framed

Checking around the photo "hosting" sites, like twitpic, yfrogger, img.ly ...etc and reading all the "fine print" in the terms of use ...it is pretty obvious that many sites now consider nudity offensive and not to be posted! ...some still say pornographic, but most now just use the words nudity or nude!


BUT that is not the real shock ...the real issues is in the "fine print" that might try to suggest that the owner is responsible for the content and it must be his own (ie they is the copyright holder)


...BUT and it is very legally worded when you post anything you are given them (and anyone they want to share it with the right to use your image "royalty free"

Art ...orginal art ...is not welcome ...I'm getting the message

Does this offend you?

Ok I admit it I like to sketch nude ladies ...what is worse I often like to do it quickly ...do gesture studies, two minute sketches of torsos, I have been posting this on the net for some time. Some sketches have been heavily criticized, by self opinionated wankers (the wankers bit is my opinion btw) but I hope enough people see beauty in my work as well. However I suspect I am fighting a loosing battle over the censorship of nudes on the social webs ...and that is because these places quickly adopt the manners and conventions of the crowd ...and that is unfortunately that nudity must equal porn ..it doesn't! I know that! I'm a grown up!

For a while there I thought Flickr had got it right offering a content filtering system that let you mark the content safe, moderate (and they had prepared good guidelines, so this equals exposed breast) or restricted (full frontal nudity and other things offensive!) They also had 18+ groups for grown ups. All was ok but then they started marking folk like me unsafe, which means if you don't log in and click that you are old enough to look everything I do is hidden from you. At Least they didn't remove my account. From recent discussions in some flickr groups a lot of accounts have been summarily suspended. The anti nudity witch hunts are probably increasing, yet I think there are just reasons, there is way too much stolen porn and other folk's photos and artwork being re-posted in flickr and all across the net these days. It is theft and plagiarism gone feral and it is distasteful ...Unlike my art!

The real rub for me came today when I discovered I have been suspended on TwitPics, presumably for posting the sketch above. No reason give no correspondence, just messages at the end of links that image no longer exist and member suspended. Such is life.

So Artists may soon not able to display their own original and real art, if it doesn't conform to the latest web stampede/fashion on popular social networks. The trend is worrying, aussies should particularly watch out for the net censorship noose (aka clean feed) proposal Senator Stephen Conroy is fashioning for australian web users (he is suddenly quiet about it at the moment? that's right there is an election loaming, but the stupidity is still their on the books).

Vive Le Art

Iranians can longer see the twitterverse

What you will see in Iran when You try to use twitter today!

Size really does matter

In the tit for tat world of international prudity it seems the germans are getting censorship from the USA (a bizarroo world inverse of the Flickr german user Censr)



It would appear a grown up author of children's story is pulling the plug on her american publisher who wanted to remove an illustration of a nude sculpture in the background of a museum scene

On the page, the sculpture stands at a very unthreatening seven millimeters tall and the appendage could, at first glance, be dismissed as a wayward brushstroke. The "little willy" as Berner called it “was barely half a millimeter in length.” The sculpture is an aside in the overall museum scene and is in no way prominent to the storyline on that page, she added.

Found this story on Ms Naughty's Blog

Censors will steals your eyes

Censr steals your eyes
Originally uploaded by pioforsky

There is a fair bit of buzz going on in flickr at the moment... the sad part is it will not be reaching the places it needs too ...in singapore, korea and germany (yes germany) you may only be able to get in to view safe content (no opportunity to do otherwise...) but in china you now have no hope of even getting in at all... its not just flickr affected, many blogs are being taken down or barred ... when I was in sinagapore even I recieved a email from my ISP questioning the appropriateness of the nudity in this very humble blog

the saddest part is that it is not about nudity, nipples and sharing more intimate photos/moments, which you can legitimately do by appropriately using the flickr's self filtering system ... the actual reason is just political and obsession with control and power.... giving people the opportunity to actually see and express what is going on is what is at risk!

Please blog about this yourself.... raise the concern with everyone you can ...the freedom of what you can hear and see is as precious as the freedom to express yourself