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October 23, 2002
Yes, I finally went out and got myself some real webspace for this site. Originally, I had my pages located over at a place calling itself "Internet Trash", run by Langtech Internet of East Brunswick, New Jersey. This is a free webspace provider who, for some years, I actively and enthusiastically promoted online. The tag at the bottom of my page said it all : "click here to visit the generous provider of this free and uncensored webspace". Internet Trash had a reputation for being one of the strongholds of Free Speech on the Internet, a reputation which it encouraged people to believe in, with a self-promotional blurb on its homepage which called it the only place for offensive and politically incorrect homepages (along with an assortment of equally unpopular categories). The only rational way that one could have read that blurb, was as a statement that they would host anything within the bounds of the law.
In reality, this was so much corporate hype. Internet Trash is no less a content-based censor than some have accused Geocities of being, and it applies the same low standards that have been attributed to its far more technically capable competitor: one complaint, no matter how unwarranted that complaint may be, is enough to get you censored. There is a section on this site called "Burning Silliness Online", which I put up as a rebuttal to some rumor-mongering which had been done at my expense, in the Burning Man forums. Not only was my version of the events described painstakingly accurate, but I could prove it to be so, beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt. What was being described was a bizarre series of e-mail exchanges, and I had held onto the e-mail. Not to copies of the e-mail, but to the original e-mail, itself.
One of the offending parties, a truly bizarre individual (even by Burning Man standards) named Tara Ball, untroubled by the reality that every word in that account was truthful, wrote in to Internet Trash to complain that these pages were "slanderous, untrue and defamation of character". Internet Trash then wrote to me and asked me to "work this out" with her. In a letter cc-ed to Ms. Ball, I explained the situation to them, including the part about being able to prove the truthfulness of what I had written. Truth is, after all, an absolute defense against charges of slander or libel - it has been since Colonial times. Incredibly, Internet Trash took the position that the truth was beside the point.
All that I got from them (or should I say, "him") from that point on, was a good stonewalling. I offered to forward copies of the e-mail in question by e-mail attachment, and to have my own primary ISP verify that these letters were, in fact, real. All that I got back was a canned reply, stating that Internet Trash didn't have the resources to check out complaints. What resources could they (or he) be talking about ? All that he would have to do, would be to read his e-mail. To add to the absurdity, Ms.Ball then went on to untruthfully state that I had accused her of drug use in a page entitled "Taraball, Drugs and You". I asked Rob Langfeld, the guy at Internet Trash to simply follow the link, and look at the page with his own eyes. I had said nothing of the sort. "Taraball, Drugs and You" was the title of a thread on the New York Burning Man list which came in response to Ms. Ball's request that people not discuss drug use and other illegal activities on the list. All that Rob would have had to do, to determine the truth here, would have been for him to ... um ... just read the page. His response? "We can't just ignore complaints". But I hadn't asked him to ignore the complaints, and he knew it. All that I had asked of him, was something that a civilized person would recognize as being something that I should be able to state as a demand - that when he examined the evidence, that he should do so fairly, with an open mind. Fair play, online or off, is a right to which we are entitled, not a privilege which we should have to pay for.
Two of Tara's friends then chimed in with equally baseless, and easily disprovable claims of wrong-doing on my part. One Jamie Slater even had the nerve to try to get around the reality that the pages didn't say what she and her friends claimed they said, by claiming that I had rewritten them after the complaints came in. I had done nothing of the sort, a fact which the Google archives will attest to, or would, if Rob hadn't suppressed the evidence by denying permission to read these pages. (Destroyed or suppressed evidence, obviously, should be presumed unfavorable to the one doing the suppressing or destroying; the very act is an open admission that one has something to hide). I pointed out to Rob that all that he would have to do, to get to the truth of the matter, would be for him to look at his own logs, and see that those pages had not been updated for weeks, at the very least. The exchange described here took place entirely within a two day period.
