Internet Censorship by Geocities / Yahoo!!

    Sub-"Plot" - Yahoo's Cowardice, Greed Results in
    Severe Prison Sentences for Chinese "Dissidents!"


    This was my old web site (inactivated by Geocities/Yahoo):
    http://www.geocities.com/victoria_cd1/welcome.htm

    Here is my current web page:
    http://home.nc.rr.com/victoriacd/index.shtml

    CONTENTS

    • Internet Censorship by Geocities (Yahoo)

    • Selected Bibliography - Web References

    • Yahoo Complicity Leads Directly to Harsh Prison Terms for Chinese Social Activists

    • Miscellaneous

    Internet Censorship by Geocities (Yahoo)

    In January 2006, Geocities (Yahoo) very rudely terminated my account / web site of approximately three years, without warning. Despite several requests for clarification of precisely how I "violated" my account (if in fact that was true), an adequate explanation was never offered, beyond their standard form-letter-type," non-informative replies. I was never warned in advance that my account was in trouble, or that it would be terminated, nor was I ever subsequently offered the opportunity to correct the "problem" (whatever it was, supposedly). Additionally as I could no longer access my Geocities File Manager, I lost the ability to recover any of my personal content, including my Guestbook (despite requests to Geocities that I be allowed to recover this material). The following is a sampling of the email correspondence between myself (Victoria CD) and Geocities (Yahoo) relating to this matter, in chronological order:

    Note: I removed my personal identifiers, below, to protect my privacy against spammers, etc.

      From: devnull@yahoo.com [mailto:devnull@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:33 PM
Subject: Service Closure Notification

Yahoo ID: ***

Usage of your Yahoo! account was recently identified to be in violation of the terms of service.

Because of this violation, your service has been shut down.

If you feel this action has been made in error, contact Yahoo! Customer Care at geo-cancellation@cc.yahoo-inc.com.

Please do not respond to this email, as this is simply a notification.


      From: Victoria
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 8:35 PM
To: geo-cancellation@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Subject: FW: Service Closure Notification

Would you kindly provide the particulars?  Why was my home page inactivated?

Thank you ...

      -----Original Message-----
From: Yahoo! GeoCities [mailto:geo-cancellation@cc.yahoo-inc.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 2:11 PM
To: Victoria
Subject: Re: FW: Service Closure Notification (KMM26370868V97673L0KM)

Dear GeoCities customer, 

Usage of your Yahoo! account was recently identified to be in violation of the GeoCities Terms of Service,
and your site and account were shut down.

Please ensure that future sites do not include redirects to sites outside GeoCities. 

The GeoCities Terms of Service states that you cannot use your GeoCities home page (or directory) as storage
for remote loading or as a door or "signpost" to another home page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo! GeoCities.

For more information, please see the Terms of Service at http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/tos/tos.php.

Sincerely,
The Yahoo! GeoCities team
http://www.yahoo.com/

19219240

    Yeah, right ... Thanks a lot, Yahoo - that certainly clarifies things! &rarr &rarr Have you ever read their Terms of Service  (paraphrased here)?! It is so inclusive that virtually any web site hosted on Geocities (Yahoo) could be summarily terminated without explanantion or recourse! ... Continuing along:

      From: Victoria
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 9:17 AM
To: devnull@yahoo.com; geo-cancellation@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Subject: Re: Service Closure Notification

Please note that I have asked you three (3) times now why my Geocities web page (account) has been suspended -
the SPECIFIC REASONS OR COMPLAINTS - and have not received an adequate response from Yahoo.

Please reply ASAP.

    ... Leading to the predictable form-letter response:

      From: Yahoo! GeoCities [mailto:geo-cancellation@cc.yahoo-inc.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 2:19 PM
To: Victoria
Subject: RE: Service Closure Notification (KMM26438511V70902L0KM)

Please do not reply to this message. 

Dear GeoCities customer, 

Usage of your Yahoo! account was recently identified to be in violation of the GeoCities Terms of Service,
and your site and account were shut down.

Please ensure that future sites do not include redirects to sites outside GeoCities. 
The GeoCities Terms of Service states that you cannot use your GeoCities home page (or directory) as storage
for remote loading or as a door or "signpost" to another home page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo! GeoCities.

For more information, please see the Terms of Service at http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/tos/tos.php.

