Oct

13

Alas, the Blog Controversy–Porn, Selling Out, Feminism, and What Rachel Has to Do With All This

Filed Under Blogs Blogging Blogthropology, Gender and Sexism, Interracial Relationships, Media Praises and Critiques, Pop Culture, Sexuality and Heterosexism by Rachel  

(Not Proofread, sorry in advance)?

The Controversy

Before I get to the meat of this post, I should let people know whats going on.? For those, who have been around the blogosphere for a while you’ve probably already heard, Ampersand at Alas A Blog has sold his domain name to a search engine optimizing (SEO)? company (See the? explanation of this here.)? that promotes several sites.? So last month Amp? wrote a post? telling readers that the domain for Alas (amptoons.com) had been sold, but this was only after Daran at Creative Destruction? and another anonymous reader noticed the porn links which are well hidden in the site.? Amp said two factors influenced his decision to sell? Alas? 1) he? and his housemates were having? serious financial difficulties and 2) the high level of Alas traffic meant that the cost of the site would increase because it needed its own server.? ? Amp crafted the contract so the he maintains control of the blog and his political cartoons, but the domain name and hosting are run by the new company.?

Then earlier this week Heart, who has a sort of soap opera love/hate relationship with Amp, found the porn links on Amp’s site.? As a radical feminist, Heart is strongly opposed to porn, and she felt that Amp had completely lost any feminist credibility for helping pornographers get higher search listings for their sites.? She also felt that he could have tried other avenues for fund raising rather than selling to porn promoters.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if Alas wasn’t a progressive and feminist blog and if Amp hadn’t announced that the site was sold well after the deal was closed.? (He has opened comments about this, and it is worth it to try to read the hundred(s) of responses here.)

So How Does Rachel Fit Into All This?

Well, I am one of Amp’s co-bloggers at Alas.? I first started posting there in March, when Amp offered me a guest poster slot, and after a month or two (I can’t remember exactly since I lost all my old emails on my dead hard drive.), he asked me if I would become a permanent guest blogger.? Like everyone else, who reads? Alas? I had no idea about the? sale of? amptoons.com until Amp put up the post in Sept.?

So what was my initial reaction (after the Sept. post, not Heart’s reaction)? I wasn’t really worried about the porn issue because Amp’s initial post said there would not be any direct links to porn in the site.? I thought that this was going to be controversial because Amp didn’t tell anyone, and because many progressives are leery of small time personally operated blogs selling out to bigger companies.

On a personal level, I was a little perturbed that he didn’t tell me anything until after the fact because I was writing over there and making a contribution to the blog.? I wasn’t really angry just concerned that make work was over at this blog, and I though somebody else may own my writing.? That was important to me for two reasons 1) I may someday want to publish some of these writings in a book, and if another person copyrights this, I could have to pay them for my own writings and 2) I worried that an unscrupulous owner could sell these posts to paper mills. As a professor that’s the last thing I need, writing that I can’t publish and students using my essays to cheat (which I’m sure they already are, but I thought this could make it worse).? I wrote Amp and he assured me that he maintains control of the blog, and that the writers still owned their work.?

Then, I read Heart’s post earlier this week, and I have to admit Heart had several legitimate points. He should have publicized this? and? the porn in the links are sexist and racist (It includes a Black porn star who was once prominently featured on a site called “Savages on Blondes.”).? I don’t agree with Amp? that porn is no more racist or sexist than mainstream media. I say this as someone who routinely gets searches for pornography at my site (Here are a few from the past two days: black men teaching fucking; call girls blogs on long island; natural tits, wife, flickr; white girls black meat; interracial fucking blogs).? In fact, for a while at least half the searches were for pornography.? I suppose the good news is that the SEO company? will help move my sight down on the search engine list when people search for porn.? (I would much rather have people searching for “interracial fucking” end up at Lexington Steele’s site than Rachel’s Tavern.)

