Rape-aXe

Image from CNN article

Q: You may have already seen this, but I thought you might be interested in this article on a female condom that is meant to fight rape. I wondered what your opinion on it was (would it actually help stop/prevent rape?, etc), or thought that maybe you would like to blog about it (or at least pass the link around).

I have heard of the anti-rape condom before. It actually first surfaced under a slightly different name a few years ago. Then it was called Rapex and now it’s Rape-aXe. And believe me I have a lot of feelings about it. I want to preface this though with the fact that I know nothing about South African culture or any other cultures in Africa. I cannot even pretend to begin to know what is going on over there.

That being said, I have to say that this is not treating the problem at all. It’s another case of the victims having to protect themselves by changing their behaviors instead of getting to the root of the problem. The people who need to change their behaviors are the rapists. They need to stop raping and not because they’re afraid that there might be teeth in a woman’s vagina. Instead, we need wide spread social change that creates an environment of respect for women and autonomy over their own sexuality and bodies. Rape-aXe is something that may or may not help in the short term, but it does nothing to effect the long term issues surrounding rape. I found it interesting that the creator said “Yes, my device may be a medieval, but it’s for a medieval deed that has been around for decades.” This evil deed has been around since before medieval times. In fact, it’s pretty much been around since the beginning of time, not decades but millennia. That is seriously long term and we need to think in those terms.

Let us address the short term though. One side effect I see of this toothy condom is more violence. A man who has just raped a woman and had a sharp object embedded into his penis is probably extremely likely to lash out at the woman who was wearing it. And what about a woman who is gang raped? That is going to spell out even more violence for her. The rapists will probably beat her more severely than they would have.

Also, there is more than one way to rape a person. It does not always involve penis in vagina. It could involve an ass, a mouth, and/or other insertable objects besides a penis. In fact, why not just shove a broom handle or something up there first to make sure she’s not packing a Rape-aXe?

They say that this would help with rape convictions because a medical doctor has to remove the condom. How long until there is an underground removal service? Just because only doctors can remove them now doesn’t mean that they will always be the only ones to be able to do it.

I also worry that it will hinder rape convictions if a woman isn’t wearing it. I can imagine it now. They accuse her of wanting it because she wasn’t wearing a Rape-aXe.

Also, this condom doesn’t actually prevent sexual assault. It just latches on to a rapist’s penis after the sexual assault has already begun. Will it prevent rape if rapists think that women are wearing them? Well, do the sponges with razorblades prevent anything?

However, I do not fault women for wanting to wear this to help protect themselves. It has to be better than shoving a sponge filled with razorblades into your vagina. That just sounds like a horrible idea. Although, at $2 a pop this may not be within most poor women’s means. And lets face  it, the poorer you are the more likely you are to get raped and the less likely your rapist will be convicted. But there’s a desperation there obviously because the rape rates are so extremely high in South Africa.

There just has to be a better way. We need to treat the disease, not the symptom. Women’s rights are human rights.

Fantasies and Condoms

One of the main arguments I often hear against porn performers practicing safer sex is that porn is supposed to be a fantasy and condoms ruin that fantasy. Can you see why this might be a bit of an issue in getting people to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)?

I mean not only are the porn performers themselves being put at risk for contracting STIs, but this notion is helping to perpetuate the idea that really sexy sex is unprotected. The same goes for erotica, romance novels, romantic comedies, sitcoms, etc. Out culture has created a narrative in which sex only feels good and looks sexy if no one is protected. We’re all suffering from this narrative, but sex workers are probably suffering the most.

I understand that in your fantasy world you won’t want to think about pregnancy or diseases. I get that, I really do. However, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to just think of safer sex items as sexy in themselves? Why does a condom or a glove have to make you think about HIV or HPV? Why can’t it be just like another sex toy? Or just something that is equated with sex. Why don’t we see unprotected sex and think these things? Wouldn’t that be a bit more accurate anyway? A condom, a dental dam, or a glove could all easily help us focus on the action because we know we don’t have to worry about the health of our fantasy players. They are a-ok and going to have super hot sex with absolutely nothing to worry about. Where as if we don’t see those things we instead worry for our sexy idols and that worry gets in the way of our ability to become aroused and get off. What would that do for the rates of unwanted pregnancies and STIs in general and for the health of sex workers specifically?

And why do safer sex supplies get such a bad wrap anyway? I’ve had people scrunch up their nose and say, “but that’s not exactly sexy” when I talk about using gloves (in butts no less – where poop is! Because poop on your bare hand is definitely way sexier than gloves). How are gloves not sexy? They can help to transform your hand into a sex toy.

