I have long suspected it… Ever since I found myself in various Turkish internet cafe’s back in 2007 and I couldn’t access my blog to update my travels. One place it came up with a (in Turkish) “Are you over 18?” type message before letting me sign in and a couple of other places it blocked me entirely with an indecipherable pop-up box. Slightly embarrassing the first time that happened and I had to ask the spotty little Turkish geek in the front desk what was wrong with the terminal I was using and he came to the machine, looked over my shoulder and said very loudly “NOT LOOKING FOR PORNOGRAPHY ALLOWED”.
Okay, so some of the language and terms on my site must have set off the stringent Turkish filters. I found ways around it and managed to update my travels one way or another. But I guess it’s official now:
The Queensland State Government has, in it’s infinite wisdom, deemed my blog to be Classified as : PORN. I’m not quite sure how that happens given the decided lack of nudity, any explicit imagery or as Neil would put it ‘abhorrent phenomena’ of any kind. There might be plenty of references to various paraphilias, lots of adult content and language not suitable for some viewers, a bit of ‘smut’ maybe… but for the most part, I hardly think it warrants being labeled ‘pornography’.
Right, well. There’s only one way to deal with this… there must be some high ranking government official who would like a letter about the blatant injustice evident in the unnecessary and unwarranted censoring of my blog being accessed from government computers! 😉
Er, I am fairly sure that many censors would consider the image in your title to be a bit pornographic. Bondage image with bare tit is a bit NSFW. (I like the image, mind but I am not a censor 8-> )
Laura’s right. I love reading your blog, and I would hardly qualify as a “prude” by any stretch of the imagination, however the splendid image on your title does meet many definitions of pornography.
You might know more about these things than I do, Ken. But I always thought various filters were designed to pick up undesirable content (‘inappropriate’ words etc) and obvious excessive amounts of naked flesh tones. Through which my header (which to the best of my knowledge doesn’t have any accompanying alternative text reading ‘half naked female handcuffed and blindfolded’) should have sailed through! 😀