• My personal opinions, based on my upbringing as well as my own moral beliefs.
• A resource for those who have either already been censored by GeoCities or may be in the foreseeable future; using the stories and observations of present and former GeoCities members to provide a real-time index of what is being censored under its domain and on what grounds.
• Intended as constructive and healthy criticism, offering a base of support for those who feel similarly disappointed by GeoCities and its current policies, as well as suggestions for change and improvement of its policies, TOS and actions.
• To inform the public of GeoCities' policies, actions it has taken against its critics (including legal harassment), and anecdotal evidence of the lengths GeoCities has gone to in order to keep quiet any such criticism.

• Intended to provide guaranteed facts, stats and other information. While I will make every effort to verify any information before posting it, this page relies heavily on anecdotal information and accounts of events (such as homepage deletions, deletion notices, threats, etc.) submitted by readers who have had these experiences. I must rely on the honesty of these sources; while the vast majority possess such honesty I cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of any account.
• Intended to slander, defame, disparage, or otherwise anger GeoCities Corp., its members, its employees, or its advertisers.
• The mad ramblings of a disgruntled ex-member. This is not to say I've had no experiences with GeoCities; they have had this page removed from their own systems as well as crosswinds.net. (I expect this list to grow, which will only serve to verify GeoCities' standpoint on censorship.) But this page is intended as an informative, intelligent and well-thought expression of my views, rather than a 'flame' or baseless hate page of any kind.

• Nudity/Pornography

 
What is nude? How much of a person must be covered for a picture to be in line with acceptable standards for your provider? What if it isn't a person at all? Is a dog standing on its hind legs pornographic? An image of one of Michaelangelo's sculptures? Is a line-art drawing showing a butt-crack pornography?
 
• Content that can be deemed obscene, profane, or perverted

 
Again, who is to say what qualifies as obscene? A frank discussion on human sexuality? A mild expletive or two? Advocating exhibitionism or nudism? An editorial on violence in which this violence is described in detail? Since there is no written definition, censors are free to decide what qualifies as unacceptable. For example, an anti-Semite censor could squelch a Holocaust page citing graphic violence (holocausts tend to be that way), and even an image of a woman eating a banana could possibly be deleted as 'perverted' based on the perceived Freudian symbolism of bananas.
 
• Defamation

 
By far the content restriction with the greatest potential for abuse, 'defamation' can refer to anything that speaks negatively of any group or individual. It is human nature to have things you like and dislike, and many persons tend to discuss these on their personal homepage. If a censor disliked you for some reason, it is very likely that they can find some content on your pages that do not speak favorably of something. For example, by putting the phrase "Adolf Hitler was an unkind person" on your page, you may have already commited a violation of your host's TOS or acceptable usage guidelines.

What about removing pages from other peoples' servers?
 
Here is another major objection I have with GeoCities censorship policies. The company is not content to merely censor its own members, but feels it necessary to censor others' as well. To squelch criticism, GeoCities has followed critics around the Web, tracked them down, threatened, and otherwise harassed them and their ISPs and Web hosts. GeoCities has in the past threatened legal action against those that dare host any critic. I am not making this up. This very page was removed from crosswinds.net, a Canadian free Web host, within 48 hours of its posting. GeoCities actually *called* Crosswinds* on the phone, claiming that the term 'GeoCensored' was a trademark of GeoCities, and threatening litigation against myself and/or Crosswinds for trademark infringement upon the GC company name, copyright infringement of their company logo on my GeoCensored Web Ring graphic, and libel. For the record, I sincerely doubt that 'GeoCensored' is a trademark. GeoCities is, but not GeoCensored. Even if it was, the only purpose it would serve is to squelch criticism, and there are legal sanctions prevent using litigation or legal threats, abuse of trademarks, etc. to silence their critics. Finally, the 'GeoCensored' logo is not a copy of the actual GeoCities logo but a parody of it. Such material is expressly protected under the fair use provision of United States copyright law.
 
I know, this may sound like a joke. "Who can dictate to other Webmasters on other servers what is and is not acceptable for the Internet community at large?" you may ask. Shortly after GeoCities forced crosswinds.net into revoking my account and deleting this page, I received an email from Bill Webb, another victim of GeoCities' strong-arming on other servers. He writes to me stating that his account on another free-hosted server (members.xoom.com) was similarly revoked and actually locked out to prevent reactivation. Webb has actually received email from concerned citizens asking, "How does Geocities keep finding your page?". According to an email I received from Crosswinds, the Xoom removal was for joining my ring.
 

