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Bloggers vs A4e - Poverty Pimps Attempt Internet Censorship

riotact | 26.07.2009 09:10 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | World

Calling all bloggers!

Poverty pimps A4e seem to be intent on starting a cyberwar after now seemingly shutting down two blogs which were critical of their shady shenanigans.

It's already been reported (1) that the website ‘Watching a4e‘ (2) had been taken offline by freewebs (3). According to freewebs someone had alleged 'dafamatory content, that someone seems alomst certain to have been A4e. We can now reveal it appears they haven’t stopped there in their bid to censor criticism on the internet.

New Deal Scandal (4) have had their wordpress account suspended after receiving the following notice on their dashboard:

“We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and re-enable posting.”

According to New Deal Scandal they are now unable to post any new material on the blog and have received limited information so far as to why. WordPress have also made this post (5) on the blog private. This post contains the information that in April of this year Neil Watson resigned from his directorship at A4e. The post can be found in the ever helpful google cache here (6).

Now this is all pretty tame stuff. Early indications suggest that A4e have contacted wordpress informing them that Neil Watson is still an employee of A4e. Nowhere in the offending piece does it say he isn’t, it merely points out his resignation taken from Company House Records as detailed here (7).

Several things seem possible. Perhaps Companies House records are wrong. Perhaps New Deal Scandal made up this rather trivial fact in the light of other more serious accusations aimed at A4e. Perhaps, somewhere, a mistake has been made.* UPDATE BELOW

Or perhaps, and most likely, A4e feel the noose tightening and have panicked, whereas wordpress have seemingly rolled over in the face of a corporate legal onslaught from a company already facing investigations of fraud.

Whatever the truth a worrying precedant is being set. If Neil Watson is still a director of A4e Ltd then a simple clairification from A4e to New Deal Scandal would not have gone amiss. From our dealings with the site they seem particularly consistent in establishing the truth before they post (even going so far as to hide potentially libellous comments) and it’s likely a retraction would have been published.

But that’s doesn’t seem to be what A4e did regardless of the truth of the matter. Much like in the case of Watching A4e, they appear to have snuck behind the backs of the bloggers to threaten the platform they published on. And so far both those platforms have backed corporate might rather than the bloggers, hacks and citizen journalists on which their empires are based.

Will this see any company with a hefty legal department able to close down criticism without debate or basic checks made to see if the information is true?

Folks the very future of what you all call the blogosphere could be in danger.

At present wordpress appear to be looking into it and New Deal Scandal appear to be attempting to glean information from wordpress as to exactly what A4e’s fucking problem is.

Perhaps the war profiteering poverty pimps are getting nervous with the prospect of that juicy Flexible New Deal contract looking ever more shaky.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this and posting new info as we receive it. In the meantime we call on all bloggers and associated internet itinerants to act in solidairty by posting information about this latest attempt to censor free speech and honest criticism on the internet.

*here’s a screenshot taken from the records at Companies House (8)

(1)