Censorship!

The document below appeared in Leda's publication of Ma'am #1 as published in 1987.

I have heard that Ed Lee fought hard to prevent his publications from being Censored and for the most part appears to have been successful.  Thus he left us a legacy of some wonderful videos and publications that we all cherish to this day. It may be a bit difficult to read the fine print from that document but it describes the attempts by the Meese Commission and the 'New Right' movement against free expression of all sorts.  Of course this was during the Conservative Regan era.

I try to keep my politics out of our blog as I know that its read by people all over the political spectrum, however I received an e-Mail from the blogger group at Google that has seriously upset me.  So here comes a political rant.

Here are the first two paragraphs from their e-Mail:

We're writing to tell you about an upcoming change to the Blogger Content  
Policy that may affect your account.

In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually  
explicit or graphic nude images or video. We'll still allow nudity  
presented in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts, or  
where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking  
action on the content.

First I want to say that I appreciate being able to post our blog using their resources, especially since they don't charge me a fee for such privileges.  That said I must admit that I'm quite upset.  There are some very nebulous and even conflicting instructions in their missive.  For example, just what constitutes "sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video"?  And who gets to choose?  Someone like Mike Huckabee or the American Family Association?

And what do they mean by saying the "we'll STILL allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts ...".  Which is it?

Here is the third paragraph:

The new policy will go into effect on the 23rd of March 2015. After this  
policy goes into effect, Google will restrict access to any blog identified  
as being in violation of our revised policy. No content will be deleted,  
but only blog authors and those with whom they have expressly shared the  
blog will be able to see the content we've made private.

So it appears that they will shut down public access for any blog they believe violates their new policy even though it is not clear what would violate their policy.  And don't they already have an 'Adult Content' warning and gateway in place?

We don't publish photos that show much nudity but we have (and will) publish photos of my bare bottom getting spanked.  And there has been (and will continue to be) photos of Cora in her sexy and oh so powerful girdles.  Will the images of my bare bottom violate their policy.  How can I find out?  Do I just keep publishing and wait for them to shut us down?

I know that other bloggers read this and I hope we see a dialogue develop on what we can do and our options.  It does sound like the only things their policy affects will be images and videos, so for those who only post text there will be nothing to worry about.  However we are very proud of the images and videos we create.  In fact tomorrow we'll be posting what we think is one of our best ones and yes, it will include photos of my bare bottom getting spanked.

Do we abandon the Google blogger?  We've got five years invested in their resources.  And if so are there other blog hosts that won't be so reactive to the right wing?

Welcome back to the era of Censorship!