Planet Homo

XY: The Database Issue

The creditors of a XY, a gay magazine and its accompanying website have been warned not to sell off any of their young subscribers' personal information after going bankrupt.

XY magazine and XY.com catered to gay men aged as young as 13 with advice and features on politics, culture, education and families but their owners filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

The firm has just one valuable asset left – its database of one million users, complete with names, street address, bank details and email addresses.

The majority of the young men on the database will be gay, with many likely to be keeping their sexual orientation from their families.

The company's creditors, Peter Larson, listed as majority owner of magazine publisher XY Residuary Corp, and Martin Shmagin, president of financial consulting firm Innovative Financial Solutions, have apparently asserted ownership of the customer information.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned them that any transfer of the database will violate the privacy standards in place before the company collapsed.

According to the FTC's letter, the company had made a number of promises to readers that it would never sell their personal data, and even posted the magazine to subscribers in plain black packaging to avoid their parents seeing it.

The letter warned that using the data to restart the magazine and website could also violate federal law.

It said: "In this case, the XY privacy policy is simple, explicit, and clear. Subscribers and members were told that their personal information would not be sold, shared, or given away to 'anybody'. This includes the names, addresses, profile information, and credit card information submitted by subscribers.

"Therefore, any sale or transfer of the data to a new company, new owner, or other third party would directly contravene the privacy representations and could constitute a deceptive practice by the original company or its principals. Such practice also could be unfair."

It concluded by asking for the data to be destroyed as soon as possible.

Xtube: GONE, not quite

Mega popular Xtube.com seems to have vanished over night to the dismay of porn lovers everywhere. In an Internet world where everything is made news instantly, this is one of those stories that doesn't seem to be capturing people's attention—yet. As for the history:

Xtube is a Canadian pornographic video hosting service which allows unregistered and registered users to share adult video content with others. Among other things, the terms of use of xtube.com state that users must be 18 years of age or older.
Xtube claims that it has over two million registered users and an Alexa Internet traffic rank of global average of 305, and a United States ranking of 175. The site receives 4.5 million unique visits per day. Xtube's main competitors are PornoTube and YouPorn. Amateur content producers can sell their videos and webcam shows, with the website taking a commission. One gay man is known to make $1,300 a week from his Xtube videos, with the site earning the same amount. Xtube distinguishes itself from its competitors by hosting a wiki engine on its site called Xtube Sex Wiki. Xtube was reportedly the first site to allow uploading of home-made adult content to a web site. Previously such content had to be shared either via Usenet newsgroups or via peer to peer file sharing networks.

A reader sends up this update:

I was able to get the following from their site: "Last night our DNS provider screwed up meaning no one could access the site last night between 10pm and 2:30am EST. The error is corrected and don’t worry, XTube is not going anywhere. As of this blog, there are still some connection errors so somethings wont work correctly until all the server errors are cleared, believe me we are just as frustrated as you are about this. We are working on it as I write this and we should have it all sorted out and back to normal shortly."

Ruby-Sachs on Why Newspapers are Needed

Yesterday, we found out that the Washington Blade, along with many other local LGBT papers and media were closing. It’s another blow to the LGBT advocacy project and a blow to print media.

Now maybe I shouldn’t knock blogging. I do it, after all, three or four times a week on two different websites. But as a blogger, I am all too aware of the pitfalls and shortcomings of our particular form of media. Blogging is generally unpaid, or paid very badly. No one is giving you budgets for investigative reporting, interviews, travel. Your greatest asset is the internet, the reporting of other papers and your own particular expertise.

So, I can pore over a recent court decision and give my opinion, but I certainly cannot go to Puerto Rico and find out exactly how the police force handles hate crimes when a 19 year old gay boy is murdered.

When you lose publications that actually report on LGBT events, you start to notice how bloggers are everywhere and reporters are scarce. You start to notice how no one is going to Puerto Rico to report on the LGBT angle.

This is a problem in all media: the rise of blogging, of recycled media, and the fall of investigative journalism. However, when a community is fighting for recognition, against discrimination and for legal equality, reporting is even more important. Officials aren’t always willing to give us the facts about LGBT related events. Reporters aren’t always worried about LGBT issues. Investigative media IS the backbone of our civil rights struggle.

I hope, against hope, that a new publication dedicated to reporting and investigating the news springs up to replace the Washington Blade and it’s sister publications. We need that more than any lobbying effort or any new liberal politician.

http://www.365gay.com/blog/ruby-sachs-why-we-need-newspapers/