As a paper pusher I always have paper cuts on my hands. And you know what can be really distracting from sexy time? Acidic vaginal juices stinging the hell out of those cuts. Or maybe you have a hangnail or a nail that chipped too close to the skin and you don’t want to cut it off just yet. Gloves! Or maybe you have calluses on your hands and your partner just enjoys a smoother, less frictiony ride. And you don’t have to wear those white gloves that your doctor wears – unless you have a medical fetish and that gets you all kinds of hot – there are other colors. There are black, blue (non latex), and purple (non-latex). Ooh I even found red! Although, they’re vinyl so they won’t fit quite so well.

And then there are condoms. There are so many fancy ones on the market these days that can turn a cock into a sex toy. You can have a studded cock without ever having to go to a piercer, or maybe you want studs AND ribs, you can have super thin condoms that keep you protected but make it feel like you’re wearing a little less, you can make your cock glow in the dark and play hide the radioactive tube, condoms that provide more head room, speaking of head room here’s one that has a whole twist, ones that transfer heat (non latex) really well, maybe you just want your dick to taste really good but also be vegan. Or you could just have one of everything and try them all. So many options!

Then there’s always the argument that you have to stop the action to get the safer sex supplies and put them on/put them to work. I call bullshit. First of all, if you’re planning on playing you should have them within reach. Secondly, make it part of the fun, part of the anticipation. If my wife can get up to go wash a dildo in the middle of us having sex you can take the time to put on a glove or a condom. And that’s just part of the fun. Putting it on means that it’s go time. Plus, if it’s a condom, it can always be put on with your partner’s mouth.

Sex Addiction

Today Shanna Katz/Essin’Em tweeted a question via the Fascinations twitter account that I found to be very interesting. I attempted to answer in 140 characters or less, but found it to be rather difficult. And since the question is on a topic that I’ve been meaning to talk about in my blog anyways, I figured this would be the perfect time.

The question: Can sex be addictive?

I’ve heard people say that you can’t be addicted to something you need to live. With the exception of the air around us that we need to breathe and our blood pumping through our system, I’d say that I disagree with that statement. Addiction happens when you use and abuse substances, experiences, etc. Addiction is consciously or unconsciously saying “Fuck the consequences” when you need your fix. And it’s just that: a fix. We need to eat in order to survive, but food can also be an addiction. We abuse food when we eat because we’re bored or sad or angry. And it can give us a high that we want to replicate over and over again which becomes an addiction. That’s different than eating because you’re nourishing your body. You need food to live, but you don’t need to binge eat regularly to live.

The same goes for sex. Now some may say that you don’t need sex to live, but I think a lot of people would disagree with them (except for the asexuals). Sex is a part of who most people are. But when sex becomes something that you do to get a certain feeling (euphoria, intimacy, adrenaline) and you say “fuck the consequences” and don’t give much thought as to how you’re getting that feeling then it becomes an addiction.

Now I want to state that I don’t think that everyone who says they’re addicted to sex really is. I think it’s a cheap and easy scapegoat for famous people to make when they get caught in the middle of a sex scandal. It’s difficult to know who is being serious and who isn’t.

I used to suffer from sex addiction. I was never diagnosed with it, but I knew it. When I was about 19 I went through a major depression and I spent a lot of time doing drugs and having anonymous sex. I didn’t care much about myself, but I loved the highs that sex and drugs created and hated the lows.

Some may say that the sex was just a symptom of my depression, but I’d say that they were both wrapped up in each other. It was a tool of escapism and it also helped to plummet me deeper into depression. The drugs were also a tool of escapism, but I never became addicted to those. I didn’t need the drugs. I needed the sex. Many addicts become addicted to their escape tools. Often alcoholics will use booze to numb the pain and it becomes a cycle where the alcoholism causes the pain that they are numbing.

For me, sex gave me the intimacy that I was longing for. For a short period of time I could feel cared about. I could be held. After it was over though I usually felt worse. But I kept wanting that high and so I kept seeking it out. It didn’t really matter with who and often the sex was unprotected.

I want to state that I am in no way against casual sex. Fuck who ever the hell you want to. But do it because you really want it, not because you’re looking for something else. And be safe!

So yes, I think that sex can be addictive. I think that anything that produces a chemical reaction in your brain can cause addiction. We become addicted to those chemicals. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but hey that’s the point of discussion. What do you think? Can sex be addictive?

Business Ethics

Warning: The following is a rant in which I do not talk much at all about sex, but instead reveal my left-leaning views. As if you were surprised that I was a lefty! Also, because it’s kind of ranty it doesn’t always flow as nicely as it should. Tough!

In response to the whole Eden Fantasys debacle I’ve found a lot of people who have left comments either for or against them who say things along the lines of “they’re a business and they can do whatever they want.” When exactly did we start having that mentality? Shouldn’t we expect more from the businesses we support? They are there to serve us really. And yet they’re expected to only serve themselves. They’re expected to poison us until they’re told not to. They’re expected to pollute our environment until they’re told not to. They’re expected to use slave labor until they’re told not to.

Some seem to think that the biggest reason that EF was in the wrong was because they purported to be the sex shop you can trust. But if you don’t think businesses are trustworthy then why would you take their word for it? Sounds like a world of hurt.

