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Author Violet Blue kills Porn Star Violet Blue’s Name and Karma is a Bitch!

darrah.jpg OP-ED By Staff Writer Darrah Ford who runs http://pornstarbabylon.wordpress.com

Back in May, (on pornstarbabylon.wordpress.com), I told you how porn star Violet Blue had lost her name, website, and most of her income because of a law suit brought by an author, also named Violet Blue, who writes a sex advice column for the San Francisco Chronicle. Author VB was upset that people confused the two names. And without ever notifying actress VB, Author VB filed for a trademark of the name Violet Blue, author Blue got a judge to rule in her favor because actress Blue didn’t have the money to hire the right lawyers to fight the case which she would have clearly won.

Author Blue claims she has been writing since 1999 as Violet Blue. But I could find no proof of any of her writings until 2001. Actress Blue has been Violet Blue since 2000 way before author Blue was ever published. Actress Blue still occasionally does adult movies but has more-or-less retired to raise her family. She’s married with children, takes care of her elderly parents, and makes a bit of money cutting hair. Because actress Blue lost her suit, that means she can’t use the name Violet Blue anymore which means she also loses the main source of her income, her website.

But the highlight of this story is that karma is a bitch and every post about author Blue is no longer at Boing Boing, all have been taken down. Boing Boing is one of the most popular sites on the web and author Blue did something to piss them of. There is an uproar in the Boing Boing community calling what Boing Boing did as censorship. But from everything I’m reading, author Blue was never a columnist, contributor, or blogger at Boing Boing. Boing Boing deleted its own coverage of her. Only one post of author Blue’s material was published there. So how is it really censorship? Boing Boing didn’t censor her, they just removed their coverage of her.

Writer Blue still doesn’t know why this happened and what could have possibly happened last year to cause it. Anyone else find it a coincidence that she got deleted around the same time she was stopping Actress Blue from using her name?

Boing Boing released this statement: 
That Violet Blue thing Posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator, July 1 Speaking for all the Boingers– Boing Boing has been caught in the middle of a real internet shitstorm and pile-on over the last few days. A blogger named Violet Blue noticed that we unpublished some posts related to her. Some people wanted to know why. Bottom line is that those posts (not “more than 100 posts,” as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work.

There’s a big difference between that and censorship. We hope you’ll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private. We do understand the confusion this caused for some, especially since we fight hard for openness and transparency. We were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved. Clearly, that didn’t work out.

In attempting to defuse drama, we inadvertently ignited more. Mind you, we weren’t the ones splashing gasoline around; but we did make the fire possible. We’re sorry about that. In the meantime, Boing Boing’s past content is indexed on the Wayback Machine, a basic Internet resource; so the material should still be available for those who would like to read it. Thank you all for caring what happens on Boing Boing. And if you think there’s more to say, by all means, let’s talk. We’re listening.

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