Is the Left Trafficking in Neo-Puritanism?

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The Great Blogger Adult Blog Deletion Poop Storm, And How It MIGHT Affect BPPA

Well, if most you haven't heard of have been under a rock this past week, you now know that Blogger is making a serious change to their policy regarding blogs with adult sexual content. If you have gotten this email, please raise your hand:

Important Update to Adult Content Policy on Blogger
You are receiving this message because you are the admin of a blog hosted on Blogger which is identified to have Adult content.
Please be advised that on June 30th 2013, we will be updating our Content Policy to strictly prohibit the monetization of Adult content on Blogger. After June 30th 2013, we will be enforcing this policy and will remove blogs which are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites.
If your adult blog currently has advertisements which are adult in nature, you should remove them as soon as possible as to avoid any potential Terms of Service violation and/or content removals.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

"Monetization of Adult content" basically refers to ads for paid membership porn sites and affiliate links used to upsell said paid sites.

In short, Blogger/Google believes that you are making way too much money off their free generosity, but rather than actually offer a premium service to get in on the gravvy train, they'd rather just throw you, your blog, and your page links under the bus.

Of course, it may also be the PITA of battling the nasty malware that occasionally travels with those third-party ads that motivated Blogger, or their parent company Google's newly found commitment to focusing their services on a more conservative demographic and "protecting their investment".

Or, possibly Google/Blogger has ceded ground to the antiporn/"anti-sex trafficking" meme that allowing people to get paid using adult commerce is one half step below "sex trafficking" and needs to be nipped in the bud before the federal authorities intervene.

The response of the adult blogosphere, needless to say, has been explosive anger: blogger and sex toy reviewer Epiphora has posted a comprehensive review of all of the drama, along with some helpful suggestions for those wanting to either continue on or move to another venue. Her suggestion of going toward paid self-hosting is the same as mine; since it's relatively cheap and you have more control over your content.

Now...where does BPPA come in on this?? Since we are NOT listed as an adult blog, and we do NOT offer any affiliate links or explicit ad banners, and we are more of a political and discussion-based blog rather than a traditional sex site, we should not be affected by Google/Blogger's new policy...provided that it does allow for adult-oriented sites without ads or affiliate links. That should be that...except that Google/Blogger has been a bit vague about whether or not their policy could extend to all other adult blogs.

Just to be on the safe side, in the small chance that Blogger gets ignorant and does decide to pull the plug on this blog, I've created an exact mirror using my WordPress Red Garter Club Network that can be found here:

http://www.redgarterclub.com/RGClubNetwork/bppa

I am slowly copying all of the links and blogroll over there as well.

Like I said, I fully expect this blog to be open and accessible after 7 PM EDT on Monday....but not a bad idea to prepare for the worst.

See also Violet Blue's ZDNet article, and a distrubing and comprehensive article in ErosBlog on the history of corporate online sex censorship. Also, see Lydia Lee''s post on the issue (especially the comment section).

How The SCOTUS Prop 8 Repeal May Have Kneecapped AHF's Measure B Defense

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