Seriously, why do we accept that businesses will be conniving for profit? Why are they allowed to throw tantrums when people try to do anything to regulate them – even if they were in the wrong in the first place? Hello bank failures anyone? Plummeting economy? Remember that?

We have given businesses too much freedom. They need to answer to society. Otherwise they will destroy society and our planet. Has anyone even been paying any attention to BP and that horrific oil spill?

What is this? The industrial revolution? We passed laws to protect employees and consumers and yet people are still being poisoned by their sex toys because they are unregulated.

Can you tell I don’t believe in the “free market?” The free market allows for businesses to screw everyone over. Without regulations people die and the earth suffers. We need to push our government for legal regulations. Failing that, we have to try to self-regulate and vote with our dollars. This is extremely difficult, especially for people who have lower incomes or none at all. And it all ends up being kind of cyclical. People can only afford to shop at Walmart because they buy from Walmart which drives the economy downwards.

I try to vote with my dollars when I can, but I don’t make much money and I have a wife who is in grad school. Plus with the fact that I work pretty much constantly, I’m limited in how much research I can do and how much time I can spend searching out products and services I can believe in.  I realize a lot of people have this problem. I also realize that a lot of people don’t care because they don’t understand how it all affects them.

Anyways, my goal is to make the world a little bit safer. A friend and I are currently working out a system in which to certify the ethical conduct of adult business. I will say more when we get closer to launch. I’m just full of surprises! ;)

Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole

This is a blog entry from Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed (aka @maymaym). I have posted it in it’s entirety as suggested in the comments. The goal is to get this information out far and wide. Please leave comments on the original post.

A few nights ago, I received an email from Editor of EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine, Judy Cole, asking me to modify this Kink On Tap brief I published that cites Lorna D. Keach’s writing. Judy asked me to “provide attribution and a link back to” SexIs Magazine. An ordinary enough request soon proved extraordinarily unethical when I discovered that EdenFantasys has invested a staggering amount of time and money to develop and implement a technology platform that actively denies others the courtesy of link reciprocity, a courtesy on which the ethical Internet is based.

While what they’re doing may not be illegal, EdenFantasys has proven itself to me to be an unethical and unworthy partner, in business or otherwise. Its actions are blatantly hypocritical, as I intend to show in detail in this post. Taking willful and self-serving advantage of those not technically savvy is a form of inexcusable oppression, and none of us should tolerate it from companies who purport to be well-intentioned resources for a community of sex-positive individuals.

For busy or non-technical readers, see the next section, Executive Summary, to quickly understand what EdenFantasys is doing, why it’s unethical, and how it affects you whether you’re a customer, a contributor, or a syndication partner. For the technical reader, the Technical Details section should provide ample evidence in the form of a walkthrough and sample code describing the unethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques EdenFantasys, aka. Web Merchants, Inc., is engaged in. For anyone who wants to read further, I provide an Editorial section in which I share some thoughts about what you can do to help combat these practices and bring transparency and trust—not the sabotage of trust EdenFantasys enacts—to the market.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Internet sex toy retailer Web Merchants, Inc., which bills itself as the “sex shop you can trust” and does business under the name EdenFantasys, has implemented technology on their websites that actively interferes with contributors’ content, intercepts outgoing links, and alters republished content so that links in the original work are redirected to themselves. Using techniques widely acknowledged as unethical by Internet professionals and that are arguably in violation of major search engines’ policies, EdenFantasys’s publishing platform has effectively outsourced the task of “link farming” (a questionable Search Engine Marketing [SEM] technique) to sites with which they have “an ongoing relationship,” such as AlterNet.org, other large news hubs, and individual bloggers’ blogs.

Articles published on EdenFantasys websites, such as the “community” website SexIs Magazine, contain HTML crafted to look like links, but aren’t. When visited by a typical human user, a program written in JavaScript and included as part of the web pages is automatically downloaded and intercepts clicks on these “link-like” elements, fetching their intended destination from the server and redirecting users there. Due to the careful and deliberate implementation, the browser’s status bar is made to appear as though the link is legitimate, and that a destination is provided as expected.

For non-human visitors, including automated search engine indexing programs such as Googlebot, the “link” remains non-functional, making the article a search engine’s dead-end or “orphan” page whose only functional links are those whose destination is EdenFantasys’s own web presence. This makes EdenFantasys’ website(s) a self-referential black hole that provides no reciprocity for contributors who author content, nor for any website ostensibly “linked” to from article content. At the same time, EdenFantasys editors actively solicit inbound links from individuals and organizations through “link exchanges” and incentive programs such as “awards” and “free” sex toys, as well as syndicating SexIs Magazine content such that the content is programmatically altered in order to create multiple (real) inbound links to EdenFantasys’s websites after republication on their partner’s media channels.

How EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have an impact on you

Regardless of who you are, EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have a negative impact on you and, indeed, on the Internet as a whole.

See for yourself: First, log out of any and all EdenFantasys websites or, preferably, use a different browser, or even a proxy service such as the Tor network for greater anonymity. Due to EdenFantasys’s technology, you cannot trust that what you are seeing on your screen is what someone else will see on theirs. Next, temporarily disable JavaScript (read instructions for your browser) and then try clicking on the links in SexIs Magazine articles. If clicking the intended off-site “links” doesn’t work, you know that your article’s links are being hidden from Google and that your content is being used for shady practices. In contrast, with JavaScript still disabled, navigate to another website (such as this blog), try clicking on the links, and note that the links still work as intended.Here’s another verifiable example from the EdenFantasys site showing that many other parts of Web Merchants, Inc. pages, not merely SexIs Magazine, are affected as well: With JavaScript disabled, visit the EdenFantasys company page on Aslan Leather (note, for the sake of comparison, the link in this sentence will work, even with JavaScript off). Try clicking on the link in the “Contact Information” section in the lower-right hand column of the page (shown in the screenshot, below). This “link” should take you to the Aslan Leather homepage but in fact it does not. So much for that “link exchange.”

(Click to enlarge.)

  • If you’re an EdenFantasys employee, people will demand answers from you regarding the unethical practices of your (hopefully former) employer. While you are working for EdenFantasys, you’re seriously soiling your reputation in the eyes of ethical Internet professionals. Ignorance is no excuse for the lack of ethics on the programmers’ part, and it’s a shoddy one for everyone else; you should be aware of your company’s business practices because you represent them and they, in turn, represent you.
  • If you’re a partner or contributor (reviewer, affiliate, blogger), while you’re providing EdenFantasys with inbound links or writing articles for them and thereby propping them up higher in search results, EdenFantasys is not returning the favor to you (when they are supposed to be doing so). Moreover, they’re attaching your handle, pseudonym, or real name directly to all of their link farming (i.e., spamming) efforts. They look like they’re linking to you and they look like their content is syndicated fairly, but they’re actually playing dirty. They’re going the extra mile to ensure search engines like Google do not recognize the links in articles you write. They’re trying remarkably hard to make certain that all roads lead to EdenFantasys, but none lead outside of it; no matter what the “link,” search engines see it as stemming from and leading to EdenFantasys. The technically savvy executives of Web Merchants, Inc. are using you without giving you a fair return on your efforts. Moreover, EdenFantasys is doing this in a way that preys upon people’s lack of technical knowledge—potentially your own as well as your readership’s. Do you want to keep doing business with people like that?
  • If you’re a customer, you’re monetarily supporting a company that essentially amounts to a glorified yet subtle spammer. If you hate spam, you should hate the unethical practices that lead to spam’s perpetual reappearance, including the practices of companies like Web Merchants, Inc. EdenFantasys’s unethical practices may not be illegal, but they are unabashedly a hair’s width away from it, just like many spammers’. If you want to keep companies honest and transparent, if you really want a “sex shop you can trust,” this is relevant to you because EdenFantasys is not it. If you want to purchase from a retailer that truly strives to offer a welcoming, trustworthy community for those interested in sex positivity and sexuality, pay close attention and take action. For ideas about what you can do, please see the “What you can do” section, below.
  • If you’ve never heard about EdenFantasys before, but you care about a fair and equal-opportunity Internet, this is relevant to you because what EdenFantasys is doing takes advantage of non-tech-savvy people in order to slant the odds of winning the search engine game in their favor. They could have done this fairly, and I personally believe that they would have succeeded. Their sites are user-friendly, well-designed, and solidly implemented. However, they chose to behave maliciously by not providing credit where credit is due, failing to follow through on agreements with their own community members and contributors, and sneakily utilizing other publishers’ web presences to play a very sad zero-sum game that they need not have entered in the first place. In the Internet I want, nobody takes malicious advantage of those less skilled than they are because their own skill should speak for itself. Isn’t that the Internet and, indeed, the future you want, too?

TECHNICAL DETAILS

What follows is a technical exploration of the way the EdenFantasys technology works. It is my best-effort evaluation of the process in as much detail as I can manage within strict self-imposed time constraints. If any of this information is incorrect, I’d welcome any and all clarifications provided by the EdenFantasys CTO and technical team in an appropriately transparent, public, and ethical manner. (You’re welcome—nay, encouraged—to leave a comment.)

Although I’m unconvinced that EdenFantasys understands this, it is the case that honesty is the best policy—especially on the Internet, where everyone has the power of “View source.”

The “EF Framework” for obfuscating links

Article content written by contributors on SexIs Magazine pages is published after all links are replaced with a <span> element bearing the class of linklike and a unique id attribute value. This apparently happens across any and all content published by Web Merchants, Inc.’s content management system, but I’ll be focusing on Lorna D. Keach’s post entitled SexFeed:Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts for the sake of example.

