At least two pages, and one account managed by Addicting Info creator and publisher Matthew Desmond have been closed down by Facebook.

It appears that the main Addicting Info Facebook page is still up, here. Facebook deleted a page called "Boycott Rush Limbaugh's Sponsors", which had received 18,000 LIKE's, and another page, "Americans Against Mitt Romney". The Boycott Rush Limbaugh's Sponsors page, Desmond reports, was the first to be removed.

Desmond appealed the deletions to Facebook; his appeal was rejected. He reports that his email contact at Facebook had the address ip@facebook.com. "IP" appears to refer to Intellectual Property, suggesting that someone complained to Facebook about use of content that we (and possibly the courts) might consider fair use. And Desmond has confirmed to me in an email that the deletions were, according to Facebook, "for posting multiple images which violate copyright laws."

Here is Matthew Desmond's account of the censorship.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a simple mechanism by which someone can claim the copyright on content, and then coerce (at least temporary) removal of that content by third party web entities, such as Facebook.

Since the first Facebook page deleted was reported to be the anti-Rush Limbaugh page, that may be a clue to who the complaining party may have been; it seems possible that Rush Limbaugh is behind the attack on Addicting Info because it owned the "Boycott Limbaugh" page. As far as I know as I type this, there is no corroborating information to confirm this speculation.

However, Daily Kos readers may recall that Limbaugh initiated a similar intellectual property dispute related to Youtube. Here is that video, once again available at Youtube, perhaps as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation getting involved:

http://youtu.be/...

While Youtube entertained the possibility of a copyright infringement (which they eventually backed away from), they confined themselves to temporarily replacing one video with a placeholder. In deleting pages and at least one account, this action by Facebook has gone far beyond that action by Youtube.

I have also spot-checked a dozen other anti-Rush pages on Facebook, and all are still available, so there's no indication that the attack is a more general onslaught against Rush Limbaugh related pages at this time.

Facebook prefers not to hear from Facebook users, so there are elaborate menus that a user must go through in the HELP system before finally obtaining an email address to report a problem. A search from outside of Facebook gives us a page with some contact information, here: http://www.computerhope.com/...

Facebook's main email address is: info@facebook.com

But guess what? That address now simply sends you a reply with links to more menus. I haven't tried the phone number on the page of contacts.

The Facebook email addresses that are offered in the article by Matthew Desmond are ip+25pb8y5.aeasrrxmkyufy@support.facebook.com and ip@facebook.com. An email to these prompts the following reply:



Hi, The Facebook Team received a report from you. Please note that this channel is only for reports of alleged infringements or violations of your legal rights, such as copyright or trademark. If you filed that type of report, no further action is necessary. However, if you contacted us through this channel about another matter, you might not receive a response. If you're not confident that your issue concerns intellectual property rights, please consult the Intellectual Property section of our Help Center for additional information...

...followed by more menu options.

I plan to update this diary as more information becomes available.