Sincerely,
The Yahoo! GeoCities team
http://www.yahoo.com/

19277066
    And now for Yahoo's coup de grace - one final twist of the knife:
      From: Yahoo! Customer Care [mailto:no-reply@firmglobal.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 4:01 PM
To: Victoria
Subject: Yahoo! would like to get your feedback for Support Case: 19277066, GeoCities

Yahoo! SUPPORT SATISFACTION SURVEY

Dear Valued Yahoo! Customer,

At Yahoo!, your satisfaction matters more than anything else. In order to meet your needs and preferences,
we invite you to share your thoughts with us about your recent experience with Yahoo! Customer Care in a
brief online survey.

(... bla bla bla ...)
    Unbelievable!

    After undertaking the considerable effort to re-create my website at an alternative site (here), I reflected on my negative experience with Geocities (Yahoo), and specifically the similar misfortunes suffered by other "transgendered" (or "alternative lifestyle") individuals. In the course of updating my web links, I have noticed that many similar sites (to mine) hosted by Geocities, Yahoo, Tripod etc. have been terminated by the hosting agencies, often without recourse. The following sites have all recently disappeared, due to inactivated accounts (for one reason or another). I am increasingly concerned by the targeted closure of particular 'alternative' (but innoculous) web sites. For example:

    • men_in_bras - a Yahoo group, this link no longer works (censored!)

    • UKpantyboy (Great Britain): 
        -----Original Message-----
From: butch boytosissify 
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 8:52 PM
To: Victoria
Subject: Re: Broken link (update)

Nice to hear from you.

Bloody Yahoo deleted my profile "leathersubinlingerie" too and I had a group for
masculine men in lingerie that had been running for 7 years wiped out.

UNFORGIVABLE.

Your website looks great, you are as hot as ever!

I could not find my site on your links though !

Direct link is
Title: Ukpantyboy, masculine boy who wears lingerie 24/7/365
URL: UKpantyboy (Note: Link no longer works - censored!)

I'd appreciate you updating your link. My banner is on my home page if you want to lift it and use it.

I have updated your link on my links page http://bestpornhost.com/ukpantyboy/links.htm

Good luck and Best wishes
UKpantyboy
    • Annie Richards' web site on Tripod.com; once again, this link no longer works (censored!) However, you can click here for some of Annie's contributed work, on another site. Provocative, perhaps, but absolutely non-offensive, to the target "audience!"


    I could proceed to list additional examples, from Geocities (Yahoo), Tripod, etc.: 
      Yahoo! GeoCities

This page is not available.
We're sorry, but this page is currently unavailable for viewing.
If this site belongs to you, please read this help page for more information and assistance.

For general questions see our main help area, or search for other member pages.


      
The page you are attempting to access has been removed because it violated Tripod's Terms of Service.
Please check out Tripod's Help system for more information.

    The de facto effect of this behaviour, by autocratic bureaucracies like Geocities (Yahoo), is internet censorship!  What's the point of this "censorship"?  More ominously, what is driving it? Without additional information, it is impossible to determine whether these web page (account) closures reflect an overall policy shift by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and/or Web Site Providers, discretionary action by specific ISP / Web Site Provider employees (e.g., referring above, who exactly is devnull@yahoo.com?), or censorship / prejudice / intolerance of TG and alternative lifestyles resulting from directed attacks by unidentified individuals or groups (e.g., by complaining to specific ISP's or Web Site Providers with respect to specific web sites, to unjustly get these sites closed w/o review / recourse). In the latter case, as may have happened to me with respect to Geocities, once a site is closed (for whatever reason), it effectively appears to be permanently "silenced." It's as simple as anonymously completing an online form, checking any number of "potential violations" such as "offensive content" (etc.) - regardless of whether they are true. Once submitted, what motivation does an ISP / Web Service provider have to investigate? It's easiest for them to simply terminate the targeted account - what do they care?!

    I hope that this "trend" (if true) is not symptomatic of a rising tide of intolerance, promulgated by a culture of indifference or apathy, that would allow or facilitate such intolerance / indifference. The energies of the various ISPs and Web Service Providers could be applied musch more constructively toward the curbing of the increasing flood of 'spam' email that originates on - or is propagated by - their networks. Indeed, I have seen no (zero) tangible evidence, in any form, that any of the ISPs are combatting spam email propagation, or the originating systems or individuals.

    Following, please find some information that is relevant to the preceding discussion, as well as some alarming indications of the future status of the "free web!"


