Making a Difference
Die Phillistines! was a small group of writers, film makers and artists, some of whom were also part of Nine Hearts Publishing. Their careers were impacted or ended as a result of the actions of uninvolved 'others'. They decided to work together "to fight the forces working against creativity and self-expression." As a result of several forced retirements and several more bereavements; the project has ended, but all completed research will be displayed here, in memoriam. We may update from time to time, so people may still contribute and subscribe, but this won't be our main focus.
Difficult Companies
Amazon
When the company receive a DMCA, staff member 'Chad' will claim that he's unable to read, despite working in a legal department. He will insist that you re-send the DMCA several times before it is accepted. It is often better to leave Amazon as a last resort, email all other contacts first, because they normally resolve the issue while Amazon are still claiming that they can't find your address, or some other detail, on the DMCA in front of them. Unfortunately, you will probably have to deal with Amazon, because they host a large number of the illegal download sites. As regards illegal book download sites, you will notice that any inaccuracies stated on Amazon are copied onto the illegal download sites and you may very well find your work illegally added to their kindle by ‘the publisher’; queries about this mysterious body will be ignored. Amazon believes that anything published via their 'Lightening Source' belongs to them.
As regards inaccuracies stated on Amazon; edits to one Amazon site will not carry over onto the other sites, you have to edit each individually, just as you have to DMCA each individual country. One country may refuse a DMCA, while another might accept it, yet they claim to follow the same policies. They will not delete your books, even if they are out of print, or were never available for sale. They allow book sellers to make any changes they wish, but deny that right to the copyright owner. This is because they derive a monthly income from book sellers and they want you to pay that fee as well, so although there is an 'author central' for UK, France, Germany, Japan and America, they will often ignore your edits, complete them incorrectly, or claim that you wish to edit something they are not able to edit. The UK site takes a ridiculously long time to make an edit, but will do so eventually. The French and German sites are the best ones; the staff are very quick to make edits and they complete them perfectly. The American site are rude and unwilling, they take an absolute age to make the simplest of edits and willfully admit that they have people registered as the 'copyright owner', or 'publisher' of work not owned by the registrant - when asked to elaborate or provide details, they will refuse to do so, thereby willingly and knowingly supporting copyright and royalty theft. 'Mike Hammer' of Amazon (US) will eventually send you a supervisory email, after you've received multiple emails from the 'team' about unrelated issues, suggesting that they do not understand your edit, or their job. His email will inform you that the correct way to edit Amazon US is to fill out the 'Report a Problem' form on each page, (which they have removed), as members of the public do and then he will inform you that you could join 'seller central' (paid service), where you will be able to edit whatever you want - thereby giving an author less rights to their own work than; publishers, thieves, the public, book sellers and of course; Amazon. He will then abruptly inform you that 'this is Amazon's final response to this issue', like the sociopathic, pumped up incompetent he is, because it gives him a temporary feeling of unachieved superiority.
You will also find your details listed on numerous unrelated sites, with paragraphs of nonsense, which basically amounts to spam. Such sites will claim they have every right to use your details erroneously, because they are 'Amazon affiliates'. In practice this means that both Amazon and the affiliate are deriving income from your details and you do not derive any financial compensation from this transaction, which constitutes a form of slavery. Amazon have elected themselves the slave masters of anyone unfortunate enough to find their work listed on their sub-standard site.
Whatever complaint you send to Amazon, regarding anything they host, no matter the nature of the material, including very suspicious, possibly illegal material; they will state that they have passed the complaint to their customer, but they cannot remove the material, because ‘it is not against Amazon policy’. Occasionally, they will make the mistake of sending you a link to this policy, where you will deduce, in as little as a few seconds that the issue is clearly stated to be against Amazon policy. Apparently, Amazon staff either cannot read their policy, or do not read their policy, but they expect the innocent party to spend unnecessary time doing so. A further inquiry, with screen shot of said policy, will gain no response. Should you manage to contact the customer directly at some point; you will often find that Amazon have not informed them of your complaint, choosing instead to play self-elected nurse to their customers and oftentimes, the customer will be only too willing to uphold your complaint and remove the content. Do ensure you send them all Amazon communications and advise them to change hosts.
Apparently Amazon pay minimal wage and low taxes, so there is little wonder that they are a billion dollar company, but only when there is no more art and no service amenities and all workers are living off food stamps will society realize that Amazon may be cheap, but its' company practice is not what the world needs and by then it will be too late, so for your own purposes;
- Check whether they are illegally listing you on Kindle.
