Yahoo Shuts Down SciFiNoir Discussion Group
I recieved an interesting email today about Yahoo! shutting down one of the online discussion lists that it hosts. In this case the group was SciFiNoir, a six-year old science fiction discussion list with some 485 members.
What concerned me most from this email was the statement that Yahoo not only gave no solid explanation for shutting down the list beyond a generic “you have violated Yahoo!’s terms of service” with no indication of how, but that they refused to give the list owner access to the raw data of that list including the messages, address book and files associated with it.
Granted Yahoo! Groups is a free service and Yahoo! has the right to stop offering that service to people, but this high-handed approach isn’t going to win them many friends. At the very least could they not provide justification for shutting down the group?
There’s a lesson to be learned about relying to heavily on free services for these personal projects I guess. There’s also a reason why I’ve been prepared to pay for commercial hosting of Solar Flare all these years.
I’m not in a position to verify all of the claims in the email, but I have attached it in full below so you can make your own conclusions:
On April 29, Yahoo deleted both my email account and my six-year-old science
fiction discussion list of 485 members, called SciFiNoir. No warning,
notification or explanation was provided. Since the deletion of my email
account and discussion list, I have discovered many people are having their
yahoo email accounts and discussion groups deleted in a similar fashion. My
phone inquiry proved fruitless. Customer support refused or was unable to
answer my questions. I was informed that I violated Yahoo!’s terms of
service, but that they were not permitted to explain how I had done so. They
also explained that there was no one to whom I could turn to find out more
about the violation, getting service restored, gain access to my emails,
copy my address book, or retrieve six years of files, images, and hundreds
of thousands of messages from the deleted discussion list. Yahoo! has
responded to member inquiries with a form letter that suggests that I shut
down the list.
A review of recent messages on my science fiction discussion forum have
revealed that less than 48 hours before the list was deleted, there was an
extended message thread regarding an article in the Los Angeles Times
covering the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit that focused on their fight against
child pornography and how the majority of those arrested are Trekkers. As
far as I know, there is nothing in Yahoo!’s terms of service that forbids
users from discussing current events (even subjects of a sensitive nature)
on their groups.
Yahoo! is currently in a cutthroat battle with Google. One of their
strategies against the Google threat is to offer users more email space and
enhanced features on their groups portal. What they don’t let unsuspecting
users know is that if they use Yahoo! services is that they will be censored
and that they running the risk of loosing intellectual property.
To read the LA Times article, see the message thread, find out who else
yahoo is deleting, or to read the What Happened to ScifiNoir at Yahoogroups
FAQ, go to: http://www.visitfloripa.com/scifinoir/
Tracey de Morsella
Phone: 215-849-0946
Email: tdemorsella@multiculturaladvantage.com
View The What Happened to ScifiNoir at Yahoogroups FAQ, at:
http://www.visitfloripa.com/scifinoir/
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