    Selected Bibliography - Web References


    • GeoCensored & Other Anti-Geocities & Anti-Yahoo Web Sites:

      • GeoCensored

      • GeoCensored - "Older" GeoCensored website

      • GeoCensored Web Ring

      • GeoShitties

      • Woohoo! HitlerCities

      • HitlerCities Links

      • Little-Ticket GeoCensorship


    • A look inside the world of search from the people of Yahoo! (also here). Some excerpted commentary:

        "Let's not forget something else Yahoo has made a habit of doing: cancelling people's Yahoo accounts for no reason and offering no explanation or path of recourse. Two months ago, Yahoo suspended my account because of alleged "ToS violations." How did I know that? Because I spend 8 days on the phone calling Yahoo to find out why. It's not as if Yahoo actually told me, despite the fact that I've had the same Yahoo user name since 1997.

        So, now I can't access my 800+member Yahoo group, Yahoo mail is basically gone. Had letters in there I'd saved almost a decade for personal reasons. Figured they'd be safer there where drives are backed up. I was right, Yahoo mail survived 2 hard drive crashes over the years, and then -- oops -- hey you're canceled. (Their ToS is nice and scary, go ahead and read it. They can delete all of your stuff for no good reason and there's nothing you can do about it.)

        Finally, I was emailed a note saying I was violating Geocities policy because my Geocities webpage (I formerly hosted there when I didn't know crap about web hosting and thought Yahoo hosting was a grand idea) had a forwarding link on it. I cleaned out my Geocities page because it was inaccessible way too often (another server crash!?) and put a link on the former fromt page saying "I moved here. Click the link to visit me." And then I didn't touch ANYTHING again for 3 years. Is it worth putting so much information into a company that, according to their own ToS, can cancel you, won't tell you why, bullies you hoping you'll give up, and then relents with a NASTY letter about how I'm ruining the internet because of my link away from Yahoo. I will never trust Yahoo with anything important ever again."

    • Amazingly Yahoo Sucks Even More   (Archived Site)

    • antitoo

    • Avoid Yahoo Geocities

    • Civil Censorship - A New Threat

    • Dear Member: You've Been Deleted- Wired News, July 11, 2002

    • This review of Free Web Hosts Listings has the following to say regarding Geocities:

        "GeoCities (now part of Yahoo) ... TOS: Standard; although this service has earned a for censorship and hidden agendas (Dissidents are placed under "house arrest" for speaking critically of company/sponsors, or questioning the activities of its commercial sponsors, even in private email.) Enforcement: Pretty much nonexistant unless complaint received (or account flagged by automated processes, e.g. keyword spiders). Recent layoffs of 2/3 of GeoCities staff following its acquisition by Yahoo, coupled with rats-from-a-sinking-ship abandonment by volunteer narcs a.k.a Community Leaders, should help enforcement slip even further. With the floating watermark(?) on every page and unrelenting plague of popups and script errors, as well as censorship issues, GeoCities is a particularly poor choice for actual webpages.

        NOTE: The icon indicates: Evidence of politically- or idealogically-motivated censorship, hidden agendas, or political/religious/sexual intolerance.

    • Internet Censor Companies Use Double Standard

    • Pagewaxing is a term coined to describe a ruthless campaign of censorship against a specific Internet resource (page, site, etc.) or author. Such a censorship campaign could be initiated by an underhanded competitor, mortal enemy, political opponent, offended(-sive) religious zealot, etc., etc."  ...  "Among waxers, GeoCities (yes, they've tried to wax me!), AOL and the Church of $cientology are probably among the more notorious for their litigation threats against critics."

    • The Suckiness of Yahoo



    Yahoo Complicity Leads Directly to Harsh Prison Terms for Chinese Social Activists

      I see that these rotten bastards (Yahoo) are in the news again ...
      hence this update, and the re-posting of this page on my web site!!
    • Group: Yahoo Assisted China With Torture (April 19, 2007)

      (AP) -- A human rights group launched a campaign Thursday against Yahoo Inc. on grounds the U.S. search company assisted China's communist government with torture by revealing information that led to the arrest of dissidents. The World Organization for Human Rights USA said businesses that operate abroad need to be more aware of their responsibilities. "They should not be participating actively in promoting and encouraging major human rights abuses," said Morton Sklar, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based organization.

      Yahoo has acknowledged turning over data on its users at the request of the Chinese government, saying company employees face civil and criminal sanctions if they ignore local laws. Without commenting directly on a federal lawsuit the human rights group had prepared against Yahoo, company spokesman Jim Cullinan said such matters are "better suited for diplomacy than it is in the legal forum." He said that although company officials are "distressed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political view on the Internet," Yahoo plans to keep offering services in China out of a belief the Internet can promote change and transform lives in that country.

