Today, FetLife.com announced they are looking to grow their team of administrators to deal with media issues. Since I’ve had a great many interactions around FetLife’s media policies, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring with an application. My cover letter follows, followed by a copy of FetLife’s announcement:
Dear FetLife (aka BitLove, Inc.),
I am very excited to be applying for a position as a Media Caretaker (aka “Media Bitch”) for FetLife.com.
As I’m sure you know, I have dedicated a lot of time and energy to investigating FetLife.com’s media storage facilities. My inquiries have ranged from legalities to privacy issues affecting your users. I’ve even contributed several pictures to FetLife that, despite having been banned and having my account summarily “deleted” for the better part of a year, I note are still available on your website’s servers as of this writing. For example:
https://flpics0.a.ssl.fastly.net/1/1254/eileenmaymayfloatingworldportrait_20080927192829_720.jpg
Additionally, I am intimately familiar with your process for issuing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices because you sent me and my service providers numerous such takedowns over the course of calendar year 2012. Moreover, you effectively admitted improper invocation of the DMCA by refusing to respond to any of the legal counter-notices I sent and seem to have chosen to ignore the issues I have been raising for years after I sent you a Cease and Desist letter for your potentially illegal actions.
For example, when I released the FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search script that implements your users’ most requested feature enhancement, you sent numerous DMCA takedown notices to the various hosts of the script, even though people not as well-known for such work as I am have released similar scripts months before I ever did. To the best of my knowledge, they were never sent similar DMCA notices. I also happily note all of my content you tried to remove from the Internet has been entirely restored, as well as copied numerous times on various different services, effectively countering this censorship.
I have been able to do all this despite not having a reliable Internet connection and indeed having my IP address blocked by your technical team in an ineffective attempt to stop the spread of code I wrote to export FetLife profile data, a basic user-centered data function you have to date declined to provide or prioritize in your development efforts. By the way, I am still waiting on a response to the invoice I sent to you for these feature enhancements.
Since you state that being a Media Caretaker also requires searching for copyright holders’ and models’ contact info, I expect you to be pleased that I have a proven track record of discovering, though not making public, the legal identities of many people who use your service, particularly photographers. As an example, I was able to easily identify BDSM photographer Lew Rubens’ culturally appropriative photograph within minutes of seeing it. However, I have focused these efforts on the many rape apologists and alleged sexual predators who frequent FetLife.com as part of defending myself against physical and legal threats your user base have sent to me in response to the release of my tool designed to empower the many users whose postings you’ve censored, the FetLife Alleged Abusers Database Engine (FAADE).
While I am dismayed that you have recently hired Susan Wright, who has been loudly criticized as a prominent rape apologist by many members of your own community, to be your Community Manager, I have an unparalleled ability to support the work of people who are unsupportive of my work if I believe it to be in the common good. This is evidenced in part by my continued support of ConsentCulture.com, a project run by people who label me “an abuser,” and who have been instrumental in advocating for the end of your censorship of sexual assault survivors.
I am an ideal candidate for a position as a Media Caretaker. I believe you’ll find that my curriculum vitae provides sufficient validation to this claim. Thank you for taking the time to consider me.
I am available for an interview at your earliest possible convenience and can be reached via e-mail at bitetheappleback@gmail.com or via telephone at (323) 963-4827.
Sincerely,
-maymay
Website: http://maybemaimed.com/tag/fetlife
Another website: http://days.maybemaimed.com/tagged/fetlife
Here’s FetLife’s announcement in full:
Hey all! I’m suicide_by_sybian, a member of the FetLife family. I lead the Caretaker’s Media Team.
Here we grow again!!! :-)
I’m really excited to announce to you guys that we’re looking for more kinksters to join our Media Team.
Media Caretakers are lovingly referred to internally as “The Media Bitches”. Why you may ask? Well, it is very simple, all of our cases deal with Media in one form or another, and… well… you know! :-p
What is the Media team responsible for?
- We contact artists when copyright is in question to make sure permission was given.
- We handle all DMCA’s for pictures, videos and writing.
- We perv Kinky & Popular reporting questionable copyright and handling all that it entails.
- Found a fake profile? yup you guessed it, we handle them as well.
- and that’s just the very basics…
Do you LOVE perving Kinky & Popular? Do you want to help us make it even better, sexier? If you answered yes to both of those questions, then where have you been my whole life… or at least the last couple of months?! :-)
We are looking for volunteers who:
- Love perving K&P. And getting deep down in there!
- Love hunting and enjoying puzzle solving… (look for copyright holders and models contact info).
- Open minded and non-judgemental (kinky and otherwise).
- Team player who enjoys working closely with other kinksters.
- Have a minimum of 15 hours to spend with us a week, which is a couple hours everyday.
- You must have a reliable internet connection and computer that can handle multiple pages and applications at the same time.
- Be able to check on K&P several times a day.
You’ll start off by keeping an eye on K&P and if over time you want to learn how to handle things like DMCA takedowns, etc. then we will slowly train you in all aspects of the Media team. We certainly don’t want you to be bored… evil laugh, as if that could actually happen!
Our team needs to grow, the site is growing and we need to grow with it! So if you think you have what it takes to be a part of our team, then email me:
sbs@fetlife.com
In your email, provide your FetLife nickname and link to your profile, your availability, and please tell me about yourself and why you think you would make a great media caretaker. Please also answer each of the following questions below, explaining your thought process. (We like brainstorming, it turns us geeky kinksters on!)
1. You come across an image in a profile that the poster may not be the copyright holder of…What do you do?
2. Joe_Bob sees that his sub littleslave’s ex (Dumb_Dom) has a rather risque picture of her on his profile. He writes in, saying that Dumb_Dom doesn’t have permission to have littleslave’s picture up! What do you do? Would you handle it differently if littleslave wrote in? If so, how? If not, why?
3. Tell me what you believe to be acceptable for FetLifer’s to upload to their profile (pics, vids)?
Application deadline is January 31st, 2013.
I will respond to applicants after the deadline has closed and we have reviewed each application and made our decisions.
So send in those emails…We can’t wait to hear from you!
sbs