- Edit the UK site if you have a significant amount of time to spend on doing so and if you deem it to matter.
- Always edit the French and German site, they are wonderful people, easy to deal with and will have your listing looking perfect within no time.
- You could try the Japanese site, they will try to help you, but if you hit upon a technical problem it may turn into a UK site effort and time frame.
- Unless it is of huge importance, don't even bother contacting the American site, if their incompetence doesn't get you, their attitude problem will.
The remainder of their sites have no 'author central', but you can supposedly send edits to their customer services. In practice, this is not the case. They will either; give you a lot of suggestions which are all incorrect, but it will cost you a lot of time following them all (Italy), or they will immediately state that they are unable to make edits (India), or they will promise to make edits, after a Chad worthy dialogue and after multiple emails and demands for information, they won't do anything. This is all complete nonsense because, if you manage to have a DMCA honoured, you will find that they can all edit their content. If you email again, they will pretend that they don't understand you and they will keep requesting further information, which you've already provided (Spain). I would suggest that the sites without 'Author Central' are not worth bothering with at all. They will all ensure that they suggest you join 'Print on Demand', (deeply worrying, considering what they host) or 'Seller Central' (paid service). Some of them simply do not respond at all. Annoying as that is, it's not as annoying as having your time wasted by continuous emails back and forth, as required by Amazon Spain and America, when you still end with the same conclusion - incorrect listings.
If your book has been listed incorrectly, you would be best advised to edit it on other sites, so that your other listings are correct. Other book selling sites are only too happy to hear from an author and make appropriate edits, because good listings sell books and that is their business. Don't waste too much time on Amazon and don't pay them any money, unless you really have to/want to.
As regards Amazon Prime; Amazon claim they have access to movie and TV content they do not have. When they are served a DMCA, they hide the content, leaving it listed within search results, rather than deleting it, as they are required to do, by law. Because they have hidden the content, their DMCA form will not allow further complaint and they provide no direct form of contact. Customer services' assurances that messages will be passed on and contact will be made come to nought. Our advice is to DMCA the search engine displaying Amazon's copyright theft advertisements.
Automattic
Automattic are the host of Wordpress, which have a publicly stated ‘terms of service’ and ‘User Guidelines’. They either do not understand their ‘terms of service’ and ‘User Guidelines’, or more likely; they refuse to adhere to them.
The user guidelines state that ‘illegal content and conduct’ is disallowed and elsewhere in the terms ‘defamation’ is individually stated as being disallowed. However, they actively refuse to remove hate crime and defamation; both criminal offenses.
The user guidelines clearly state that ‘intellectual property infringement’ is disallowed and yet they list much provable copyright theft, which they willfully ignore and they pretend they are not aware of it. If they do remove the copyright theft they will confirm, claiming that they cannot take action because you have reported a 404.
The user guidelines state that ‘impersonation’ is disallowed, yet when faced with evidence, categorically proving that their user/s are demonstrating impersonation; they variously refuse to investigate, or they refuse to respond.
The user guidelines state that ‘calls to violence’ are disallowed, but when clear examples of the same are shown to them; they ignore them and when victims of such calls contact them, some of whom are children; they are told that ‘freedom of speech’ is of greater importance than their right to life, because apparently the staff are psychopaths and do not believe they have to adhere to the ‘freedom of speech comes with responsibility’ claim we’ve all heard so much about.
The user guidelines state that ‘posting private information’ is disallowed, but when clear examples of the same are shown to them; they ignore them and when victims of such posts contact them; they are told that ‘freedom of speech’ is of greater importance than their Human Right to privacy and safety.
The user guidelines state that ‘spam’ is disallowed, but once again; when clear examples of users spamming activity is presented to them; they ignore it.
The staff decide among themselves, within their group, whether or not a concern should be upheld. Sometimes a single individual will decide within minutes, which is contrary to their outlined terms, which solidly claim that a legal team make such decisions. At no time do they inform the user of the complaint. The user is actively denied their own right, to resolve their own issue and decide whether or not they wish to uphold ‘freedom of speech’ over a matter causing significant damage. Staff members will even claim that they have no means of contacting users. The user guidelines clearly state that their users can and should be contacted when any complaint is made.
Do not use Automattic or Wordpress unless you’re a stalker or slanderer, seeking a nurse.