      The human rights group planned to announce its lawsuit Thursday, citing federal laws that govern torture and other violations of international law. Plaintiffs were expected to include jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning and his wife, Yu Ling, who was visiting San Francisco this week as part of the group's campaign. Sklar said he knew of three other cases, but the dissidents were reluctant to join the complaint for fear of harm to their families living in China. Among those three dissidents is journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in jail. Part of the lawsuit's goal will be to determine how widespread Yahoo's assistance was, Sklar said, "and to stop this practice of U.S. corporations being complicit." The group is seeking unspecified damages and wants Yahoo to actively secure the release of any detainees.

      Yahoo rivals Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. also have been accused of helping the Chinese government crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets, but only Yahoo has been accused of directly assisting in a dissident's arrest. Google has offered a censored version of its popular search engine, while Microsoft shut down, at Beijing's request, a popular Chinese blog that touches on sensitive topics such as press freedoms. Activists, meanwhile, have criticized Cisco Systems Inc. for selling computer networking equipment that could potentially be used to monitor Internet use.

    • Another Cyberdissident Imprisoned Because of Data Provided By Yahoo - Reporters Without Borders, Feb. 09, 2006

    • Chinese Man 'Jailed Due To Yahoo' - BBC News, Feb. 09, 2006

    • Group: Yahoo gave China key data - (link no longer works) CNN, Feb. 09, 2006. "BEIJING, China (AP) Information helped jail information, rights organization claims. Internet firm Yahoo Inc. provided Chinese authorities with information used to jail one of its users for eight years, an activist group said Thursday -- the second time Yahoo was accused of helping jail a Chinese user. ..."

    • Reporters Blame Yahoo for Chinese Jailings - ConsumerAffairs.com, Feb. 09, 2006. "Reporters Without Borders is blaming Yahoo for the eight-year prison sentence imposed on Chinese cyberdissident Li Zhi. ..."

    • Tech execs get grilled over China business - Money.CNN.com, Feb. 15, 2006. "... Several critics singled out Yahoo for providing the Chinese government with the identities of its customers, including a dissident named Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison." ..."

    • Tech giants face questions over role in China's Internet - ISA Today, Feb. 15, 2006. "... Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," said Rep. Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night. ..."

    • Tech Companies Defend Profiteering To Holocaust Survivor Congressman (boingboing.com, Feb. 17, 2006)  Direct questioning from Congress, and Yahoo's shameful, feeble response (excerpted):

        Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, put the screws to Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco for their active role in profiteering from human rights abuses in totalitarian regimes around the world. The transcript on CNet is amazing and shameful  ...  It's embarrassing to read their dismal defenses of raw greed at any cost:

          Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

          Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law ... We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

          Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years? Have any of the companies reached out to these families and asked if you could be of any help to them?

          Yahoo: We have expressed our condemnation of the prosecution of this person, expressed our views to the Chinese government ... We have approached the Chinese government on these issues.

          Lantos: Have you reached out to the family? I can ask it 10 more times if you refuse to answer it. You are under oath.

          Yahoo: We have not reached out to the families.

        Link: Congressman Quizzes Net Companies On Shame (c|net News.com, Feb. 16, 2006)

    • Yahoo! link confirmed in second Chinese dissident case (The Register, Feb. 27, 2006)

    • Report: verdict confirms Yahoo helped jail China dissident #2 (boingboing.net, Mar. 01, 2006)  "Reporters Without Borders issued a statement this week that it has obtained a copy of the court verdict against Li Zhi. The former civil service employee in China received an eight year jail sentence in 2003 for posting internet message board comments criticizing local government officials. The court document reportedly confirms that Yahoo! collaborated with Chinese government prosecutors, as did Sina.com. 'Yahoo! should urgently withdraw its content and email servers from this country before further requests of this kind are made of it. The fact that it operates in China through a local partner, Alibaba, does not in any way absolve it of its ethical responsibilities,' said the organisation.  ..."

    • More Yahoo B*llsh*t ... (boingboing.net, Mar. 22, 2006)

        "Yahoo: If You Use Our Ads, You Have To Block Non-US Visitors"

        LDM sez,

        I joined the Yahoo Publisher Network, a beta program through which Yahoo provides text ads in much the same way that Google does. I started running the Yahoo text ads on many of my web sites.

