Dennis Cooper Booted from Blogger, Relaunches on WordPress

photo credit: Sergey Zolkin
photo credit: Sergey Zolkin

Nearly two months after Google removed Dennis Cooper’s 14-year-old Blogger site and Gmail account without explanation, the novelist and performance artist has been officially ejected from the platform. According to Cooper, a post he wrote 10 years ago, which he had placed behind an adult content warning due to pornographic material, was flagged by a recent visitor and reported to Google.

“According to Google, around the time my account was disabled, some unknown person came across this ten year-old page, thought one of the images on it constituted child pornography, and reported it to Google who immediately disabled my account,” Cooper said in an update on his Facebook page. He claims the post did not contain any child pornography but Google was unwilling to show him the image in question. After three weeks of discussions and negotiations, Cooper is now in possession of his archive.

“I have the data for the archive of my disabled blog, but it’s not something that can be uploaded into the new blog intact,” Cooper said. “I will need to restore each post by hand, and since there are many thousands of posts, that restoration will happen very gradually over time.” He was also given the data for 10 years of correspondence in his Gmail account, along with his yet unreleased animated GIF novel.

Today Cooper relaunched his blog on WordPress at denniscooperblog.com. The site is currently using the Hemingway theme by Anders Noren and it seems that comments from the previous blog are being included in the import. Posts are being gradually added to the archive.

Self-hosting a site with controversial subject matter doesn’t automatically guarantee Cooper won’t have it taken down again, especially if visitors perceive the content to be illegal. However, should a similar incident happen where his hosting company takes his site offline, Cooper should still be in possession of his content without fear of it being erased. After the experience he had with Google, it would be surprising if he didn’t get his new blog immediately hooked up to a backup service for peace of mind.

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12 responses to “Dennis Cooper Booted from Blogger, Relaunches on WordPress”

  1. Darn, no Denniscooper.blog :) glad Google gave him his data back and his archive, he’s pretty damn lucky.

  2. Jesus. All this because some kid thought he was hosting CP on his website? Since he got his data back, why didn’t he make an argument to Google that it wasn’t CP? Wouldn’t Google have unsuspended him if it were in fact a false report?

  3. If he did in fact have child pornography, even one photo, Google would have to delete that file off their servers.
    If it was CP and Google sent him the file, wouldn’t Google be transmitting/distributing CP?

    I have never seen the photo or Dennis Cooper blog. In fact, I didn’t even know Dennis Cooper existed until that first article on WPTavern.

    However, it can be said that if DC did in fact uploaded CP, wouldn’t the FBI (if DC is in the US), RCMP (if DC is in Canada), and so forth, go to him and arrest him?

    See? Both sides.

  4. 10 years worth of blogging, how frequent did he blog? If he blogged mostly daily for the past 10 years, that’s A LOT of data to download and then upload to his new site.

  5. His blog is just disgusting.

    “…International male slaves for the month of August”

    That’s as far as I could get….

    No wonder Google nuked it.

    • Not sure what exactly his blog is about but I certainly regret opening it. There must be better examples of why bloggers should self-host WordPress.

      PS. People still use Blogger? :P

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