These fake links look like this in HTML:

And according to Theresa Flynt, vice president of marketing for Hustler video, <span ID="EFLink_68034_fe64d2">female consumers make up 56% of video sales.</span>

This originally published HTML is what visitors without JavaScript enabled (and what search engine indexers) see when they access the page. Note that the <span> is not a real link, even though it is made to look like one. (See Figure 1; click it to enlarge.)

Figure 1:

In a typical user’s browser, when this page is loaded, a JavaScript program is executed that mutates these “linklike” elements into <a> elements, retaining the “linklike” class and the unique id attribute values. However, no value is provided in the href (link destination) attribute of the <a> element. See Figure 2.

Figure 2:

The JavaScript program is downloaded in two parts from the endpoint at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx. The first part, retrieved in this example by accessing the URI at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx?i=jq132_cnf_jdm12_cks_cm_ujsn_udm_stt_err_jsdm_stul_ael_lls_ganl_jqac_jtv_smg_assf_agrsh&v_14927484.12.0, loads the popular jQuery JavaScript framework as well as custom code called the “EF Framework”.

The EF Framework contains code called the DBLinkHandler, an object that parses the <span> “linklike” elements (called “pseudolinks” in the EF Framework code) and retrieves the real destination. The entirety of the DBLinkHandler object is shown in code listing 1, below. Note the code contains a function called handle that performs the mutation of the <span> “linklike” elements (seen primarily on lines 8 through 16) and, based on the prefix of each elements’ id attribute value, two key functions (BuildUrlForElement and GetUrlByUrlID, whose signatures are on lines 48 and 68, respectively) interact to set up the browser navigation after responding to clicks on the fake links.

var DBLinkHandler = {
    pseudoLinkPrefix: "EFLink_",
    generatedAHrefPrefix: "ArtLink_",
    targetBlankClass: "target_blank",
    jsLinksCssLinkLikeClass: "linklike",
    handle: function () {
        var pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.each(function () {
            var psLink = $(this);
            var cssClass = $.trim(psLink.attr("class"));
            var target = "";
            var id = psLink.attr("id").replace(DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
            var href = $("<a></a>").attr({
                id: id,
                href: ""
            }).html(psLink.html());
            if (psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                href.attr({
                    target: "_blank"
                });
                cssClass = $.trim(cssClass.replace(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass, ""))
            }
            if (cssClass != "") {
                href.attr({
                    "class": cssClass
                })
            }
            psLink.before(href).remove()
        });
        var pseudolinksAHrefs = $("a[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksAHrefs.live("mouseup", function (event) {
            DBLinkHandler.ArtLinkClick(this)
        });
        pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.live("click", function (event) {
            if (event.button != 0) {
                return
            }
            var psLink = $(this);
            var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix);
            if (!psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                RedirectTo(url)
            } else {
                OpenNewWindow(url)
            }
        })
    },
    BuildUrlForElement: function (psLink, prefix) {
        var psLink = $(psLink);
        var sufix = psLink.attr("id").toString().substring(prefix.length);
        var id = (sufix.indexOf("_") != -1) ? sufix.substring(0, sufix.indexOf("_")) : sufix;
        var url = DBLinkHandler.GetUrlByUrlID(id);
        if (url == "") {
            url = EF.Constants.Links.Url
        }
        var end = sufix.substring(sufix.indexOf("_") + 1);
        var anchor = "";
        if (end.indexOf("_") != -1) {
            anchor = "#" + end.substring(0, end.lastIndexOf("_"))
        }
        url += anchor;
        return url
    },
    ArtLinkClick: function (psLink) {
        var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
        $(psLink).attr("href", url)
    },
    GetUrlByUrlID: function (UrlID) {
        var url = "";
        UrlRequest = $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "/LinkLanguage/AjaxLinkHandling.aspx",
            dataType: "json",
            async: false,
            data: {
                urlid: UrlID
            },
            cache: false,
            success: function (data) {
                if (data.status == "Success") {
                    url = data.url;
                    return url
                }
            },
            error: function (xhtmlObj, status, error) {}
        });
        return url
    }
};

Once the mutation is performed and all the content “links” are in the state shown in Figure 2, above, an event listener has been bound to the anchors that captures a click event. This is done using prototypal extension, aka. classic prototypal inheritance, in another part of the code, the live function on line 2,280 of the (de-minimized) jsget.ashx program, as shown in code listing 2, here:

        live: function (G, F) {
            var E = o.event.proxy(F);
            E.guid += this.selector + G;
            o(document).bind(i(G, this.selector), this.selector, E);
            return this
        },

At this point, clicking on one of the “pseudolinks” triggers the EF Framework to call code set up by the GetUrlByUrlID function from within the DBLinkHandler object, initiating an XMLHttpRequest (XHR) connection to the AjaxLinkHandling.aspx server-side application. The request is an HTTP POST containing only one parameter, called urlid, and its value matches a substring from within the id value of the “pseudolinks.” In this example, the id attribute contains a value of EFLink_68034_fe64d2, which means that the unique ID POST’ed to the server is 68034. This is shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3:

The response from the server, shown in Figure 4, is also simple. If successful, the intended destination is retrieved by the GetUrlByUrlID object’s success function (on line 79 of Code Listing 1, above) and the user is redirected to that web address, as if the link was a real one all along. The real destination, in this case to CNN.com, is thereby only revealed after the XHR request returns a successful reply.

