[Text quoted below is excerpted from an imperious email issued by Helium.com to its writers outside of the United States. Helium.com is the product of an Internet publishing company whose trademark is Helium™. Parenthetical comments are provided by a former Helium Head whose trademark is HE™]

“As you may be aware, Helium recently changed its policy about accepting contributions from every country around the world. Helium.com instituted this policy as a result of careful consideration of its members and its publishing partners.”

[Every Helium.com participant was not aware of this new policy until frustrated members posted it in blogs. The email was originally sent to participants in foreign countries where English is not the native language, although English speakers in those countries may speak English better than many Brits, Americans, Canadians, et cetera. We suppose they will have to move to English speaking countries if they want to contribute to the enterprise, or at least set up virtual addresses in those countries. However that might be, Helium.com did not ask its members to consider whether or not English speakers from foreign countries where English is not the native language should be discriminated against. Its policies are simply “instituted” i.e. dictated or imperiously handed down. Helium.com is not a writers’ community, cooperative, or “open” WEB2.0 social network as its administrators occasionally imply. Quite to the contrary: even constructive criticism is routinely deleted from its site. There was even less consideration of the will of its members in reaching this dictatorial decision on linguistics than there is consideration paid for content pursuant to Helium’s perpetually changing, non-negotiable, “take it or leave it”, invalid adhesion contract. The great majority of writers receive no consideration whatsoever for their “contributions” because, regardless of the quality of their work, they never reach the $25 payout threshold. The fact of the matter is that Helium Exchange Inc is a Delaware corporation, registered to do business in the State of Massachusetts, whose sole interest is produce a profit for its owners. Its ability to do so is naturally based on its financial resources, its business plan and organization structure, and the abilities of its officers, directors and employees. It is obviously wasting its financial resources on a business plan quite similar to the plans of many other Internet publishing companies that have dismally failed their investors and the writing community because of their closed, hierarchical structure and lack of consideration for and underutilization of the intellectual capital they believe they can inconsiderately exploit for content.]

“Since our goal is to become the top-quality content site on the web, we realize that, as a US-based company, we cannot accept writers from countries where English is not the primary language. It has put those writers at a disadvantage in rating and getting the most from writing on Helium. To prevent frustrations from all writers and to limit staff time spent trying to accommodate non-English-speaking writers, we have decided to stop accepting submissions from locations that may have a negative impact on the quality of our site.”

[English is not the official language of the United States, and Spanish is rapidly becoming its main competitor as the first or primary language of many Americans. In some regions, such as in South Florida, Spanish is the primary language of the majority of residents; but this does not mean that Spanish speakers speak no English or broken English at best – incidentally, popular novels and nonfiction accounts have been written in broken English. In fact, many Spanish speakers are fluent in both languages, and they may have to be fluent in both languages to be employable in a bilingual culture. Likewise, there are many residents of foreign countries whose primary language is English although non-English may be the lingua franca of that country – of course English is often the common language used as a medium of communication where several languages are spoken. Helium’s new policy definitely discriminates against writers based on their native language, country of origin, and place of residence, and effectively eliminates many fine writers of English. It cannot be said that the policy was designed for the convenience of the writing community, so that “bad English” could be gotten rid of and writers could more easily rate each others work according to the incestuous rating system in place, for no vote was taken. Helium™ advertises itself as the “face of the publishing revolution” where “great writing rises to the top,” and is “the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry.” It was touted in a March 1, 2007 New York Times podcast as a budding organizer of “citizen journalism,” “separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion out there.” To that end it relies on the magic of “Web2.0 tools,” which turn out to be, when carefully examined, an incestuous writer-rating and -ranking system employing a traditional scalar consensual method that has little scientific merit except to create a “buzz” and provide a great deal of user-generated “content,” the overwhelming bulk of which is unpaid for – only participating writers are allowed to rate contributions to topics the corporate administrators and their minions believe will be of interest to real publishers, who are expected, in turn, to buy some of the content on the cheap, saving them the cost of hiring professional writers; a pittance of the fees paid, after Helium’s cut, will be remitted to the few lucky writers who make the grade by furiously rating other writers when submitting hundreds of articles. Eliminating bad English certainly will not change the fact that its rating system is virtually useless in terms of winnowing out quality writing, or, for that matter, the sort of writing that readers – who are not allowed to rate at Helium – may want to read.]

“Because you cannot access Helium, or will soon be blocked from access, we feel it is only fair to remove your content from the site. Full rights to the work revert to you. We recognize that the version of your work that exists on Helium may be your only copy, so we will not begin removing content for four weeks (in mid-July). (For an easy way to copy multi-page articles, click “Print article” in the Article Tools tab on your article page, then copy and paste that version to your computer.) If you have earned over the $25 minimum payout, we will be crediting your Paypal account.”

[Helium censors routinely delete articles posted by writers because they feel those articles are not on the salable topics preconceived by staff, or because the article is considered too short or long, or politically incorrect if not otherwise offensive, and so on. The arbitrary and often ridiculous character of its censorship behavior is a cause of some amusement, annoyance, and discouragement among its writers. The writer will discover that, although his article is deleted from public view, it still remains on the server as a Helium “property” file. But if the writer wants to delete her own article, she discovers she cannot do so, nor can she have her account closed down and her articles removed from public view, although she has not actually received a red cent for her work. If she feels that she has associated with a bad company, she cannot withdraw her work and disassociate from the site. She is referred to an adhesion agreement, which can be changed any time, at the will of the corporation, a clickable “agreement” that supposedly commits her posted work to the site forever, by way of a perpetual license. And if she does not maintain activity at the site, she may never be paid anything for the work she has posted. When she claims that she thought the staff had discretion to delete postings for her, or claims that she did not read the User Agreement every time she posted to make sure she understood and recorded every change in that “agreement”, and when she points out that she is able to remove her work at the half-dozen other sites where she posts articles, she is informed that no exceptions are made, that no work may be deleted at the author’s request, and that this policy is a norm for the industry. In other words, Helium can delete work for any reason whatsoever, but the providers of that work can never do so. Helium’s arbitrary deletion policy and its unconscionable adhesion contract has alienated many writers, who are spreading the word: “Stay away from Helium. It is a mediocre company run by mean people.” If you wish to be a Helium Head and believe that your work has value worth enduring, be sure to back up copies of your articles somewhere else in the “computing cloud” as well as on CDs. Also print out a copy with good ink on good paper for long term preservation. Many Internet publishing sites have failed; Helium.com will probably fail in a year or two unless it changes its way; the Internet itself is not an entirely safe place to store material; CDs will become obsolete and may be unreadable in the distant future.]]

“Readers from around the globe are welcome to enjoy Helium's articles. In the future, we hope to be able to offer a full experience of Helium that works well for everyone. Thank you for your understanding, Team Helium.”

[The conclusion penned by Helium’s PR writer is utterly absurd and hypocritical in the context of what Helium has previously stated.]