Wordpress to be blocked in Brazil over sex video?
Just got this in from Mike Corso at Cool Site of the Day.
A recent Brazilian YouTube sex scandal threatened to close down every WordPress blog around the world.
Did you hear about it? It's already called “YouTube Gate”—apparently a spicy sex scene was posted on YouTube and someone discussed it on a WordPress-hosted blog.
The problem is the Brazillian courts placed a ban on viewing the IP address of the entire WordPress website …
… And that means potentially thousands of bloggers can't have their content shown in their country.
Even worse, this isn't the first time a violation like this closed down an entire network of blogs.
But the bottom line is this should be a wakeup call for those who rely on hosted blogs (like WordPress) to tweak their strategy and avoid getting their own blogs banned.
The good news is the fix is simple … just host WordPress on your own server (rather than hosting it on the WordPress site).
Getting WordPress installed on your own site is now a snap … just take advantage of John Saya's FREE WordPress autoinstaller.
http://www.cnotes.com/r/wordpress.html
Any questions, shoot me an e-mail.
Mike Corso
Cool Site of the Day
This is a bit disturbing. Global Voices has more info. One of the quotations indicates a million Brazilian bloggers will be affected.
I am not sure if a Brazilian judgement should have an effect on blogs like this, penalizing those in Brazil who are using wordpress.com. Those who didn’t feature the home-made porn on their blogs—as in the overwhelming majority of Wordpress users—should not pay the price for the handful that did. (And surely non-Wordpress blogs are affected, too?)
Surely a simple deletion of the offending URLs would suffice?
And this desire to post someone’s home sex video on to their own blogs—well, it ain’t my scene. Stick it on to YouPorn and let the perverts all go to the same place, and keep it off the blogosphere!
Comments
Hi Mr Yan,
Hope your day is cooler then Los Angeles, Cali is blazing, summer fires burn hot and its only April...
Amazing post!
However, I find it hard to imagine that Brazil has an issue with porn. They should have a concern with AIDS, the cheap sex and underage labor that Brazil offers to Sex Industry.
Actually, I find it hard to imagine that the web's underbelly is filled with porn. That such a large % of online revenue is based on porn. Moreover, that Major Market Advertisers have allowed their brands to be co-branded with sex sites. Do shareholders not know, or care?
Yet, blocking WP sites does not control the dynamics; people's taste or lack of taste. Free speech, I guess, is an old American phrase. I wonder; will blocking wordpress sites stop white slavery, sexual abuse towards young children, men from going to Brazil to engage in power driven sex events that hurt the fiber of global culture, and humanity?
Thanks for allowing me to pose my questions. Sex is what it has always been. Yet, the online media has tried to make porn a staple of global culture and economics. I understand lust, from a posture of lust. What I don't understand is when sex and racism combine; that creates porn. Not just pictures of cute girls or guys. Just type any standard url, misspell a word and BAM!, you are looking at porn. My mom shops online, she is in a rage over the lack of privacy, and respect to humanity; all related to porn and its online revenue.
Still:
bill
Bill: I so agree. Brazil already shows plenty of skin in sites such as The Girl on Terra, Paparazzo, Morango and Bella da Semana (my Portuguese is poor so I may have spelt these wrong). These are just publicly accessible ones, never anything like a nipple except for paying subscribers, but girls in states of undress. It gets bluer with the obvious Playboy and SexyClube sites.
I suppose even with this characteristic in Brazilian culture they have some sort of moral tut-tutting when it comes to showing intercourse itself, though I note that their Big Brother has shown it, as has the programme in other nations.
You are right that there are far greater concerns in that nation and blocking Wordpress serves no public policy. The people who should be punished—those leaking the video—seem to now get the message that they need not be responsible and others have to suffer.
We can try to turn a blind eye to online porn’s existence, but they do not congregate in their own areas. They are quite willing to make those fake URLs as your Mom has encountered, and trick us even in Google to go to porn sites and even download porn software on to our machines in the form of spyware. Surely that serves no one except for the hits that a pornographer affiliate might get paid for—but I’d rather not have the bad karma from that.
Perhaps YouPorn, in that context, is a good thing: at least it gives a central clearing-house for sex videos and those who seek or provide that type of entertainment won’t need to bother the rest of us. The cynic, however, in me says that that will only make the others work harder in getting the unwanted attention of the general public, and that includes children and the elderly. The sex economy, the fixation on sex, are not good things for us to be so focused on, yet I don’t like it being constantly propagated even through prime-time shows such as the old Friends or Desperate Housewives.
I do not regard myself a prude but you are right: there are more pressing things to be concerned about, and I’m far too busy to find double-entendres in every sitcom appealing.