(don't) BAN THIS SICK FILTH

Just a brief one, and definitely no pictures.

Blogger's owners Google has announced that sexually explicit blogs will be forcibly made 'private' - available only to individuals the author personally invites to view.

As you may have noticed, Plashing Vole largely eschews sexual material you're one of those discerning souls who flushes at the thought of a well-applied preposition or a neatly-turned phrase. You I welcome. In short, there's nothing 'blue' to be seen here, though a look through the search terms used by people who land on Vole implies that a lot of people are a) sick and b) very disappointed quite quickly.

As perhaps the least sexy author and blog in cyberspace, I protest. Google, Apple (another deeply prudish company) and various other tech corporations are happy to spy on us, spy on us for governments, avoid their taxes, promote a politics which disempowers the citizen in favour of oppressive states and oppressive, unaccountable corporations, and yet they fear the expression of sexual appetites. Reaching back to my days reading Freudian literary theory, I seem to remember an argument that the exchange of money is a fetishised transference of the exchange of libidinal energy – if that's true, Google is the horniest beast in existence.

I don't view pornography for a range of reasons personal, political, social and sensible (for a start, I only use the web at work, and shared offices aren't the ideal setting for a session with the Kleenex; besides, I like my job). But I do want to stick up for my invisible comrades in the blogosphere. Firstly, explicit material is not necessarily pornographic. There are millions of people out there discussing their sexual development and appetites in constructive ways. Human sexuality is a wondrous (bonkers) landscape and take it from this ex-Catholic: not talking about it produces damaged people and societies. I want the gay Saudi or Nebraskan kid to find out that there are people like her or him, and that anyone who feels a bit odd at home has a community of people exploring the same feeling.

Not all sex blogging is pornographic. A large amount of it, frankly, is. I'm largely opposed to pornography but accept that there's at least the potential for 'ethical' porn. My guess is that it's more likely to be found on blogs than on the corporate pages of commercial producers. I'd far rather hear about Hilda and Cyril's wife-swapping parties in Tunbridge Wells than some violent rape-fantasy produced by the Gb in Los Angeles in conveyor-belt fashion. Artistically, too, let's hear it for awful mobile-phone footage and the glories of DIY home decor and (don't blame me; Boing Boing thinks it's cool) Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn (link is harmless but please, people, shut your bedroom door).

Most of all, I'm bothered that Google is going to be the ultimate arbiter of what's unacceptable. A tiny elite group of mostly-white, mostly-male, mostly-heterosexual elitists is now going to decide what can and can't be written about and shown in one of the few uncommercialised spaces on the web. Yes,  you might say, Blogger is a commercial service, freely available on the understanding that content and metadata become Google's profit-making data. It's a pseudo-public space rather than a public one, and it has the right to dictate what goes on under its roof. I suspect Google will claim that this is an issue of public protection, but it doesn't stand up. A Tory MP last year appealed to the Prime Minister to ensure that children are prevented from seeing sexual material. From the party which hates the Nanny State, this is a bit cheeky: how about he do some actual parenting? I don't think children are going to read blogs about shoe fetishes. They'll google the obvious things or view stuff their mates pass on.

I don't think this washes any more. There is no public equivalent of the blogosphere for those who don't have the resources to host their own sites, and without the visibility the comes from being on a major site, you may as well not exist. Yes, there are compromises (WordPress even tracks bloggers through a hidden feature in the typeface) but we should demand at least a clear and accountable process for determining what is and isn't acceptable. My guess is that the ideological and cultural position occupied by Google's censors will disproportionately hit blogs dealing with homosexuality, trans-gender sexualities and other 'minority' positions on the sexual continuum.
I have a sneaking suspicion that big-boobed-babes of the kind purveyed for heterosexual men by Playboy and its multiple imitators will somehow remain visible (bloggers making money from erotic material are banned: you can find corporate porn via Google any time you like).