Based on the complaints of a certifiable whack job (Tara Ball) and her two equally whacky friends (Jamie Slater and Dustin Smith), Internet Trash went on to ignore the easily-checked evidence, and denied access to those pages, effectively censoring their content by making them unreadable, based on nothing more than a few demonstrably frivolous complaints. There is absolutely no difference between the way Rob Langfeld/Langtech Internet/Internet Trash resolved this dispute, and the way in which it would have been resolved at one of the more notoriously censorious webspace providers. The only difference is, those providers don't pretend to be anything other than what they are; Internet Trash does. (*) Some have tried to defend them by pointing to the fine print in the Terms of Service allowing them to end service for "any reason, or no reason at all". That might, or might not, get them off the hook in court, but ethically, it gets them nowhere. The fact of the matter is, they did advertise themselves as being a Pro-Free Speech provider, and, to in effect say "yeah, but we have our fingers crossed behind our back", doesn't change this into anything other than what it was and is : deceptive advertising.
Having found that my faith in Internet Trash was unjustified by the facts, I then went looking for a provider that meant what it said, when it spoke of not censoring its users. One at which reliable service could be hoped for, instead of the month-long blackouts I had seen at Internet Trash, and a helpful response to reports of technical problems would be seen, instead of the unprofessional and immature ranting which I had seen out of Internet Trash, when I reported problems with their FTP server.
I think that I may have found one, here at Newsguy, and the prices are certainly reasonable. Just to be on the safe side, though, I'm going to set up a domain name, so if anybody out there wants to be cute, and try to threaten or harass Newsguy into dropping this account - don't even bother. Even if they caved in (and apparently, unlike Internet Trash, they have a proven history of not doing so, from what I've heard), what would this person hope to accomplish ? I'd just set up a new copy at a new provider, and re-align the domain. Even the links to this page and the search engine listings would, for the most part, remain good. This, I do not out of distrust for Newsguy, but out of a desire to do my part as an appreciative customer. It is my hope that, by making it clear that a successful plug-pulling will accomplish nothing for any would-be censors out there, that they will realize that there's no point in even trying. This page is here to stay. Deal with it.
Click here for Bad Times on the Green Tortoise, or here to enter the Halls of Eternal Disbelief. You may see some complaints about technical problems; keep in mind that I've just relocated this site from Internet Trash, and really haven't had time to revise my pages yet. These complaints are about Internet Trash, not Newsguy, which seems pretty cool, so far. (And has remained so for over a year now, as of Dec.27. 2003).
Welcome to the home of the steadily disintegrating web page.
Don't get the wrong idea. This is by design, not by server failure. To varying degrees, some of the things discussed online, are things that I'd like to put behind me, so they're being seperated out into distinct pages, or lent to other webmasters. Much of that material is still here, still on the same old webrings, and still feeding hits into the heart of this site. I'm just not going to link back to it from this front page. I'd like to find something more worthwhile to dwell on, than some of the crap already here.
Right now, I have some serious obligations, so it may be a while before I start work on this, again. What will it be about? A few things. Opposition to the death penalty. The Peace movement. (Remember when killing people was considered to be a BAD thing?). Some non-internet related essays on the abuse of statistics in politics, and academia, on this page. Some photos of my some of my favorite sights in Chicago and its suburbs. (Don't get your hopes too high on that one. Chicago is not Paris, or even New Orleans. We're talking charm, here, not magnificence, but these are places one gets a little attached to).
All far, far more interesting than the juvenile garbage which I found myself dragged into on Usenet. Yes, I'll polish the account of it up, and make it into a more interesting narrative in a few years. But put it in a place where I am reminded of it constantly? No. I don't think so.
Yes, I know this looks pretty shoddy, right now. Come back later, and it'll be a lot more to look at. In the meanwhile, there is the homepage for a would-be Burning Man camp for you to check out, and an African cooking page on the way.
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(*) Mild irony: I initially had mentioned Geocities, due to the many complaints I'd read responding said provider. My own personal experiences, which I've had subsequently, have since lead me to decide to remove that reference to Geocities, as I don't not feel so certain that it was fair. Did Internet Trash handle this "no differently than Geocities or some other equally notorious content-based censor"? No, because unlike Internet Trash, the much maligned Geocities hasn't censored me to this day. Others may have had very different experiences and maybe reporting them truthfully, but to date, I have yet to see where much of this Yahoo bashing has been coming from. Perhaps I'll end up eating those words, but for now, I thought I'd offer a small testimonial from the other side.