Personally, I don’t even want to wade into the pro-porn anti-porn feminist debate, but I must say that I am not opposed to pictures of people nude or of people having sex.? If consenting adults want to consume sexually explicit content, I don’t object.? What I do object to is the specific content of much of porn.? I’m no porn connoisseur, but anybody who does research on interracial relationships,? can tell you that much of the content you come up with in this research is porn that involves racist fantasies (especially of Asian women and Black men).? When I used to do searches on “interracial relationships,” that stupid Savages on Blondes site always came up all the time. I also think that it is important to note that this link in Alas is not directly to porn; it is to a page that has links to porn, and that link is virtually impossible to find.? I had to have my partner, Pius, search through the site code to find it.? Additionally, I tried numerous Google searches and couldn’t find the porn on the domain.?

Many of Amp’s supporters have said, “It’s his blog he can do what he wants.”? However, that is an oversimplification of the situation, as it doesn’t take account of the co-bloggers like myself who were uninformed of this decision.? Unlike others, my concern about having porn links under the domain, is also related to my status as a professional.? Since I used my real first name and it is relatively easy to find out my last name and my employer, I worry that having anything associated with pornography could hurt me professionally.? This is not my private home after all.? It is a public forum, and since I consider Amp a blogfriend, I hoped for better from him.? (Everybody including Amp, himself, says this was wrong, and he has apologized publicly and privately to all of us, which is sufficient for me right now.)

If you haven’t already noticed, it took me a few days to respond to all of this.? In fact, that has become my sort of general style to most blog controversies.? My slow reaction is partly related to two of my character traits.? I’m deliberative and forgiving.? I try to take time to? get my thoughts together.? This is a lesson I have learned from being a student activist and from working in a University administrator’s office–You can’t take back what you have already said or done. I also agree in forgiving people’s transgressions.? I know Amp felt bad about the situation, and he’s sorry about the way he handled it.? I can accept that and move on.? While I’m not thrilled with? link situation,? I’m going to stick with Alas for the time being, but I would like Amp to try his best (and I can be part of that process if he wants me? to) to get out of this deal.?

Alas, is a great blog and it is a great community.? Just like all communities it has its issues, but I’m not ready to abandon it yet.

End Note: Daran has collected the myriad of responses to this controversy in his post if you want to see how others reacted.? I should also note that this post could have been as long as a book given all of the background and extra info.? I tried to be concise, but if anyone wants to add? info. that you think is important in? the comments section, feel free to do so.? This is indeed an abreviated version of the saga.?

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Comments

16 Responses to “Alas, the Blog Controversy–Porn, Selling Out, Feminism, and What Rachel Has to Do With All This”

  1. Kate L on October 13th, 2006 8:30 pm

    I’ve been wondering when you were going to chime in Ever since you told me about it, I’ve been reading the stuff and sitting in awe of the attacks. I totally agree that his timing sucked and he should have been more up front, particularly with co-bloggers about this, but I can’t bring myself to get worked up over it. In fact, the links in question are actually not even on Alas, they are on amptoons.com, which is somewhere I never go (I know alas is PART of amptoons, but given that I just have the blog bookmarked, I’ve only been to amptoons.com like once (to get to the blog). Plus, I agree with Achilles that there is a funny irony in porn sites supporting a progressive, feminist blog. I agree the porn in question is bad, but if Amp hadn’t sold the domain, it wouldn’t have shut them down… I just can’t get over the READERS sense of entitlement (as I said, I agree he probably owed his co-bloggers more), but dude, reading a blog gives you NO right to say what should or should not be done with it.

    Crazy.

  2. Daran on October 13th, 2006 9:06 pm

    It’s abviously not “virtually impossible to find”, because two people at least found it. Also a google search on “site:amptoons.com” turns up the top review page in second place. I do searches on that string (plus other search terms) all the time, when I’m looking for past content on Alas, so it would only have been a matter of time, even if I hadn’t found the link first.

    On the subject of ownership: in US law, a copyright transfer must be in writing. So, unless you have a written contract with Barry assigning it him, ownership remains with you.

    Also copyright is created as soon as a work is written down, typed into a computer, etc. You can register your copyright,, so that you can defend it in court, but registration merely records the copyright. It doesn’t create it.

    I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

  3. admin on October 14th, 2006 12:45 am

    Daran, I may have the legal right to that writing, but we are talking about the brave new world of the internet here. People sell personal emails to spammers for as much as $3 each, so I can imagine an unscrupulous webmaster/blog host/ etc. doing the same thing with essays. I could probably win a case in court, but I don’t have the money or time to undertake a legal battle.

