sholio | About the latest LJ kerfluffle...

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About the latest LJ kerfluffle...

I didn't really think I had a whole lot to say about the latest LJ/6 Apart thing, but I keep finding myself commenting on other discussions in more and more detail, so I guess I'll just distill it here.

First off, there's a really fantastic post on the topic here, addressing the real-world political, moral and legal climate in which most of us operate when we're not online, and another good post here which is kind of a response to it.

I do think that LJ/6A made a mistake by deleting journals without giving the users a chance to remove the offending material, or to archive their stuff and delete the journal themselves. I don't think they were necessarily acting improperly or outside their rights as a business, but I really hate it when businesses deal that way with me, and I can see why someone would be upset about that. If I'm one day late with my utility payment and my electric company shuts me off, that'd piss me off. I can't deny that the electric company has every right to do it and (in the above example) I couldn't even deny that I was violating the terms of my agreement with them, but I can still be annoyed and upset that I wasn't given a chance to fix my mistakes first.

I'm seeing fandom doing a whole lot of the former and not so much of the latter. Getting ticked at LJ/6A for being a bit knee-jerky with journal deletions and still not having a good, clear process for appeals ... yeah, I can get behind that. Decrying LJ/6A for not being willing to risk fines, court cases and jail time to defend someone else's underage porn? WTF is wrong with people? And yes, in the case of the latest, I know the author says they're not underage in the picture -- sorry, can't find a link for that at the moment, but try looking through the links at

metafandom because I KNOW I've seen it a few times. And you know what? If they're underage in canon, if they look underage in the picture or at least reasonably could be, I don't think it's at ALL unreasonable for people to assume that they are. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and it's always been a duck, "but it's only dressed up like a duck!" is not a good defense. It's the artist's responsibility to prove that it's not, not the viewer's responsibility to realize that it's not, or the responsibility of those providing the venue to take the heat for the artist's creative decisions. (And by "the artist's responsibility" I don't mean that an artist, or a writer, HAS to conform to society's mores in their work -- of course not. But understanding that your work has real-world consequences and taking responsibility for them -- that's something we all ought to do, always.)

Similarly, even though I'm 31, I don't object when I'm carded at the liquor store. The employees don't want to get in trouble; if my illegal and/or ill-considered actions might hurt someone else, the burden of proof that I'm acting legally and properly is, and should be, on me. Personally, I think that setting the drinking age at 21 when a person gets most of their other adult privileges and responsibilities at 16 or 18 is idiotic -- but even though I think the law is a stupid law, I'm still totally responsible if I buy liquor for underage kids and go to jail for it. The liquor store and its employees should not be held responsible for my actions (which has happened, OFTEN ... selling to minors is a CRIME), and they are perfectly within their rights to do whatever they have to do in order to protect themselves from ME choosing to protest what I believe are unequal and/or unjust drinking laws.

You don't have to believe that something should exist in order to acknowledge that it does exist and can affect you. Do I want to live in a world where the laws and social mores of my country are dictated by the WASP middle class? Of course not. But I do live in that world, and I have to make my decisions based on that.

Whether or not drawings of underage sexual activity are technically illegal, as opposed to photographs which most definitely are -- this keeps getting brought up in various discussions, and IMHO, it's a total straw man. I mean, from a moral and legal standpoint, OF COURSE it matters (and I have my own opinions on it), but as far as a drawing of underage sex getting 6 Apart in trouble ... it doesn't HAVE to be illegal, it only has to LOOK like it is to a cop, judge, soccer mom, Warner Brothers exec, or self-appointed LJ vigilante. And "obscenity" is a muddy, state-by-state mess of contradictory laws that can be used to support damn near any kind of stupid lawsuit.

Being willing to go to jail to defend my rights is admirable (and, frankly, requires a level of moral fortitude that I don't think I have). Expecting someone else to risk their business, their money or their freedom to defend my rights, and insulting them for not being willing to do so -- that, my friends, is complete and total asshattery. Believe me, I understand being upset at being treated shoddily by a large business, I understand and applaud the urge to support free speech ... but what I'm seeing in a lot of these discussions is a sense of (god I hate this phrase, because I've all too often seen it used as a slur against fanfic writers, but in some cases it really does apply) fannish entitlement that is really disturbing to me. LJ/6A hasn't necessarily done a very good job of fairly and consistently enforcing its rules, nor (apparently) of conveying those rules to its users in a clear and understandable way, but you know what -- when it comes to the content we store on their servers, they don't owe us a damn thing. The burden for making sure that our content is legal and conforms to the terms of their TOS falls on us, not them, and they have every right to kick us out if they catch us in the act of doing something that could get them in trouble.

(And while I'm being all ranty, who in their right mind creates a community called

innocence_jihad to defend creators of (allegedly) underage porn who've had their journals deleted? I'm the last person in the world to go all PC on someone's ass, but I'm truly boggled here ... how in the WORLD can a person lose that much perspective?)