Figure 4:

All of this obfuscation effectively blinds machines such as the Googlebot who are not JavaScript-capable from seeing and following these links. It deliberately provides no increased Pagerank for the link destination (as a real link would normally do) despite being “linked to” from EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine article. While the intended destination in this example link was at CNN.com, it could just as easily have been—and is, in other examples—links to the blogs of EdenFantasys community members and, indeed, everyone else linked to from a SexIs Magazine article or potentially any website operated by Web Merchants, Inc. that makes use of this technology.

The EdenFantasys Outsourced Link-Farm

In addition to creating a self-referential black hole with no gracefully degrading outgoing links, EdenFantasys also actively performs link-stuffing through its syndicated content “relationships,” underhandedly creating an outsourced and distributed link-farm, just like a spammer. The difference is that this spammer (Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys) is cleverly crowd-sourcing high-value, high-quality content from its own “community.”

Articles published at SexIs Magazine are syndicated in full to other large hub sites, such as AlterNet.org. Continuing with the above example post by Lorna D. Keach, Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts, we can see that this content was republished on AlterNet.org shortly after original publication through EdenFantasys’ website on May 3rd at http://www.alternet.org/story/146774/christian_anti-porn_activists_now_targeting_female_. However, a closer look at the HTML code of the republication shows that each and every link contained within the article points to the same destination: the same article published on SexIs Magazine, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5:

Naturally, these syndicated links provided to third-party sites by EdenFantasys are real and function as expected to both human visitors and to search engines indexing the content. The result is “natural,” high-value links to the EdenFantasys website from these third-party sites; EdenFantasys doesn’t merely scrounge pagerank from harvesting the sheer number of incoming links, but as each link’s anchor text is different, they are setting themselves up to match more keywords in search engine results, keywords that the original author likely did not intend to direct to them. Offering search engines the implication that EdenFantasys.com contains the content described in the anchor text, when in fact EdenFantasys merely acts as an intermediary to the information, is very shady, to say the least.

In addition to syndication, EdenFantasys employs human editors to do community outreach. These editors follow up with publishers, including individual bloggers (such as myself), and request that any references to published material provide attribution and a link back to us, to use the words of Judy Cole, Editor of SexIs Magazine in an email she sent to me (see below), and presumably many others. EdenFantasys has also been known to request “link exchanges,” and offer incentive programs that encouraged bloggers to add the EdenFantasys website to their blogroll or sidebar in order to help raise both parties search engine ranking, when in fact EdenFantasys is not actually providing reciprocity.

More information about EdenFantasys’s unethical practices, which are not limited to technical subterfuge, can be obtained via AAGBlog.com.

EDITORIAL

It is unsurprising that the distributed, subtle, and carefully crafted way EdenFantasys has managed to crowd-source links has (presumably) remained unpenalized by search engines like Google. It is similarly unsurprising that nontechnical users such as the contributors to SexIs Magazine would be unaware of these deceptive practices, or that they are complicit in promoting them.

This is no mistake on the part of EdenFantasys, nor is it a one-off occurrence. The amount of work necessary to implement the elaborate system I’ve described is also not even remotely feasible for a rogue programmer to accomplish, far less accomplish covertly. No, this is the result of a calculated and decidedly underhanded strategy that originated from the direction of top executives at Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys.

It is unfortunate that technically privileged people would be so willing to take advantage of the technically uneducated, particularly under the guise of providing a trusted place for the community which they claim to serve. These practices are exactly the ones that “the sex shop you can trust” should in no way support, far less be actively engaged in. And yet, here is unmistakable evidence that EdenFantasys is doing literally everything it can not only to bolster its own web presence at the cost of others’, but to hide this fact from its understandably non-tech-savvy contributors.

On a personal note, I am angered that I would be contacted by the Editor of SexIs Magazine, and asked to properly “attribute” and provide a link to them when it is precisely that reciprocity which SexIs Magazine would clearly deny me (and everyone else) in return. It was this request originally received over email from Judy Cole, that sparked my investigation outlined above and enabled me to uncover this hypocrisy. The email I received from Judy Cole is republished, in full, here:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 17, 2010 2:42:00 PM PDT
To: kinkontap+viewermail@gmail.com
Cc: Laurel <laurelb@edenfantasys.com>

Hello Emma and maymay,

I am the Editor of the online adult magazine SexIs (http://www.edenfantasys.com/sexis/). You recently picked up and re-posted a story of ours by Lorna Keach that Alternet had already picked up:

http://kinkontap.com/?s=alternet

We were hoping that you might provide attribution and a link back to us, citing us as the original source (as is done on Alternet, with whom we have an ongoing relationship), should you pick up something of ours to re-post in the future.

