Google's discriminatory practices

Read this and make some noise! Let's see if we can't get Google to rethink this bad decision. It's much bigger than a small ad for Irish sex workers - it's really about discrimination against legal workers just because you don't like what they do for a living.

Post ur displeasure yoon Google and CEO Larry Page's Facebook sites (although the blog mistress did just that this morning and the post is already gone from Google's site - I think it lasted all of 5 minutes). Send feedback to Google corporate. Give in to your inner radical.

Consider the customer

If you don't mind a bit of academic prose, here's a paper from the Sociological Review arguing that any sociologist studying service culture ought to include the customer experience. The researcher has used a UK review board, Punternet, to test the premise.

Google censors sex workers

Hey, what's up with Google? A sex workers' group in Ireland says Google is prohibiting the group from running an AdWord that links to the group's Web site due to the ad content being an "egregious violation" of Google's advertising policy.

Here's what it said: "Turn Off the Blue Light - Sex Workers In Ireland need human rights, not legal wrongs." Yeah, that's pretty out there, pretty damn egregious. Come on, Google! Time to see this item get a little media attention.

News coverage of court case

Hope you're following the great coverage in the Globe and Mail on the big sex-work case currently before the Ontario Appeal court. Canadians are never going to get so passionate about safer sex work that they will actually force the government to act on decriminalization, so let's hope the courts can make things happen.

Film Fests

Hey, this looks like fun! Anybody heading to London for a little getaway in the UK? Good chance to catch a sex worker film fest. Here's more thoughts on the festival, which starts June 12.

Too late for San Francisco's SW fest - that was last month. Next year?

Taking the stuffing out of the Swedish model

Finally, a research paper that right-thinking people can use to refute those tiresome abolitionists who are always going on about the Swedish model (customers criminalized, sellers legal). This is out of the Prostitution Licensing Authority in Queensland, Australia.