Friday Nibbles: Unauthorized Access – Assange Sex Allegations, Kindle Erotica Deletions, Star Wars, True Blood

10 pieces of BRILLIANCE put forth by a DARING and DELIGHTFUL reader

Star Wars Swimsuit by Black Milk

* This is big: The Guardian UK got unauthorized access to the legal documents detailing the sexual allegations against Julian Assange and they report everything here. (guardian.co.uk)

* Also quite huge: Amazon kicked erotica out of Kindle for being incest-themed – then deleted the book from people’s Kindles. When customers called to complain, they were chastised and humiliated but Amazon customer service. Disclosure: I am quoted in the Ars article. (arstechnica.com)

* On a much lighter note, my pal over at Starlet Sheet (my fave mainstream porn blog) started doing a cool thing: a feature where porn starlets share their wish lists for fan appreciation. Want to get Lexi Belle a holiday prezzy? Now you can – yay! (starletsheet.com)

* I need True Blood to come back on ASAP. This will suffice in the meantime: for a charity contest, Vampire BIll and Vampire Eric competed against each other – with the loser having to wear a t-shirt designed by the winner. Eric lost. He is now, officially, “Bill’s Bitch.” Is there any way I can beat Vampire Eric in a competition, too? A girl has to ask… (trueblood-news.com)

* The C3PO swimsuit meets the R2D2 swimsuit. Very sexy – and so are the rest of Black Milk’s collection. (thenerdybird.com, shop.blackmilkclothing.com, via linecook)

* The Kinect sex simulator arrived, and the demo was put on YouTube – and promptly removed, despite the lack of nudity and tame nature of the video. Eliot Phillips (RobotSkirts) got the YT Fail Whale-Prude Tube graphic. Sad. Watching it was like seeing Thing grope really bored girls in bikinis. Vaguely unsettling. (news.cnet.com, flickr.com)

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  • Sundawg

    The Assange thing is deliciously ironic, but when I see the abuse the guy is taking on the news and read the Guardian article — whether the guy knew the condom was torn or not, etc., it seems like his disgust with being interviewed about it may be justified. Although important to the individuals involved, this is not, in my opinion, news.

  • criolle johnny

    Yippee, so I can send a porn starlet an XMAS present.
    More important, how can I send YOU a box of my candles?

    Happy Holidays (all of ’em).

  • Sundawg

    I’m thinkin’, sex with XBOX? Is that what it’s come down to? Seems like there are better options. . . . .

  • There was a sufficient mismatch between Amazon’s update and the claims in the Ars Technica story that I dipped into the comments after the Ars Technica story. From those (and I did not follow the supporting links offered) it appears that there may have been some confusion in the original story.

    It looks like what may have happened is that Amazon yanked the titles from sale, and when they did, folks who had purchased them lost the ability to download them and/or redownload them from the Amazon cloud links — thus losing access to something they’d paid for in the case of people who had never made the initial download, but not suffering an actual device deletion. That loss is what Amazon later referred to as a “technical glitch” and restored for the people who had already made the purchase.

    I’m not trying to undercut the blundering corporate stupidity and bizarre unexplained inconsistent sexual phobias angles of this story — but I did want to point out that there seems to be some doubt about whether the “OMG Amazon reached out over its radio fingers and robbed my device again” angle has a factual basis.

  • I like the update on the Ars story in which Amazon claims that “books were temporarily unavailable for re-download” “due to a technical issue” and are now “available for re-download”. Note how Amazon never comes to grips with why the buyer might need to “re-download” these files. It’s a mystery, huh?

    I should point out that this sort of tomfoolery is not a reason not to buy or use e-readers; that’s very much cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s just a reason to maintain firm control over your own files and formats. The way to do that on the Kindle is to not buy DRM’d files through Amazon. Turn off the wireless, download the excellent and open-source Calibre program for managing your ebook files, and use it to convert whatever you got into formats that your e-reader of the day can deal with. More importantly, if the device manufacturer tries to get tricky with the radio in your device and messes with your files, who cares? You’ve got them all on your local hard drive for re-uploading after you teach your device who owns it.

  • Jacob Hugart

    I wonder when Amazon will drop the Bible because of sex? Maybe they don’t offer it for the Kindle. But reading Genesis 19:30-35 should make clear that incest has been around several thousand years…and, so far, has been considered part of Scripture.

  • Jacob Hugart

    Removing a book due to incestuous content? Goodness. When will they remove the Bible, then? There’s that bit about Lot being seduced by his daughters. Here, in Genesis 19:30-35…

    Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children – as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and thensleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

    That night they got ther father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

    The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

  • t_in_pdx

    Just one more reason to never buy a Kindle or other e-reader. Letting the distributor retain control over content is just unacceptable. If they can withdraw certain erotica, they could also clearly withdraw other supposedly ‘objectionable’ works. Once you buy something it should be your property and yours alone. Amazon is engaging in theft in a moral, if not legal, sense in this case.

    Books are durable, books stay around and books are damning. You actually have to burn them to make them go away. Buy someone a nice subversive book made out of paper this holiday season, it’ll be around for years to come.

  • Popzealot

    “Watching it was like seeing Thing grope really bored girls in bikinis.”

    :::giggle fits:::

    on to a more serious note…

    The Assange thing is troubling for me. I know that such condom-thwarting efforts are simply way too commonplace and trivialized, and they should be punished. But I also know that they are going to trump-up whatever they can on him. It’s so impressively playing on the sentiments of liberals!!

  • Azkyroth

    What, eight, nine thousand years of mythical references and NOW human culture suddenly decides even mentioning incest is unacceptable?