Yahoo and Bing
Adequately led by Führer Gates von Bing und Yahoo, Yahoo and Bing actively try to get people murdered and/or drive them to suicide by denying their European Right to be Forgotten and by supporting favoured illegal download sites, over creators content. They deliberately misrepresent caches and other content in the hope of directing a hate crime toward the subject. For example; their favoured method is to display a person’s sex assignment at birth at the top of the search results, while claiming to be inclusive and left leaning. They also list children’s home addresses and they highlight links between public people and those living under police protection, using name changes. They list entirely sexual content under children’s names and children’s interests, which further highlights their suspect and illegal interests. This leads to sexual spam listings using children’s names within their content, which both Bing and Yahoo refuse to remove, even when the host has deleted it!
Yahoo list long deleted URL’s and they have no content removal tool. They provide no right click option, while claiming otherwise. They prevent any method of making a report and they provide no direct means of contact. Both Bing and Yahoo will not accept their own links in a report, as they erroneously believe that they are above the law, despite the EU bitch slapping them into accepting that is not the case some time ago.
Because they can never achieve the greatness they believe they already are, they enjoy willfully destroying other people’s ability to achieve, by spamming their listings with mirror links, ensuring their notable achievements and present occupations cannot be located. When a person manages to access their European Right to be Forgotten, or has something deleted via other means; both Bing and Yahoo will override their legal right by readding the link/s in images or videos, or adding a new 'related search' or 'snapshot' of the same.
Once they have made a vast assumption about your life and circumstance, they will arrogantly stick with it, regardless of what evidence to the contrary is presented to them and they will simply ignore your forms. Bing regularly, accidentally, send their internal communications to the wrong people, being so gifted and intellectual and this will reveal to you that they put the forms in the bin, as soon as they receive them!
Their denial of the European Right to be Forgotten law does not create more accurate results; it leaves them presenting page after page of mirror sites, criminal downloads (of which they’re both major fans and supporters), 404’s and most weirdly; invented, on site search results, which are not existing URL’s. They also link images to unrelated content, 404’s and on site search queries, which they refuse to change to something more appropriate, because they don’t understand the issue. These issues are also created by Bing’s content removal tool effort being completely incompetent, refusing most links. This leads to creatives losing good content and innocent sites being closed down, as a result of efforts made by creatives, to represent themselves appropriately in the face of Bing/Yahoo’s continuous misrepresentation.
Yahoo’s motto is; “Do you Yahoo!” and of course, the world screams NO! That is, those of us who have even heard of Yahoo.
Their staff denies any method or provision for the supply of the further information they desperately require, yet they arrogantly employ a word count on their forms, because they assume that they do not require a full explanation. They will, for example; claim that ‘the public interest outweighs your own’ in reference to deleted content, or that ableist content is protected by a ‘public right to know’; that being that, in Yahoo and Bing’s opinion, ableist members of the public have a right to access information which can be used as ammunition to bully or even murder the subject, whereas in Bing and Yahoo’s opinion the disabled person has no right to safety, protection and to live peacefully, laws not only covered by the European Right to be Forgotten, but by Human Rights laws as well. They also turn down links on the basis that they cannot find your name within the content. I assume because it would involve reading, but unlike the company they wish they were; Yahoo provide no means of providing screen shots or directions, necessitating further contacts, until one finds a literate member of the team. Other reports state that multiple page letters must be affixed to all forms, to cover all conceivable angles of the most simple, straight forward issues for example; URL’s which have ‘significant public interest’ because they use a given name within them, although none of the content is related in any way. In such instances, one is forced to investigate everything stated on the page, providing evidence that none of it relates to the stated name and afterwards, the response may still maintain that the wholly unrelated page is of ‘significant public interest’. They will often state the content relates to another person and a cursory search will prove this to be untrue and in fact; impossible. They will state that they do not understand the objection, or that you have provided insufficient evidence for the claim and try as you might, to access the akashic records and consult your crystal ball; you will not be able to deduce how even your dog would not understand the vast quantity of evidence submitted at this point, yet an INSUFFICIENT explanation will be submitted at every point.
When one FINALLY and at GREAT LENGTH gets a link removed, they will simply readd it at a later date; leading to many requests having to be made fifty times or more, especially if it’s a matter which might cause personal endangerment. No apology or explanation is ever given. They will also introduce different results, using variations of your name, in the hope of getting their intense bullying and trolling seen, but they are not intelligent enough to succeed and you can immediately gain a feel for this, through their responses.
