Here are some emails back and forth about how the blog move came to be. You may find the whole situation interesting.
A faithful blog reader, Marie-C wrote to me in February:
"Hello, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your blog has been censored. Whenever one attempts to reach it, one gets to a page saying "Certains lecteurs de ce blog ont contacté Google car ils pensent que le contenu de ce blog est inacceptable. " (sorry, the jerks notice I'm in France and I can't tell them otherwise without allowing their cookies). Translation - "some readers of this blog have contacted google because they think its contents are unacceptable".
Anyway, from what I see here http://www.blogger.com/terms.g you'll have a jolly time getting yourself off the porn list... Must be some competitor who turned you in, because there's nothing remotely objectionable about your site. On the opposite, it was an immense public service, and it's a great loss to have it treated that way. But could I suggest you drop the blog idea, which doesn't fit very well what you were trying to do anyway? Just write simple pages as tutorials and put them on your own site, where you control the content without interference
from poisonous idiots. All you need is a page framework and some cut-and-paste, and one page of table of contents. Then you can drop blogger, blogspot, and all its googlelian tentacles.
And thanks for putting that blog up in the first place."
Well, well. I had no idea....I responded to her right away:
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention! We had no idea that someone would even think that any part of our blog is pornographic. Yes, we show breasts naked, but only as part of the educational process for our bra-making students. It's very sad that freedom of speech has come to this. That being said, I think you will be happy to hear that we have moved the blog away from Blogger and its "tentacles" as you so colourfully describe them and we have our own domain hosting the blog, so we have complete control. It isn't quite the colours and the set-up that I want yet, but I'm back blogging and have encouraged my staff to post entries as well. I've managed to transfer all the old posts and the comments from Blogger to our new blog home, and that was a chore, let me tell you. Blogger doesn't want to let go of its posts, or the comments easily. No such thing as a mass export. No sir!
I hope you find out new blog host more comfortable and gracious than the previous one. I like to blog and it's a great opportunity for those around the world, like yourself, to learn and connect with other bra-makers. If you would be so kind to let any newsgroups you may belong to, know of our new location, I would be very grateful."
So, she wrote back again -
"Yes, unfortunately you're a typical example of why 'parental filters' on the net don't work... Many perfectly legitimate, even desirable, sites end up in cyber-limbo because of some stupid application of keywords. Many breast cancer sites are not accessible from public libraries, or sites about suicide prevention for teenagers because they mention being gay as a common risk factor, etc.. Although it sounded here as if someone actually complained about you, which is even worse, but frankly I think there are fundamentalists trawling the net by keyword also and filing automatic complaints without really looking. In this case, it's doubly unfortunate that google didn't even notify you of what was happening, and didn't give you an easy path of appeal. I understand that they might not have the staff to look at thousands of sites upfront, but for them not to take the time to even look if you complain is really outrageous when they're cutting you off completely. I'm glad that you're able to extract your contents from the old blog, and put it up under your own domain. But I'm not at all surprised that it'd be very painful.
Actually when I started a blog some years ago I decided that I didn't want to use one of these tools because they actually reserved the copyright to all the content you posted to them! A friend of mine had run into a really big hitch with quilting show reviews that way, and found that she was legally unable to reuse even her own pictures. Anyway, I'm very glad to see you're creeping out of this awful hole, and I'll be sure to pass the word along. In fact, I just noticed that you're now selling your book in CD format, a big plus in terms of expenses and shipping... what a good idea :-)! It's about time for me to make another bra attempt, my first having dead-ended into an unwearable awful poking-underwire mess.."
Thank you Beverly, and good luck!
I then asked if I could quote her. Absolutely, she said, but she went one step further and posted this entry to a sewing group she belongs to.
"An excellent resource about making bras is coming back to the web: http://www.bramakers.com/blog This is the site of Canadian Beverly Johnson, who wrote a definitive book on the subject and teaches classes for professional bra-makers. Her blog is a mine of incredibly useful information. She was recently the victim of google censorship: they decided her blog must be pornographic, given the keywords in the content, and simply removed it from the public eye (they own blogger.com). And appeal is a judiciary process, they won't spare 2mn of staff time to check their own decisions. So it's been a long and painful process for her to get her content back and post it under her own domain, but she's getting there. Mind you, because google filed her under porn, I can't reach her own site from work either, I can get to it only at home (and only till my ISP decides to purify my morals as well). Many equally innocent and useful sites get the same treatment, you can't get anywhere near full access to breast cancer resources from most public libraries for instance. Sheesh.."
She then received a comment from author, Dawn Cloake of fashion Academy. www.fashionacademy.co.uk
"How very embarrassing for Beverly and how ridiculous (that accusation!) I wrote the review for her book - BraMakers Manual - it's on my webpage - and I know her to be of impeccable character and reputation. The trouble is, these days, is that there is so much nastiness out there that perfectly innocent and respectable people are accused of the most unpleasant things. If you are reading this, Beverly, take care and just carry on doing what you do so well - showing us how to make well-fitting bras. Your work is so greatly appreciated all over the world and will continue to be so. Best wishes from Dawn"
Well, thank you, Dawn, I appreciate the confidence and the supportive words. And yes, I WILL blog on!
So, readers, what do you think of all this? Have YOU been caught in any tentacles lately?
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