    All I can say about finding those links is that even when I knew what the page URL was (curteosu of Jimmy Ho) I could find it through Google or by looking on the page. When Pius showed me how to search the code, I finally found it. I’m also wondering if the page rank of that particular URL is shooting through the roof right now, since verybody and their mama has been over there looking at it. It is kind of an ironic coincidence that the anti-porn people seem to have drawn the most attention to it. I went through it and looked at the sites to see if I found the content problematic. (Lexington Steele shoudl be really happy because I gave him a bunch of hits, trying to figure out if he was one of the stars of “Savages on Blondes,” which has apparently been renamed “Blacks on Blondes.” Since racist pornographers use the term black and savage interchangably. )

    People do feel entitled, particularly at at Alas. It’s partly Barry’s fault for being way too damn nice, but I can relate. I let tombstone, curious, and Michael post around here and get away with a bunch of crap. Some of the people who are coming out against him have both a personal and a political axe to grind, so the emotions are really running high.

  4. Michael on October 14th, 2006 12:46 am

    I have no problem with porn. In the past I have owned porn sites, filmed movies, and even worked in them. That being said, I would expect that a person would be completely open about such a connection with his co bloggers. The deserve the right to be completely informed so that they may make an informed decision to participate

  5. Michael on October 14th, 2006 12:52 am

    Admin said :

    People do feel entitled, particularly at at Alas. Its partly Barrys fault for being way too damn nice, but I can relate. I let tombstone, curious, and Michael post around here and get away with a bunch of crap. Some of the people who are coming out against him have both a personal and a political axe to grind, so the emotions are really running high.

    Hmm . Interesting . Although I disagree with you on many things , my opinions are based on solid recognized Libertarian beliefs . You will also find that I am particulary good understanding of people and current events.

  6. admin on October 14th, 2006 1:08 am

    I’m not sure if you are the same Michael that I am talking about because I have a Michael that uses a different email address (unless you changed it). LOL!!! I’ve been meaning to ask about that for a while.

  7. Daran on October 14th, 2006 6:23 am

    I’ve got some bad news for you, Rachel. Spammers don’t need to buy your content, they just pull it staight of the web. Even if you could afford to sue, do you seriously believe a guy with a server full of kiddie porn in Uzbeckistan is going be worried about your copyright infringement suit?

    So what’s to do? Take some deep breaths, if you have to. Go for a walk, if you have to. Then just carry on posting as you did before, because you call let these bastards dictate what you do.

  8. Daran on October 14th, 2006 6:37 am

    Oh, and another thing. Linking to Alas, or even linking directly to reviews.amptoons.com makes very little difference to the latter’s pagerank. Barry said that the buyer wasn’t particularly worried about a mass disaffiliation, and he was right not to be. Link for the benefit of your readers, and don’t worry about what google makes of it.

    It’s on my list of things to do, to write a post about how all this works.

  9. Daran on October 14th, 2006 6:42 am

    Should have said “…can’t let those bastards…”

  10. Michael on October 14th, 2006 10:04 pm

    From time to time I comment from my office at work while other times I write from home . I think the two locations have different emails .I found your site early in the whole Duke rape case debate .

    The lesson of many high profile cases is that they tend not to be treated on their own terms . Instead they tend to be used to prove a particular point . I strive to see each case on its own merits .

  11. Gandalph Mantooth on October 15th, 2006 2:52 am

    my search results are usually so chaste . . . the only time I had anything “good” was when I’d posted about Stormfront. Aryan lolita turned up often . . .

  12. admin on October 15th, 2006 10:24 am

    GM,
    You’re lucky. I can give you one sure way to increase your raunchy searches. Writing about interracial relationships. It works like a charm. LOL!! One of the searches I used to get all the time is “black c*ck” and about 6 or 7 variations of it. It got really bad when I put up an old post, pointing out that most of the websites that contain the word interracial were porn sites. Every IR fetish perv in America was googling me.

  13. Daran on October 16th, 2006 11:42 pm

    If you see someone searching for “ampersand pornography”, it’s not someone looking for alphabetical erotica. It’s me, wading knee-deep though porn, looking for posts about the amptoons debacle for my roundup.

  14. admin on October 17th, 2006 8:51 am

    Daran, LOL!! I’ll take note of that.

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