Off-Topic: Internet Censorship

Two years ago I wrote a post complaining about Internet censorship. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) asked the company American Apparel to remove an image of a model advertising a body suit because she looked like she was under 16. It was irrelevant that the model, Kacy Anne Hill, was 20 at the time the photo was taken. All that mattered was the warped fantasies of the ASA who looked at an adult woman and immediately started fantasising about young girls.

After reading about the censorship I was fortunate enough to find that the allegedly offensive photo of Kacy was still on the American Apparel web site. It was removed later in the evening, so I posted it on my blog to protest against Internet censorship. I searched the American Apparel web site for other photos of Kacy, and I found 39 similar images which I saved to my hard drive. Within three days these photos were also removed from the site. As a result I decided to post a complete gallery of the 40 images to protect them from being lost forever.

I'm very pleased with the way my posts and the gallery have been received. On the day that I posted the photo it was nowhere else on the Web (according to Google). A week later it was on two other web sites. Now, two years later, the photo is available on 23 different websites, on many of them in its original size (1035 x 1380 pixels). I am proud that I am personally responsible for saving this photo from censorship. Today, as I write these words, my post about Kacy Anne Hill is the most viewed page in my blog. I hope that my readers will continue to download and share all 40 of her photos.

The main reason for my post was to make a stand against Internet censorship, but I also did it because I know it's what Kacy wants. She said in an interview that she finds the complaints about her photo ridiculous. I have the greatest possible respect for Kacy, and I am doing whatever I can to keep her photos alive. I hope that she will read these words and they will make her smile.