        A couple of days ago Yahoo sent me a notice stating they'd revised their Publisher Policy. Item '11.l' stated that I will not "display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US". In other words, I can't allow users outside of the United States to view my pages if there is a Yahoo ad on the page!

        This seemed insanely limiting, to say the least, and I wrote Yahoo to clarify this. Here is their reply:

        ------------------------------------------------

        Mar 21 2006 16:18 PT

        In regards to your inquiry, as per section 11.l of the Terms and Conditions, you are in violation if your ads receive traffic from sources outside the United States. However, there are scripts and programs which you can initiate to block international users from viewing or encountering your Yahoo! Publisher Network ads. We do not recommend or support these methods, but we do suggest finding a method to block this kind of traffic so you remain in compliance with the Terms and Conditions.

        If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us again via email, or by calling our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday to Friday from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. PDT, and from Saturday 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. PDT.

        Sincerely,
        Ray Devlin
        Customer Solutions
        Yahoo! Publisher Network

        ------------------------------------------------

        So...Yahoo tells me to deliberately keep a large number of users from seeing my pages, but won't even *suggest* a way to do this. Clever, huh? Now I've got to spend a considerable amount of time removing the *&$%! Yahoo ads from my sites, lest they come to me later and accuse me of fraud or worse. If I didn't know better I would think Yahoo had no clue whatsoever of what this intarweb thing is all about. Who knew that people from *other* parts of the world use the internet?

        When I spoke with a Yahoo rep on their Publisher Support line, they said I could block either the ads or the pages, but said over and over again that they "couldn't and wouldn't" give me any information on how to accomplish such a task. The rep finally told me that I should just firewall or block off "everything but the US" to keep the Yahoo ads from being seen by anyone outside the US. I'm sure their intent is to block only the ads, but they wouldn't hazard even a suggestion as to the best way to do this. Their "solution" was basically to block off the rest of the world.

    • Yahoo could stay in China and stop sending its users to jail (boingboing.net, Mar. 29, 2006)

        "Rebecca McKinnon expertly skewers Yahoo's spin on its ongoing assistance to the Chinese government in arresting dissidents -- Yahoo accuses its critics of calling on it to leave China altogether; McKinnon points out that most of us would be satisfied if it would just structure its business so that it couldn't be compelled to fink on its users and get them sent to jail.

        Yahoo! executives keep framing this issue as black and white: Either you're in there and do everything the Chinese authorities tell you without question, or you can't do business in China at all. That is false. Companies can and do make choices. You can engage in China and choose not to do certain kinds of business. Yahoo! has placed user e-mail data within legal jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China. Google and Microsoft have both chosen not to do so. Why did Yahoo! chose to do this? Either they weren't thinking through the consequences or they don't care."

        Linked from: Yahoo! Abomination. (YHOO) (Mar. 29, 2006)

    • HK Lawmaker: Yahoo Unit Had Role In Shi Tao's Jailing (boingboing.net, Mar. 31, 2006)  " '... Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided materials that confirmed the user's information,' the document said. The document appeared to contradict early comments by Yahoo, which said evidence used to convict the journalist was provided by Yahoo's unit in China to comply with the mainland's laws. ..."   Link (ABC News);  Link (Forbes.com)

    • PEN files complaint against Yahoo over Shi Tao (boingboing.net, Apr. 05, 2006)  (Original Link)

    • Report Claims Yahoo May Gain From Adware Click Fraud (Digg.com, Apr. 06, 2006)  (Original Link)

    • The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection -- and Yahoo's Role Revisited  (Apr. 04/06)

    • Yahoo implicated in 3rd China dissident case (boingboing.net, Apr. 19, 2006Apr. 04/06);  Link (Reporters Without Borders)

    • Yahoo accused of helping jail Internet writer  (CNN, Apr. 19/06) Link no longer works.



    MISCELLANEOUS

    • How To Cancel, Uninstall, or Complain About AOL

    • There's ONE page AOL.com hopes you'll never find  "AOL deletes link to "Cancel My Account" page after I publish link; deletes new links as I update. I learn AOL deleted Keyword "Cancel" from Keywords A-Z too. Deleting Keyword "Cancel" and "Cancel My Account" page breaks AOL's 1997 deal with Washington to make "Cancel My Account" info easy to find online."

    • The Battle For Net Neutrality: Consumer Groups, Telecom Companies Take Sides Over Web Content Access

    • The End of the Internet?


    Home   (http://home.nc.rr.com/victoriacd/index.shtml)