On today’s Jupiter Files: A man claims aliens are targeting him with meteorites, Poltergeists are haunting Hollywood publicists, video from the recent Chinese UFO sightings… and pictures of some rather creepy creatures from the depths of the ocean.

If you want the latest episode every weekday, check out this page.

And so it begins!  Today was the first episode of “Bryan Lunduke’s Jupiter Files”.

Yes, my name is in the title.  And, yes, that was my idea.  What can I say?  I like my name!  (Besides… my ego is ginormous.)

In this first episode, I give a quick little intro to the show and talk about the recent UFO sightings in China… along with some obviously man-made (but very cool looking) crop formations.

The show is live, Monday through Friday, at 7am Pacific Time (That’s 10am Eastern, 2pm GMT).  You can watch it (and hang out in the chat room) over at http://jupiterbroadcasting.com/live.  If you miss an episode, you can download them from http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/.

Video RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ldf-video

MP3 RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ldf-mp3

And, yes, the show is in black and white.

I am angry at Google.

Nay.  I am furious.

As some of you may know, I am part of a production company called Jupiter Broadcasting.

At Jupiter Broadcasting we make nerdy podcasts.  About Linux.  About Beer.  About video games.  It is, as you might expect, composed predominantly of reviews and opinions.

We put out quality shows on a shoe-string budget.  We are not Revision3 or TWiT.  We are the little guy.  The underdog.  Read: We are not rich (not even a little).

We need every penny we can get just to keep afloat.  Part of this means we have utilized Google’s Adsense advertising both on jupiterbroadcasting.com and in the YouTube versions of our videos.

We get good traffic, often pushing our servers to the limit, but we still don’t earn much.  But those few bucks we do earn?  We need.  And, more importantly, we earned.

Then we received an email from Google.  It begins:

“This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does notaccept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?cat=377.

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website.”

Whut.

That’s right.  They decided we have violated their policies on pages “such as” the one they list (they give no other example) and so have turned off AdSense revenue from that page.

Here’s the crazy thing.  That particular page?  It’s nothing but a list of our shows.  That’s it.  It’s a freaking list of episodes we have made.

The Google email continues:

“As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on sites involved in the distribution of copyrighted materials. This includes hosting copyrighted files on your site, as well as providing links for or driving traffic to sites that contain copyrighted material.

As a result, we have disabled ad serving to the site.”

We are not distributing copyrighted material illegally.  We go through great pains to make sure of that.

But… read that paragraph again.  It says nothing at all about legality.  It says that no website that uses AdSense is allowed to link to websites that contain Copyrighted material.  This would include, drum-roll please… essentially every website on the internet.  Including Google.com.

Aka: This reason is 100% bogus.

They conclude:

“Your AdSense account remains active. However, we strongly suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies ) to ensure that all of your remaining pages are in compliance.

Please note that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team”

Note that there are a few key things missing from this email from Google:

1. Any way to contact them at all.  In fact they sent the email itself from an email address that cannot receive email.  And they provide no indication of how to get in touch with them.
2. Any real indication of what might be the reason for the supposed violation.  (How can we fix a problem that Google itself doesn’t even seem sure exists?)
3. Any sense of Google’s “Don’t be evil” company motto.  The email threatened our ability to earn a living with no details as to why.  If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is.

The use of the Google logo here is a parody. Will Google try to attack me for using "Copyrighted" material? Maybe. But they'd be WRONG for doing so.

After much digging on Google’s various webpages (which are all extremely poorly laid out… almost as if it was a conscious decision to try to prevent people from finding critical information) we found an email address that might hold some promise.  To this email address, we sent the following:

“The page you link to is an entire category of a WordPress blog which represents one of our six Podcasts.

Additionally, there is nothing of copyrighted martial, OTHER THAN OUR OWN, on this site.

Can some explanation, of what the offending content is, be given to me so I can fix the issue?

I believe this an error on your part, and is the direct realization of the cold, robotic approach Google takes that directly impacts the livelihood of those of us foolish enough to hitch our wagon to Google’s cold, robotic soul.

Not only is this type of action extremely degrading to those of us who work tirelessly to produce content, but the quick, zero-warning type of approach here is making me reconsider my companies entire relationship with Google. From our Google Hosted Apps, to the Google Ad Words we purchase.

This has been a very alarming and extremely rude wakeup call.

Please work WITH me to correct this problem. And please be specific as to where the offense was made.”

No reply has come.  (And, sure, the “robotic soul” part wasn’t exactly friendly.  But, come on.  They had it coming.  They attacked us directly.  Besides… it entertained us.)

It’s also critical to point out that, when reviewing something (let’s say a video game for example) information used for this purpose falls under fair use.  So referencing a video game title, etc. in a review is totally fine.

Also critical:  ign.com uses Google AdSense as well.  And, if you go by the information Google provided to us in their email, ign.com is a far bigger violator of Google’s AdSense policies than any pages hosted on Jupiter Broadcasting.  (Of course, saying ign.com is doing something illegal here would be ridiculous… but, then again, Google is being ridiculous.)

So why are we being targetted and not ign (and the many other larger websites)?

Is it because we’re the little guys?  Do they think we won’t fight back?

Is it because they dislike our content?  Do they dislike Linux, Beer and Video Games that much?

Who knows.  All I know is this:

I am pissed off.

But I’ll give Google this one chance to redeem themselves:

I want either:

1. An email explicitly outlining our violations so that we can fix them or
2. An email stating that our AdSense status is fully restored and no further shenanigans as such will occur.

Then, either way, I want Google to make a statement that they are changing their policies in this regard.  Specifically: “No more auto-disabling of AdSense accounts without warning and without cause, which deprives small business of income necessary for their survival.”

Seem like a lot to ask for?  Seem like more than Google will be willing to do?  It probably is.

But, you know what?  It’s reasonable.  And it’s ethical.

And, if Google truly is “not evil”, they will gladly (and quickly) do it.

The Linux Action Show is quickly approaching its 4th birthday and, during all those years, we’ve never really had a set-in-stone schedule for when we record the show each week.

That has now changed.  Going forward, the Linux Action Show will standardly be recorded (and broadcast live) every Sunday at 10am (Pacific Time).  (That’s 1pm US/Eastern, 6pm Greenwich.)

So join us this Sunday as we review Ubuntu 10.04!

You can watch the full behind the scenes video, with chat, at http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/live.

The Linux Action Show! has its own wikipedia page.  (Though it could use a little love.)

This makes sense.  The Linux Action Show! rocks the house.

But there are many, many other wikipedia pages that do not exist.  The absence of these pages on our global, intertube-based hitchicker’s guide makes me cry a little each night.

Here is a quick list of just a few of those pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Lunduke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_is_Tasty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Broadcasting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Fisher(podcaster)

Here’s the thing.  I would feel weird writing any of these pages myself

However I have no problem at all putting out the call for you crazy kids to write these pages!  :)

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