5232 N. Sheridan Rd. in Chicago

7:30 PM $15/$10 students and low income

Hope to see [...]]]> Just a quick reminder that I will be doing my last Chicago workshop (while I’m still living here) tomorrow night at Early to Bed. Come out and learn about the magical g-spot and female ejaculation. Last I checked there were still spots open.

5232 N. Sheridan Rd. in Chicago

7:30 PM $15/$10 students and low income

Hope to see you there!

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This post, G-spot/Squirting Class Tomorrow, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/12/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: G-spot/Squirting Class Tomorrow. Thanks for visiting!
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At [...]]]> There is this woman who comes into Early to Bed. She isn’t really a regular like the ones who come into the shop so often that they always need to ask what’s new. In fact, it took me awhile to recognize her as coming in a few times, but she is one of my favorite customers.

At first I misjudged her. I try not to be judgmental, but I do that kind of self-defense judgment of people where I’m always on the lookout for people who may be offensive or judgmental themselves. So if you look like you belong in a frat I will probably assume you’re a beer drinking douchebag until you prove me otherwise. I never said I was perfect.

So at first I misjudged her. The first several times she came in her hair was blonde, now it is brunette. She used to look like a sorority girl and with that slight southern accent of hers and her classic good looks I thought she would be a giggly girl with not much knowledge of the sexual world. It is people like her that remind me that I should not judge others.

It took me a few times to recognize her. All I realized about her the first few times is that she looked familiar. It probably took til the 3rd or 4th time of her coming in for me to remember that she is incredibly awesome. She is so open about her’s and other’s sexuality. She does not judge. She is extremely curious about experiences outside of her own, but not in an othering way. She just genuinely is interested in people. And she’s nice. She’s so nice.

This past weekend she came into the store with a man. Apparently this man had some history at the shop as well, but I do not ever remember seeing him previously. But you knew he had to be an incredible guy once you found out that he was married to her. This intelligent sweet woman. And he did not let me down.

They both wandered around the store sometimes talking to each other, sometimes talking to me and my coworker. Always having such engaging conversations about things they enjoyed, but never getting too personal as some customers seem to do. It was always light and fun. He enjoys ass play. They love watching queer porn. They want to see more real couples in porn. They read erotica together. He is extremely interested in any sort of theatrical works and therefore must watch The Curse of MacBeth.

Both of them so comfortable in their sexuality. Both of them in what appeared to be an egalitarian loving relationship.

As they left the store both my coworker and I found that we had smiles on our face. We decided that they should win the best couple award if there was one.

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This post, Best Couple, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/12/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Best Couple. Thanks for visiting!
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On Tuesday July 13th at 7:30PM I will be giving my last Chicago workshop before I move. The topic is the [...]]]> Hey Chicagoans (sorry to those of you who aren’t from Chicago)! Early to Bed is having a couple of exciting events coming up next week. You should come out to both if you can make it.

On Tuesday July 13th at 7:30PM I will be giving my last Chicago workshop before I move. The topic is the g-spot and female ejaculation. It promises to be a lot of fun. Please pre-register either online, by phone, or in person. $15/$10 low income. There are lots of spots still open.

On Friday July 16th there will be a benefit for the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) 7-pPM. There will be snacks and drinks and 15% of all purchases will be donated to CAF

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This post, Upcoming Early to Bed Events, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/06/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Upcoming Early to Bed Events. Thanks for visiting!
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Tomorrow at U of C there will be a documentary about Early to Bed which is the sex shop I work at. I get interviewed a bit in it and I swear [...]]]> Hey Chicagoans, or those of you who may be visiting Chicago during these times, here are a couple of events featuring the always awesome me:

Tomorrow at U of C there will be a documentary about Early to Bed which is the sex shop I work at. I get interviewed a bit in it and I swear that gap in my teeth isn’t that bad in person! In fact, come look at it after the movie and let me know because I’ll be there. The details:

This event is open to all and is free. Snacks will be provided.

On July 13th I will be giving my last workshop in Chicago before I move out west so you should all come. I’ll be talking about the g-spot and female ejaculation, which are both topics close to my heart. The class will be at 7:30pm at Early to Bed and it’s $15/ $10 for students and low income. Please register in advance by calling: 773-271-1219, ordering online, or coming into the store.

Hope to see you at one or both of these events!

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This post, Local Chicago Stuff, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 06/02/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Local Chicago Stuff. Thanks for visiting!
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In response to the whole Eden Fantasys debacle [...]]]> 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! ;)

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This post, Business Ethics, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 05/20/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Business Ethics. Thanks for visiting!
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A few nights ago, I received an email from Editor of EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine, [...]]]> 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 3^rd 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.
  • On the recommendation of my friend Dr. Charlie Glickman, I suggest Good Vibrations.
  • On the recommendation of my friend Shanna Katz, I also recommend Fascinations.
• 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.”

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This post, Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 05/19/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole. Thanks for visiting!
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