif Badawi had been imprisoned for the past few months for the apparent crime of starting a liberal blog seeking to start religious dialogue within Saudi Arabia.

He is accused of, among other things, breaking Sharia law and starting a website that infringed on religious values.

According to Haidar, her husband just wanted to encourage discussion about religion in his homeland. But starting a liberal Internet forum in conservative Saudi Arabia can be a dangerous pursuit.

It's a lesson in a great many things for us here in America. First, some of our allies have an awful lot of blood on their hands. Second, allowing any special interest groups, not just religion, to get their meat hooks into the censorship of speech is a dangerous precipice on which to teeter. Finally, free speech, secularism, and the enlightenment should be a global goal, not a local one. For instance, take the difficulty of getting Badawi any representation from the legal community into account.

"No one wanted to take his case," said Waleed Abualkhair, Badawi's attorney. "Because they believed that anyone who'd take this kind of case, that means he destroys his (own) reputation. But I don't believe in that. I believe that everyone has his right to have a lawyer. And I believe that Raif is innocent."

Abualkhair is more than just Badawi's attorney. He's also his brother-in-law and a fellow human-rights activist also on trial in Saudi Arabia.

When the only person willing to represent you in a case about speech is himself on trial for his speech as well, you have a massive problem. Perhaps, like me, your first thought in reading this was to wonder what you could do to help. A noble thought, to be sure, but my first thought is what are the people we elect to represent us doing to help. They should be on this already, not relying on human rights groups.

In the end, if Saudi Arabia wants us to believe their noise about becoming more open to change, it would be best if they started by freeing this peaceful blogger.

Filed Under: blogger, free speech, saudi arabia

Google's Latest Music Blog Kerfuffle Highlights Problems With The DMCA

from the time-for-a-fix dept

You may recall that almost exactly a year ago there were all sorts of reports of music blogs using Google's Blogger service finding their blog posts silently disappearing. The issue, it turned out, was the way Google dealt with DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders. The way the DMCA is set up, in order to avoid liability, Google is put in an awkward position of having to take the content down. After the outcry a year ago, the team at Blogger spent a lot of time talking to the lawyers both internally and elsewhere (such as at the EFF) to see if they could come up with a better way to still follow the law, but avoid the mess of February '09. Back in August Google announced its revamped DMCA policy for Blogger, specifically designed to deal with this. Basically, the company tried much harder to communicate with users as to what was happening. Rather than just deleting whole blog posts, it would move them to draft mode, and then try to alert the bloggers via email and through the Blogger dashboard. This definitely seemed like a step in the right direction, but I still thought the company fell short on not having a clear counternotice procedure. Instead, it seemed to default to assuming the DMCA takedown was accurate, and moving a post to draft would be enough to get the blogger to "remove" the offending content? But what if the content wasn't actually infringing?

Either way, unfortunately, it looks like the new policy isn't working. Today, the stories started popping up again, claiming that music blogs were being deleted, leading to something of a Twitter frenzy. Certainly, it appears that some blogs had their content removed despite having permission from the record labels to post the content. But it also appears that some of the frenzy involves people finding the news stories from a year ago and not realizing we're in 2010 now. For example, this blog post at Nashville Scene points to a year old story as if it's new.

And, in fact, from what's being talked about from the blogs that did have their content removed, it sounds like the newer system (unlike the old system) did alert them to what was happening, but they just felt hopeless to respond. Google has put up a response, basically saying that if it doesn't receive a counternotice, and it keeps getting DMCA takedowns on the same account, eventually it takes the blog down as a "repeat offender." So we're back to the point that I predicted in August, where your average everyday blogger has no idea what a DMCA counternotice is and how to use it -- so it would be much better if Google made the process of filing such a counternotice a lot more intuitive.

In the end, though, there are two real issues here. First, is the ridiculous "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" aspect of record label lawyers sending out DMCA takedowns for content that its marketing department sent to the blogs on purpose. But second, and much more important, is the ridiculousness of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions in its safe harbors. It's a "guilty until you're innocent" type of measure. It effectively forces Google into a position where it needs to take down the content, until a blogger goes through the confusing process of filing a counternotice. It makes no sense, at all, why we don't improve the process to allow for a notice-and-notice system, whereby the blogger is allowed to respond to the copyright holder before any content is removed. That seems like common sense. On top of that, while the DMCA is a little vague on this topic, it does in some ways suggest that service providers must do more to prevent repeat offenders -- which is part of the reason why Google most likely shuts down those "repeat offenders." Again, it seems like Google should be a lot more communicative with blogs it's about to shut down, and a lot clearer in explaining the issues (and the best way to respond). The current notices leave a lot to be desired.

But, the real issue is how much pressure the DMCA puts on Google to act in this manner, and with things like ACTA being negotiated in secret with the aim of locking in the more draconian rules of such safe harbors, it will become increasingly difficult to fix that faulty aspect of the DMCA takedown process.

