Affiliate manager Commission Junction has dropped gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender multimedia publisher Cybersocket. Commission Junction attributes the action to a determination that Cybersocket’s materials are “obscene”; Cybersocket says Commission Junction dropped it unjustly.
Cybersocket said it tried to get CJ to clarify how the company determines obscenity but was rebuffed at every juncture, until CJ finally broke off all contact with no explanation and no attempt to pay money owed to Cybersocket.
"They're obviously going after the little guy because they think we won't fight back," said Cybersocket publisher Morgan Sommer in a prepared statement. "One wonders if they make a pattern of kicking off smaller sites to pocket money that should be paid out."
Commission Junction said it made the decision after reviewing a number of words in Cybersocket search results "which I really don't care to repeat," according to a Commission Junction staffer who asked not to be identified.
This staffer said Commission Junction sent Cybersocket an email notice June 3 saying the company was exercising its right to terminate the agreement with Cybersocket by 30-day notice, but the actual deactivation of Cybersocket happened after the 30-day period.
However, an email message from Commission Junction to Cybersocket made available to AVNOnline.com and dated July 5 said that Cybersocket was being removed from the CJ network "for placing your banners and/or links on the following obscene site: Phone Sex," and that Cybersocket earnings were to be forfeited." The message also declared Cybersocket ineligible to rejoin the Commission Junction network.
The Commission Junction staffer insisted some of the language coming up in search results was the main cause. "We just don't allow that as a company," she said. "Porn is something that we just don't do lately."
Sommer denied that Cybersocket ever received a 30-day notice from Commission Junction, telling AVNOnline.com that even though he was out of the country on June 3, his assistant was flagged to any such notifications from business partners. He insisted he never communicated personally with anyone at Commission Junction.
"[They] may have talked to my editor and said they found my site obscene, but they have yet to say specifically that this or that is obscene," he said. "They have yet to actually define one word, one phrase, that is actually, categorically obscene in their eyes."
Sommer said Cybersocket was being penalized for search result language that nonadult search engines yield routinely. "Look what Google and Yahoo do," he said. "That's what [Commission Junction is] banning us for. [They're] stopping us from sending traffic to any one of the 200 companies [they] claim to represent, but Google and Yahoo are allowed to? How does that make sense?"
Nine-year-old Cybersocket publishes Cybersocket: The Gay Net Directory, an annual guide with more than 2,000 gay and lesbian site reviews, Cybersocket Web Magazine (a print journal), and the Cybersocket e-newsletters for Web professionals and surfers alike.
