Censorship

Censorship from Wikipedia

Censorship at Zazzle.com: the story started in December, 2009. The first step was a really good news, a customer ordered a Porn or Art calendar from Zazzle.com. A day later Zazzle tried to process the order, that's why they checked the images. The calendar was immediatelly removed from Zazzle, and another day later all Porn or Art products were permanently removed, too. After some discussions on Zazzle's forums, armed with many suggestions and positive criticism, censored versions of the images were published again, now with an 18+ age restriction. We requested an extraordinary review at Zazzle Review Team, only the censored versions of Porn or Geometric Art images survived. We decided to fight...

Not only censorship, but the reaction - both positive and negative criticism - inspired this decision. Let's see some of them:

• the word porn is most likely already against zazzle rules (J32 Design)
• porn would have caused a few nervous twitches. What you've shown here seems arty enough and the embracing couple is very cool. I do hope you and Zazzle find some common ground. (Stutoons)
• I just did a search for "porn" and it came up with 8.990 products.
  Many of them have nothing to do with art -unlike yours! (Surreality)
• Your work is in fact wonderful and intelligent. (Funkart)
• Personally, I wouldn't want to see this on zazzle (artNimages)

Fight for freedom of speech

Milton's speech from Wikipedia

Freedom of speech, fight against censorship. It's not a new topic, Milton's Areopagitica, the most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to free expression (Wikipedia), was printed in 1644, more than 350 years ago. Many members of the Porn or Art team grew up in the communist area of Eastern Europe. Being a teenager in a dictatorship taught us how to circumvent the oppressive rules of the establishment: formally follow them, but break the ideas in the background as strongly and as frequently as possible. Provocation is the only weapon against censorship. This is our new inspirator, the basic idea has been extended with a new value: sexy, artistic & provocative.

Provocation is only effective if it can reach a critical mass, a critical mass of people, who understand and support it. That's why the images should be not only sexy, artistic & provocative, but decorative, aesthetic and funny, too. Decorative and funny enough to be published on websites, blogs, forums and... in everyday life on T-shirts, ties, skate-boards etc.

Provocative & sexy artworks

After analyzing the content policy of Zazzle.com, after many brainstorming sessions, and after creating many drafts finally the new images are ready, the result is really satisfying:

• The Answer - a very first reaction
• Bukkake - overprovocation
• BDSM - hardcore is not enough
• Pussy or posse - that is the question
• Fishnet - catch the gold fish