Filed Under: blogger, counternotices, dmca, record labels, takedowns
Companies: google

Blogger Fixes Its DMCA Takedown Process

from the good-job dept

You may recall earlier this year that Google was accused of invisibly deleting entire blog posts on Blogger when the RIAA would send takedown notices alleging that the blog posts contained unauthorized music. This was troubling for a few different reasons. First, on the RIAA side, there seems to be something of a double standard here, as many of the record labels purposely send MP3s to music bloggers to help promote their music... but then they decide to take some down? But the bigger issue was the way that Google was handling the whole issue. Bloggers were upset that entire blog posts just seemed to disappear entirely without any notice at all. Google claimed that it was alerting the bloggers, but it didn't seem to be doing a very good job of it, and making entire posts completely disappear based on the sayso of the record labels seemed to be a bit extreme. So it's good to see that Blogger has entirely revamped its takedown process for Blogger posts that get takedown notices.

First, for those issuing the takedown, they've switched from a manual (send a fax or letter) process to an electronic one -- which has the side benefit that Google can now get those takedown notices to ChillingEffects.org much faster. Google always passes along takedowns to ChillingEffects, but when the notices were faxed or typed it took a while before ChillingEffects could get them up, meaning that if content was taken down, there was often no way for the blogger in question to understand what happened (Google says it always emails the bloggers, but not everyone's email address is up-to-date).

On top of that, Google not only will notify people via email, but will put a notification in the Blogger admin dashboard, so the next time the blogger logs in they'll see it. Finally, and most importantly, to handle the "takedown," rather than totally deleting the posts as before, the posts are switched to draft mode, which allows the blogger to see the post and change it (if necessary). This seems like a much better policy than what Blogger/Google was doing before.

The one that that still seems to be missing (at least in this description) is the counternotice process. The process described in the announcement says that bloggers can adjust their post... but what if they don't believe it's actually infringing (fair use, authorized copy, different content, etc.)? It would be nice if Google also offered an easy counternotice procedure from directly within the Blogger admin as well -- so that a Blogger who has been falsely accused of a copyright violation can quickly counternotice and get the content back up.

Filed Under: blogger, dmca, music, music blogs, takedowns
Companies: google

More Civil Liberties Concerns Over Jailed Korean Blogger

from the freedom-of-speech dept

We've covered the story of the South Korean blogger who went by the name Minerva, and who was arrested for "spreading false rumors." The whole episode seemed troubling to us. It seemed as though the blogger was just posting his thoughts online, and the government didn't like what he was saying. Now even more information is coming to light, including reports that what he said (about the Korean gov't telling banks not to buy US dollars) wasn't quite as false as the government claimed. Apparently it wasn't an official order -- but banks were urged to avoid dollars. This has plenty of people up in arms over what seems like a clear politically motivated arrest of a guy for telling the truth that the government didn't want people to know about, rather than any sort of "false information."

Filed Under: blogger, forecasts, free speech, minerva, predictions, south korea, spreading harmful information

Lesson From Jailed South Korean Blogger: Don't Be Too Good With Your Predictions

from the it'll-come-back-to-bite-you dept

There's been a fascinating story coming out of Korea over the past few months, concerning the (formerly) anonymous online commentator who went by the name Minerva. He accurately forecasted some of the early days of the financial collapse last fall, and suddenly the press talked him up and everyone wanted to know who he was. Then he claimed that the Korean government had told companies to stop buying US dollars -- forcing the government to put out a statement denying this was true. Then, following a few weeks of searching, he was arrested for spreading false information and (a week later) his identity was revealed (along with a background that shows he wasn't particularly well connected or knowledgeable -- he likely made some lucky guesses).

But, it does raise questions about the fine line between making predictions and spreading false information. Because he had been so accurate with his earlier predictions, many started to assume that he was well-connected, and any future predictions he made would also be equally accurate. It seems that, once again, the old saw that "past results is no guarantee of future performance" was ignored. Now, there may be a difference in terms of how the information was presented -- in terms of whether he specifically claimed to know for certain that the Korean government had done what he said, as opposed to just predicting that it was about to happen -- but it seems like the line between a prediction and "spreading false information" gets pretty thin once everyone thinks you know what's going on better than anyone else.

Filed Under: blogger, forecasts, free speech, minerva, predictions, south korea, spreading harmful information

Swedish Authorities Take Action Against Blogger For Revealing Surveillance Documents

from the free-speech-violation? dept

Wille Faler writes "Swedish blogger and civil rights activist Henrik Alexandersson has been reported for "freedom of speech" violations by the head of FRA (Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment), the government agency that is responsible for surveilling the contents, origins and destinations of all phone calls, internet traffic and text messages passing through swedish networks, regardless of suspicion or not. Alexandersson published a classified document on his blog some time ago that had been leaked to him, that proved how FRA had been conducting illegal surveillance against innocent Swedes for more than ten years. It is this offense that has landed him in trouble and deemed him a "threat to national security." In other word, the messenger gets shot for whistleblowing about the illegal conduct of government agencies."

It's interesting that this comes so soon after Sweden passed a new law that lets the gov't tap all forms of communication. While you can understand the government's position, this definitely does appear to be punishing the whistleblower, which is all too common these days. Plus, of course, in attacking the guy who brought this info public, the Swedish government is all but guaranteeing that it gets that much more attention.

Filed Under: blogger, surveillance, sweden, whistle blowing