Both Bing and Yahoo now employ ‘snapshots’, an idea introduced by a different company. These are usually inaccurate, or out of date. They are most entertaining when they announce ridiculously false claims, for example; the searched for subject is presumably a time traveller, who is associated with some random historical figure. They will then proceed to fill the listings with information pertaining to the unrelated, historical figure and any complaint will gain the response that; ‘the public have a right to know’. To know what? You might ask, but you will gain no information regarding their secret dossier pertaining to the drugging, kidnapping and forced time traveling of the subject, because this is a secret, which only Bing staff are allowed to know about….but it is of ‘public interest’ nonetheless, so one would assume the individual querying is not a member of the public?! If nothing else, it may be a nice gauge as to whether or not you have been outcast from society?! If, by some miracle, you manage to get this removed, within two weeks they will add another ‘snapshot’ about something else, which is equally out of date and unimportant. If you do manage to gain a response regarding content which uses your name; Bing will state that they do not provide information about the content to the subject of the content; contrary to data protection law.
Both Bing and Yahoo illegally and erroneously claim that pen names and stage names cannot be used in connection to a claim, a claim disproved when they accidentally send you their list of rules, which you will familiarize yourself with, unlike them, and they categorically state that this is not the case. If you attach their own, stated rules to your Bing form and underline the relevant sentences, to ensure it is an easy read; they will suddenly make an about turn, but this will not create change with Yahoo, despite Bing providing all their search results, because a separate claim must be made to them and their 1990’s style form, which often does not send, will not allow any uploads, other than ID. This also disallows the evidence, which their rules claim they need to view, in order to honour creatively adopted names.
Bing will often direct you to their ‘customer service team’, who will not understand you, however brief your contact and they will send you a form email, in lieu of the assistance they believe they provide. If you manage to gain a response from a semi-literate staff member; the individual will claim that content can only be removed if Bing control it, despite Bing’s legal team refusing to action any Bing content and that the European Right to be Forgotten, other laws, and the status of 404’s does not require that the search engine control them in order to remove them. They will then claim that they can only remove content which fits their rules, which they will link to and you will find, within the first paragraph, that your complaint fits said rules, but you will gain no further response. However, Yahoo provide a confusing warren of contacts, most of which do not respond and those who do are as helpful as Bing and after such effort to make contact; that is frankly annoying, though not as much as their search results are. However; they did give me their permission and blessing to write this.
Bing’s motto is “Bing and Decide” (sic)?! And did you know that now that Yahoo and Bing have mastered the law and search results and mottos; Microsoft is advertising to teach your children LOL!!!
Both Bing and Yahoo do their level best to deny innocent parties rights, even going so far as to use variable links, to direct thieves to the relevant sites, while cheekily denying the copyright owners rights on the basis that they do not own the work displayed on the link they are listing. They even list copyright theft on their own servers, which they distribute among spammers and unsuspecting customers. When you delete your own content; you will find it still listed, using a Bing URL. You will then be persistently spammed with your own out of date or pre-edited content, which they will display as badly as possible and they will assure you that, in their opinion, they have more right to your name, image and works than you do!
If you ever do manage to delete all Yahoo’s prized 404’s, or Bing’s “significant public interest” 404’s, all the mirror sites, the unrelated content and the copyright theft; instead of listing anything new or current, both Bing and Yahoo will dig up some decade old information, which would’ve been nice to see at the time, but even you’re not interested in it at this point; whereupon the entire farce will begin again.
Yahoo have a copyright complaint form and if you fill it out, they will variously ignore you, or direct you to fill out the Bing copyright form and so it would seem that they update their own content as often as they update their listings, which is never. It is not clear whether their European Right to be Forgotten form is also a false one, because no responses to the forms is given, nor to contacts, and on the very rare occasion that a response is given; they simply claim that they don’t understand what you’re referring to.
Both Bing and Yahoo are also massive fans of trademark infringement; delisting original companies and replacing them with their favoured, thieving companies, while they themselves steal other people's ideas.
Yahoo currently attempt to give people epilepsy, cause seizures to begin and kill people using epilepsy. They do this using a 'clean' screen and a constantly flickering 'change page' option. When reported; they fail to respond and delete your post, proving foreknowledge and intend.
Those named should simply legally change their name. Casual browsers should use a different search engine. Neither company is worth the insurmountable effort they seem to require at every turn.