I don't mind my government passing laws about this stuff even when they're wrong, because I can vote them out if enough people agree with me, but Google et al. are informed by only two things: profit and their own private perspectives on what's 'icky'. That's not good enough when their service is fast becoming a utility.

The old saw about 'first they came for X, and I said nothing because I was not X' applies here. However disgusting you might find them, it's time to stand up for the perverts, not only because someday Google might decide that you're one too, but as a matter of principle.

Mark ye but this

Mark has:

a three-legged cat

14,500 books

7 broken TVs

no ceilings

no number-plates

3 broken computers

one (semi-) working eye

no spectacles

and is a dear, dear friend and colleague. His research interests are porn, Charles Manson and other freaky stuff. And now he's completely knackered his back - can only shuffle, can't lift things etc - so I'm off to help him move office. He is, of course, in possession of the largest library in the university. See his library and cat here (and mine here)

I get readers: odd ones

I had a visitor from Catonsville, Maryland in the middle of the night. To this blog, you understand. I'm not sure I'd have wanted him or her visiting my house because they'd Googled 'computational linguistics porn'.

I'm stunned. I know a lot of computational linguistics practitioners, and they've never mentioned the field. Is it an underground thing? Or is this person ahead of the curve? There may be a gap in the market?

'Hi there. I'm here to, uh, resolve your anaphora'.

'Oh, thank God you're here. I've also been struggling with automatic abstracting'.

'Yes, I can see that by the rips in your lingerie. Want some Natural Language Processing advice?

'Why, you're one cunning linguist!'

I thankyewverymuch, I'm available for weddings and children's parties.

Jacqui Smith

I posted this as a comment over at Demented Demon's site, but thought it worth dumping it here too.

It's all rather hilarious, but shouldn't be a news story. They're not to my taste, but these films are legal, and presumably he's missing his hard-working wife. It seems that they have a TV/phone/internet bundled package, so it's easy to see how the payment would have slipped through. I'd have a lot more respect for the couple if they'd stood on the steps, said sorry for accidentally putting the £10 on expenses and ignored the howling of the faux-moralists. 'It's either Chav Lez Action 12 or harrassing the cleaner', he could have said…

What is annoying me is that the News International tabloids are screaming loudest - the organisation which includes the satellite and Pay TV service subscribed to by the Smiths. The same goes for the Express, which is owned by a pornographer but which takes a highly moralistic stance in its pages. So clearly it's OK to make and sell porn, but not to watch it.

I think the story is a sign of the media's desperate hysteria. They've decided to lynch the government, Labour MPs and all politicians (in that order) and are prepared to exaggerate any little thing, aided by judicious bribery of partisan civil servants. What an aid to the public sphere the tabloids are.

On Ms. Smith: I've no strong feelings about her either way (except that as a cabinet minister in this government she's clearly a class traitor), but I think some boring ministers are pretty much what we need. Do we want the Boris Johnsons, Alan Clarks, Tom Dribergs, Ron Browns etc in government? They might be good fun for the papers but there's more to government than entertainment.

Dirty, perverted conservatives

It's in the New Scientist and it's statistically significant: the more conservative (judged by the US elections by state) you are, the more porn you consume. I suppose it figures - us lefties are concerned about objectification and simulation and exploitation - whereas Tories are all for such things.

More surprisingly, as Pharyngula notes, the stronger your beliefs in 'old-fashioned family values' and in Aids-as-God's-punishment, the more porn you ogle. Weirdos.

Keep it up!

Despite being a sordid pornographer, Larry Flynt plays a useful role as America's court jester. What with announcing the release of 'Who's Nailin' Palin'' during the election, his part in various freedom of speech court actions and his wicked sense of humour, he's played his part in pricking the pomposity of the ruling classes (perhaps because he's simply an honest capitalist). In this vein, his latest PR stunt is genius. On the eve of some porn-industry event, he's applied to Congress for $5bn dollars of the bailout money available, to revive the flagging industry. On hard (sorry) economic grounds, who could refuse him? Or does America's turn away from capitalism also include a morality clause?