Day: February 21, 2004

I’ve returned from Las Vegas, where the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had a two day brainstorming board meeting to discuss the Fund’s future, the cases on our dockets, changes in by-laws, and pretty much everything else having to do with the past, present and future of the CBLDF.

Why Vegas? Lots of cheap airfares (since we paid our own way), lots of cheap hotel rooms, plus stuff to do in the evening after long days of work. Particularly entertaining was Thursday night when Neil arranged for the bunch of us to see his pals, Penn and Teller, performing in their new permanent theater. We went back stage and hung with them for a bit afterward, so that was cool.

With various states stepping up various laws ostensibly designed to “protect the children,” but which can be used to cripple comic book stores (not just comic book stores, but book stores, magazines, even 7-11s), we’re thinking that the next year (or four, if Ashcroft remains around) could potentially be a horror show of litigation. Check in with the CBLDF site for details, and watch for announcements as to future activities.

PAD

Seems that Oceana has had some ads censored by Google:

Oceana recently bought two ads with Google for its Web sites oceana.org and StopCruisePollution.com. Only two days after the ads started running, Google shut them down…. They tell us that they will not run any ad containing or linking to a Web site with “language critical of Royal Caribbean” or “the cruise industry”… Never mind that none of their written policies include such a rule, and only one of the two canceled ads even mentions Royal Caribbean in the first place.

We sympathize. So we’ve decided to block all of Royal Caribbean’s Google ads, and we strongly encourage you to do the same (the URL for you to do so is at https://www.google.com/adsense/filter. And if Google doesn’t get their act together, we’ll pull their ads all together.