• First, I would sincerely hope that you will decide to open your minds a little to opinions you do not necessarily share, be they on freedom of speech, advertising, sexuality, culture, religion... when censoring any page, please ask yourselves what agenda the deletion will serve; whether it will be for the benefit of the Internet as a whole or merely to boost your own revenues and egos.
• Second, I urge you to calm down and go easy on the hatred. Spite is not an acceptable reason for removing any homepage, whether or not you host it; nor is harassing the creators of any online materials. Furthermore, your obvious propensity for chasing and continuing to harass those you have had less-than-stellar relations with in the past is simply unacceptable.
• Finally, I request that GeoCities stop trying to censor material on other peoples' servers. You are not the nanny of the Internet. No matter how much it may annoy, anger or otherwise displease you, there will always be materials on the Internet that some may find inappropriate or offensive. However, it is not your duty to decide for the rest of the Internet community what is and is not acceptable. This includes criticism of your company.

I do not believe, specifically, that it is wrong for GeoCities to ban anything--Pornography, pirated software, multi-account users... there are plenty of good reasons to delete a page or revoke an account. All I'm saying is that the criteria used to determine when a page is/isn't appropriate are very loose and subjective. I am also, by attempting to acquire and post information on recent deletions, trying to provide a current index of what is and is not being censored at this point in time.

I believe that, with their current TOS Agreement (which I believe is much too loose), there is much potential for abuse of its generalities and loopholes. I do not believe that GeoCities encourages or even condones racism or discrimination; in fact, they are explicitly forbidden by the TOS. However, I feel that any company can unknowingly hire someone with such a bent, and, if left in charge of the Delete key, these individuals could potentially abuse their power as a censor to serve their own malevolent interests. With a more explicit TOS that specifically states, point-by-point, the meanings of such terms as 'Perverted', 'Obscene', 'Violence', 'Profanity', 'Defamation', and other vaguities, the potential for such abuse would be greatly reduced. Again, I must reiterate that I believe GeoCities is firmly against discrimination and prejudice, and during my several months' stay at GeoCities, I did not note that censorship was confined to any sort of minority or other group. As far as censorship goes, GeoCities is an equal-opportunity offender.

This ring nearly ceased to exist when GeoCities apparently contacted www.webring.org claiming that it infringed upon their copyrights/trademarks... From what I have learned the accusations were, basically, a bluff. I showed the Webring logo to a lawyer and explained the situation, and he explained to me that it was nothing more than a scare tactic to pressure the owners of the Webring system into removing the ring to serve GeoCities' better interests. I applaud Webring.org for standing up to these false accusations and disregarding GeoCities' baseless prattle.

The next is the Banned Sites ring, which is for the victims of censorware--software programs that automatically block sites as 'inappropriate' by domain, classification or keywords, among other criteria...

This site has been banned by one or more of several Internet Filtering Software Packages. Why not look at another and see if you agree with their choices?
Site Owned By: Mark Zeman
Site Banned By: Several keyword-based filtering packages, which find words such as 'nudity', 'violence', 'holocaust', 'obscene' and 'perverted' on this page, interpret this page as offensive and block it.
Site Censored By: GeoCities, for the criticism of their censorship policies.
the one before | the one to come | jump around | see more
Learn more about Banned Sites
 
 

The Lucid ring is for rambling, ranting, emoting and expressing oneself in any number of ways.

The GeoDelete ring is for those who have been suspended or deleted by GeoCities--similar to the GeoCensored ring.

 

This unhappy site owned by Mark Zeman is a member of the GeoDelete Webring.  [ Previous 5 Sites | Previous | Next | Next 5 Sites | Random Site | List Sites ]

Finally, the MPASN/GeoShities Boycott ring in intended for just that, participation in a boycott of GeoCities. Sadly, it would seem that threatening GeoCities' bottom line is the only way to encourage them to listen to reason.

Geocities.com Boycott Presented by the Modern Pirates Anarchy and Socialism Network and GeoShities This Geocities Boycott: Fight for your 1st Ammendment Rights site owned by Mark Zeman.  [ Previous 5 Sites | Previous | Next | Next 5 Sites | Random Site | List Sites ]

  Proud supporter of free speech online
 
Mark Zeman