And Yet My School's Spam Filter Is Thrown By CiaLI$ and Thinks Doggie Style Is About Innocuous Pet Grooming

Posted by Alan Childress

This from New Zealand, actually News.com.au:

A WOMAN'S email to the help desk of Telecom New Zealand was rejected by a computer system because her name was Gay and "inappropriate for business-like communication".

Gay Hamilton, from the northern South Island town of Nelson, said while she was actually gay, she was concerned that the country's biggest public company was spending its time and resources on trifling issues, the Herald on Sunday reported.

"If they do have to put content filters on, then maybe they should ensure that it only gets genuinely abusive words," she said.

I am shocked that someone of any name would normally expect a response from a telecom's Help Desk.  Must be a NZ thing.  Anyway, the story is called "Gay's too gay for phone giant."

Hat Tip to the media law blog Freedom to Differ by Peter Black, a law prof at Queensland, who linked the story in his post, "Well, this is just silly."  Elsewhere he reports (from tomorrow, in fact) some interesting (and unsilly) internet and speech issues such as noting, "One of Egypt's most prominent political bloggers has decided to call it a day, citing harassment by security services as his main reason to quit."  And this report from Sydney, echoing our own recent worrying about public presences and bar licensing applications:

A woman denied a teaching degree on the eve of graduation because of a MySpace photo has sued the university.  Millersville University instead granted Stacy Snyder a degree in English last year after learning of the web-published picture of her, which bore the caption Drunken Pirate.