If you would be interested in having us send you updates on stories that might be of interest, I would be happy to arrange for a member of our editorial staff to do so. (Like your site, by the way. TBK is one of our regular contributors.)

Thanks and Best Regards,

Judy Cole
Editor, SexIs

Judy’s email probably intended to reference the new Kink On Tap briefs that my co-host Emma and I publish, not a search result page on the Kink On Tap website. Specifically, she was talking about this brief: http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676. I said as much in my reply to Judy:

Hi Judy,

The URL in your email doesn’t actually link to a post. We pick up many stories from AlterNet, as well as a number from SexIs, because we follow both those sources, among others. So, did you mean this following entry?

http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676

If so, you should know that we write briefs as we find them and provide links to where we found them. We purposefully do not republish or re-post significant portions of stories and we limit our briefs to short summaries in deference to the source. In regards to the brief in question, we do provide attribution to Lorna Keach, and our publication process provides links automatically to, again, the source where we found the article. :) As I’m sure you understand, this is the nature of the Internet. Its distribution capability is remarkable, isn’t it?

Also, while we’d absolutely be thrilled to have you send us updates on stories that might be of interest, we would prefer that you do so in the same way the rest of our community does: by contributing to the community links feed. You can find detailed instructions for the many ways you can do that on our wiki:

http://wiki.kinkontap.com/wiki/Community_links_feed

Congratulations on the continued success of SexIs.

Cheers,
-maymay

At the time when I wrote the email replying to Judy, I was perturbed but could not put my finger on why. Her email upset me because she seemed to be suggesting that our briefs are wholesale “re-posts,” when in fact Emma and I have thoroughly discussed attribution policies and, as mentioned in my reply, settled on a number of practices including a length limit, automated back linking (yes, with real links, go see some Kink On Tap briefs for yourself), and clearly demarcating quotes from the source article in our editorializing to ensure we play fair. Clearly, my somewhat snarky reply betrays my annoyance.

In any event, this exchange prompted me to take a closer look at the Kink On Tap brief I wrote, at the original article, and at the cross-post on AlterNet.org. I never would have imagined that EdenFantasys’s technical subterfuge would be as pervasive as it has proven to be. It’s so deeply embedded in the EdenFantasys publishing platform that I’m willing to give Judy the benefit of the doubt regarding this hypocrisy because she doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a search query and a permalink (something any laymen blogger would grok). This is apparent from her reply to my response:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 18, 2010 4:57:59 AM PDT
[…redundant email headers clipped…]

Funny, the URL in my email opens the same link as the one you sent me when I click on it.

Maybe if you pick up one of our stories in future, you could just say something like “so and so wrote for SexIs.” ?

As it stands, it looks as if Lorna wrote the piece for Alternet. Thanks.

Judy

That is the end of our email exchange, and will be for good, unless and until EdenFantasys changes its ways. I will from this point forward endeavor never to publish links to any web property that I know to be owned by Web Merchants, Inc., including EdenFantasys.com. I will also do my best to avoid citing any and all SexIs Magazine articles from here on out, and I encourage everyone who has an interest in seeing honesty on the Internet to follow my lead here.

As some of my friends are currently contributors to SexIs Magazine, I would like all of you to know that I sincerely hope you immediately sever all ties with any and all Web Merchants, Inc. properties, suppliers, and business partners, especially because you are friends and I think your work is too important to be sullied by such a disreputable company. Similarly, I hope you encourage your friends to do the same. I understand that the economy is rough and that some of you may have business contracts bearing legal penalties for breaking them, but I urge you to nevertheless consider looking at this as a cost-benefit analysis: the sooner you break up with EdenFantasys, the happier everyone on the Internet, including you, will be (and besides, you can loose just as much of your reputation, money, and pagerank while being happy as you can being sad).

