Poetry News

Victory Is Dennis Cooper's

Originally Published: August 29, 2016

Though you may not see the link to Dennis Cooper's blog revived just yet, Cooper announced on Facebook that his "Google-related nightmare is over." The Google gods have given back to Cooper--after much negotiation--all of the blog's archival data, including a GIF novel titled Zac's Freight Elevator (forthcoming as a free download), and all of his correspondence. But he has to hand-code the posts in, one by one. But why, why, why did they do it?

Why Google says my account was disabled: For years I used to do these posts on my blog that I called 'Self-Portrait Day'. I would present a theme or topic and invite everyone who read or commented on the blog to send me related things -- writing, images, video, sound files, ... really anything that could be uploaded onto a blog. I would assemble what people sent, attribute each entry to its sender, and that would constitute the post. Ten years ago, in 2006, I did one of those posts where I asked people to send me things they thought were sexy. I had forgotten all about that post until the other day, and I don't remember what was in it. I do remember that, upon assembling the post, I realized there was some rather pornographic things therein that could potentially get my blog in trouble. So I set up that Self-Portrait Day on a separate page off the blog that could only be accessed on the blog through a link with an adult content warning. According to Google, around the time my account was disabled, some unknown person came across this ten year-old page, thought one of the images on it constituted child pornography, and reported it to Google who immediately disabled my account. Now let me just say that I know there are people who don't know me or my work well and think I'm some kind of ultra-transgressive shock-creating monster, but I completely assure you that if someone had sent me an image that I thought was child pornography, I would never have uploaded it, period. Anyway, Google says some unknown person's flagging of one image on a ten year-old group-curated page that wasn't even technically on my blog is the reason they disabled my blog and email account.

The resolution: Google finally responded to me after a month of my complaints, international press, thwarted internal investigations, the petition, and so forth on July 15th. Then one of their lawyers and mine began talking. First I asked to be shown the offending image that had shut down my account. Google refused. I suggested that the situation could be resolved if either Google or I went into my blog and removed the image. Google refused. I suggested a resolution whereby my email account would be restored and I would be allowed to enter my blog privately to save and export my work. Google refused. What followed was about three weeks of discussions, negotiations, and so on. Finally, a week ago, Google suddenly announced that they were going to send me the data for the DC's blog and my email account. They did, and that's how and when the stand-off ended.

Wonderful news.