By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 13, 2009
Filed at 8:39 p.m. ET
NEW YORK AP — Amazon.com apologized Monday for an ”embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that led to the sales ranking being removed from tens of thousands of books.
The online retailer initially said Sunday that a ”glitch” had caused the problem and promised that the numbers would be restored. But Monday afternoon, sales numbers were still gone for such recent works as Chelsea Handler’s ”My Horizontal Life” and from such classics as Gore Vidal’s ”The City and the Pillar” and James Baldwin’s ”Giovanni’s Room.”
”What kind of a childish game is this?” Vidal said Monday. ”Why don’t they just burn the books? They’d be better off and it’s very visual on television.”
On Monday, Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener called the deletions an ”embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.” He said that 57,310 books had been affected.
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Tagged as:
amazon.com,
amazonfail
By DANIEL WOOLLS
MADRID, Spain -
Conservatives governing Madrid’s town hall have installed a filter that blocks lawmakers from doing Internet searches for words such as sex or sexuality, opposition Socialists said.
Angeles Alvarez, the Socialists’ top official for gender equality issues, said she recently tried to check on a Spanish-run reproductive health campaign in Latin America. When she typed the word ‘sexuality’ in a search engine, a denied-access warning flashed on her screen. (more. . . )
Tagged as:
r,
sex,
The Marketplace
Are Google AdWords out of line with Google sex queries? Violet Blue questions the propensity of Google AdWords to completely misrepresent searches on the web browser in this article:
With equal parts bitter irony, offense and amusement, I receive regular e-mails from Open Source Sex readers about the keyword-generated Google AdWords text ads that regularly populate the bottom of this page. Take a look at a few of my columns — especially the porn entries — and you’ll be, er, treated to a fat serving of sexually shaming “porn addiction — get help” text ads. Which, of course, run totally against the grain of the pro-porn message I’m dishing out. Because I want you all to get help, too — help finding better porn, that is.
But I’ve never been shocked about this: Google AdWords has a rep for pairing inappropriate (if not offensive) text ads with the original content it’s posted with — especially when it comes to sex. AdWords’ insensitivities might seem trifling or even amusing on the surface (let’s assume those of you reading my column feel OK about porn enough to disregard the douchey anti-porn ads at the bottom of the page), but those trying to make a positive change in the way their sexuality is portrayed in the wider culture are facing a David vs. Goliath battle of keywords.
Tagged as:
r,
rope,
sex,
The Marketplace
Elizabeth writes:
I like WordPress. A lot. I like that it is based on an open source platform. I like that it is independent, that is, not owned by a monstrously large corporation. I like that as a community it is generally very open.
That is why I’m concerned about a storm that is brewing over issues of censorship and community control among we WordPress.com bloggers. The controversy began when Janie and Kate noticed that their blogs had disappeared from tag pages. I’m writing about it here because, predictably, it began with some beautiful, erotic, sexual content. (Their blogs do contain erotic content. That’s not all they contain, but they do contain that, so if you’re bothered by that kind of thing, don’t click those links.)
The WordPress Terms of Service — you read them, didn’t you? Certainly you got your treat, right? — makes the following things clear:
- WordPress (And Automattic, the hosting service) don’t screen content before it is posted. (TOS Item 3)
- Bloggers must agree not to post illegal content like spam, obscene material, fraud schemes, etc. (Note: there is in the law a significant difference between obscenity and indecency. Obscenity is not protected by the first amendment.) (TOS item 2)
- Automattic (the host of all our content) reserves its right to remove or refuse any content that, in its “reasonable opinion, violates any Automattic policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable.†(Note: Harmful or objectionable are certainly very subjective terms, but we did agree to this when we accepted the TOS and put up our blogs.) (TOS item 2)
The content that started the uproar was not removed from the site. Instead, it was subject to a policy not described in the TOS: “reporting as mature.†(more…)
Tagged as:
bloggers,
legal,
r,
sex,
tes,
The Marketplace,
wordpress
Gallery Carre