What you can do

  • If you are an EdenFantasys reviewer, a SexIs Magazine contributor, or have any other arrangement with Web Merchants, Inc., write to Judy Cole and demand that content you produce for SexIs Magazine adheres to ethical Internet publication standards. Sever business ties with this company immediately upon receipt of any non-response, or any response that does not adequately address every concern raised in this blog post. (Feel free to leave comments on this post with technical questions, and I’ll do my best to help you sort out any l33t answers.)
  • EdenFantasys wants to stack the deck in Google. They do this by misusing your content and harvesting your links. To combat this effort, immediately remove any and all links to EdenFantasys websites and web presences from your websites. Furthermore, do not—I repeat—do not publish new links to EdenFantasys websites, not even in direct reference to this post. Instead, provide enough information, as I have done, so visitors to your blog posts can find their website themselves. In lieu of links to EdenFantasys, link to other bloggers’ posts about this issue. (Such posts will probably be mentioned in the comments section of this post.)
  • Boycott EdenFantasys: the technical prowess their website displays does provide a useful shopping experience for some people. However, that in no way obligates you to purchase from their website. If you enjoy using their interface, use it to get information about products you’re interested in, but then go buy those products elsewhere, perhaps from the manufacturers directly.
  • Watch for “improved” technical subterfuge from Web Merchants, Inc. As a professional web developer, I can identify several things EdenFantasys could do to make their unethical practices even harder to spot, and harder to stop. If you have any technical knowledge at all, even if you’re “just” a savvy blogger, you can keep a close watch on EdenFantasys and, if you notice anything that doesn’t sit well with you, speak up about it like I did. Get a professional programmer to look into things for you if you need help; yes, you can make a difference just by remaining vigilant as long as you share what you know and act honestly, and transparently.

If you have additional ideas or recommendations regarding how more people can help keep sex toy retailers honest, please suggest them in the comments.

Update: To report website spamming or any kind of fraud to Google, use the authenticated Spam Report tool.

Update: Google provides much more information about why the kinds of practices EdenFantasys is engaged in degrade the overall web experience for you and me. Read Cloaking, sneaky Javascript redirects, and doorway pages at the Google Webmaster Tools help site for additional SEO information. Using Google’s terminology, EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a very skilled mix of social engineering and “sneaky JavaScript redirects.”

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

So the sex blogger community has been all abuzz today because of a certain adult toy store banning Epiphora, a very popular toy reviewer. I’ve kind of always known that there was something not quite right about that website ever since I first heard about them. First it was because they sold products that are dangerous (which they later stopped selling) and then I heard brief mentionings of how they had wronged people who had worked for them. I’d never really researched it though since I felt like it never really concerned me since I wouldn’t promote them here on my blog anyway.

But since there was the buzz today I decided to do a little bit of research. Both AAG and Essin’Em have written about their experiences with the company and that enlightened me quite a bit.

But all I can think about is how EF is so much like Suicide Girls (you’ll notice I won’t link to either of the sites because I dont’ want to give them traffic). I have a lot more experience in the alt porn community than I do in the sex blogging community. Or at least I did at the height of alt porn. So this is the connection I instantly drew.

Both sites are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are both pretending they are something they are not, but even worse is that they are pretending to be good, but they really have other intentions. They pretend to be the good people who have worked hard to create a good, ethical product or service and then they exploit it in order to make lots of money.

Suicide Girls pretended to be a typical alt porn site that just happened to rake in tons of dough. They even pretended to be run by a woman so that they could put a softer feminist touch on the whole porn thing. They weren’t out to exploit women! They were women! Bullshit. The bigger they got, the more difficult it was to keep the sheep’s wool in place. Their real goals and intentions started to show through more and more as models were made to sign ridiculous contracts while other models were banned from the website and yet their content still remained and was often sold off to the highest bidder. The community members and newer models refused to believe what was going on. They tried to discuss it in the community only to find threads deleted and them banned as well. SG fooled a lot of people, but a lot of us in the alt industry saw them for what they were pretty quickly. I was a part of a site that helped them into existence and then got stabbed in the back once they were doing well enough on their own. These good companies then changed their contracts to show the models that they would protect them and their images; to show that they were the real deal.

There are similarities here to EF. EF has made money by pretending to be an ethical honest sex shop like the feminist sex shops out there who have worked their asses off to spread the word about healthy sexuality and dangerous products. But see there’s an obvious difference right away. When confronted with the fact that anal-eze is dangerous they continued to sell it until it no longer fit in what they wanted their image to be. They didn’t stop selling it on principal. They sold it because people bought it and that makes them money. Only once they felt that it truly conflicted with the image they were trying to portray did they stop selling it.

EF is not a feminist sex shop. They have not worked hard to make the world a better place. They work hard to make money. And you know what, that’s fine. It’s a business which is supposed to make money. The problem is when they pretend that they are all the things that the feminist sex shops of the world have tried so hard to attain, but aren’t actually that at all.

And just along the same lines of SG, EF is now censoring and banning community members. I predict the next move they will make is to insist that all reviewers only review for them.

Ok the truth is that I don’t like drama, but I felt this needed to be said because I feel like it is so difficult to know who to trust in the adult industry. There are many wolves in sheep’s clothing and just straight up wolves. But without education a lot of people can’t even spot the wolves who aren’t hiding. There are so many dangerous products and exploitative services in the adult industry because there are few regulations. It is an industry that has to self-regulate. That is why it is so important to be able to trust who you are giving your money to.  If you can’t trust them, how can you be sure they’re not out to screw you in the most unpleasant way possible?