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Jeremy Shoemaker reports that he was blackmailed into paying for staying in the DMOZ.org open directory (which is usually free to be in):

A while back I got a email from a guy claiming to be a DMOZ editor saying that I had to pay him $5,000.00 or he would have my site: shoemoney.com removed from the dmoz.

I thought nothing of it.... then today I got a email from him saying it was removed and I might want to rethink not paying him. I thought I would check just for grins.

It was removed... WOW.

(Jeremy below his post links to a disclaimer stating that you “should assume everything written on this blog is a lie;” however, that’s just Jeremy’s disclaimer below every post.)

Google, as you may know, is using the Open Directory as data source for their (mostly deserted, but still live) Google Directory. Now, this incident might be a single case, or point to corruption within the Open Directory Project. There’s even a small chance that someone is trying to ruin the DMOZ image (because it’s kind of stupid to blackmail a blogger, because many of them will do what’s natural, and blog about the incident). In any case, I wonder if we’ll see the day when Google simply takes their Directory offline...

[Thanks Pokemo!]

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