Yikes, I just got done reading Wired’s Worst Tech Moments 2005 and man, 2005 had some UGLY ones. They’ve listed a bunch, but I’ll limit this post to my personal picks.

Commerce Department Blocks .xxx Domain:
In a move that would help isolate porn on the net and even help make it easier for parents to block content from unsuspecting children by adding a .xxx top level domain to the Internet, a Christian group called the Family Research Council said no. They felt that a top level domain dedicated to porn sites would somehow magically double the number of porn sites on the net.

Prompted by a flood of mail from the Republican base, Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the U.S. Commerce Department, drafted a letter to ICANN chairman Vint Cerf asking for the new domain to be delayed. It was; and in that moment any illusion that the internet’s critical domain-name system was immune from U.S. political whims evaporated.

There you have it, Republicans once again overlook their own philosophy of small government in favor of ideology.

PayPal Blocks Katrina Aid:
You can’t get very far without personaly meeting someone who’s been screwed by PayPal (although, I must admit, I’ve been pretty lucky with them). However, I don’t think anyone was ready for what they did to a website earlier this year.

…the service hit a new low in 2005 when it froze an account created by the proprietor of the popular Something Awful website to gather donations for Hurricane Katrina victims. PayPal delayed the transfer of over $25,000 to the American Red Cross. What did they think? The Red Cross was trying to scam them? We don’t know — the eBay-owned service declined to explain themselves at the time, citing “privacy concerns.”

I think what they meant to cite was “we don’t want everyone to know we’re idiots concerns.”

Apple Attacks Bloggers:
Even the coolest company in the world has its faults as Steve Jobs proved when he sued “the Mac enthusiast site Think Secret for scooping Apple on some product announcements.”

In a pitched court battle, Apple argued that bloggers aren’t journalists, and therefore don’t have a right to protect anonymous tipsters. The county judge hearing the latter case went further and said even mainstream reporters can’t get away with revealing corporate secrets — a decision that’s now under appeal.

Gee wiz. I expect a company like Microsoft, Time Warner, or any of the big media conglomerates to say something stupid like “bloggers aren’t journalists,” but to hear that kind of thing come from Apple really bothers me. Bloggers are more journalists sometimes than paid journalists, as we’ve seen time after time after time.

Accidently deleting the first posts on the newly launched TM:
This one is my own personal worst tech moment of 2005. I thought it a fitting addition to this post to mention that in one of my more retarded moments, I accidently deleted the “welcome back” post on Thought Mechanics. I’m a boob.