Having gotten all THAT off my chest ... even though I'm not planning on leaving LJ (at least not at the moment, and probably not in the future either), I did try LJ Book, a cross-platform backup feature that converts your journal into a PDF. It took about five minutes to convert my whole

friendshipper journal into a cleanly formatted and printable, book-style, 8-Mb PDF. The biggest problem I'm seeing at this point is that it doesn't seem to pick up paragraph breaks in comments -- the actual journal entries are fine, but comments come out as a long undifferentiated block of text; not THAT much of a problem, but for someone like me with a habit of writing long comments, it can make discussions a bit hard to follow. Generally though, it seems to be a nice tool and I like it. (If you select a very narrow range of dates, you could also use it to get your fic formatted quickly and easily into a printable PDF. And if you have the full version of Acrobat, you can create your own custom title pages or illustrations and add them to the existing document ... but that's probably a bit much. *g*)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think what annoys me the most is that LJ representatives first say one thing, and then do something else. I mean, e.g. based on this conversation with an LJ representative, I'd have thought that surely a drawing with Harry who's somewhat ambiguously aged maybe 16, maybe 18 (but really the style was somewhat manga influenced and to my eye in manga many adults look like children and teenagers anyway, hence for me his size, muscles and pubic hair marked him as adult) would fall under the cases with a more moderate action taken, when the LJ guy explained that in cases where it's probably a violation but the poster didn't realize that, they'd do a temporary suspension and give the owner opportunity to remove things. Sure, drawings are always at more risk than text media, and he was talking about stories then, but still.

Yeah, the issue as I see it is more with the way that LJ did it than the fact that they did it at all. But what I'm seeing all over Metafandom (granted, not exactly a hotbed of rational thought) is a lot of outrage about the fact that they did it at all, the worry that now they'll be coming after ALL slash, etc. That's what I was reacting to, above. Honestly, the idea that my journal could be deleted without warning IS concerning, but the fact that it's only happened to a handful of journals out of millions (and most of those for pretty clear and specific reasons) leads me to believe that it's not exactly likely. I've known several people lately who've had catastrophic house fires, and I'm now being extra-careful in lots of little ways to reduce our fire risk, but I think it'd be overreacting to move out into the yard just in case the house burns down.

Well, I try not to visit metafandom, its effect on my zen is kind of like a f_w light... What I've seen through surfing from my f-list is lots of anger about the procedure, feelings of betrayal because LJs reassurances in retrospect come across as placating rather than honest, and worry that 6A (or 6A pressured by someone, and the theories on that seem to range from fundamentalist internet crusaders to fans with a grudge against pornish_pixies) might do a low level attrition campaign against the (in the mainstream view) more "icky" (i.e. potentially image damaging) porn parts of fandom. And I mean, looking at the popular fandoms that is not entirely a baseless worry since many favorite characters are underage at least for part of the canon, and power imbalance combined with sex (like age differences and mentor/student relationships) are a favorite kink. Even if they were "just" aiming to remove all explicit porn between teenagers and adults that would hit more than half of my fandoms hard.

HP is obvious -- also the one with the most chan artwork, so I can understand their worry best, because there's a lot of art out there that is far squickier to mainstream sensibilities than consensual Snape/Harry with an almost adult Harry (examples that come to my mind are examples like art showing double penetration rape of a 13 year old Harry by Snape and Lupin, which was one piece of art I unfortunately still remember vividly, or Harry/Padfoot bestiality sex drawings also set during PoA). But Star Wars has it share of underage fic, Buffy, Smallville and pretty much every teen drama as well, much of comics fandom with kid sidekicks being slashed with their mentors, and the list goes on. So as someone into many mentor/student pairings I can understand the worry.

I can see where the concern is coming from; on the other hand, it's such a tiny microcosm of journals that are affected so far, that the magnitude of concern I'm seeing seems to be highly overblown to me. Of course, my specific kinks and fandoms are not likely to be affected, at least not by this, which I'm sure makes a difference in how I feel about this.

Still, I guess what I keep thinking about is that if 6A is responding to pressure from some group in society, or just from general concerns about looking like they're enabling child porn and the possible effects on them, the appropriate target of anger isn't really 6A -- it's the underlying root causes, the groups bringing pressure, the ways our society deals with types of speech it doesn't like.

The thing is, as someone who's been, if only marginally, involved with the comics industry for most of my adult life, I've seen so much worse -- as far as people being taken to court and even jailed on obscenity charges for ridiculously tiny offenses -- that I'm having trouble mustering a lot of indignation at 6A, aside from annoyance with their sudden and arbitrary (but quite rare) journal deletions. While I certainly believe that everyone should be able to write, draw and post as they please without encountering condemnation or legal ramifications, the world just isn't set up that way. I don't think writers or artists need to feel like they ought to cave to social pressure and write only what's "safe", but on the other hand, you (the writer or artist or publisher or person who provides web space to them) has to ask "Is the risk I'm taking for this actually worth it for what I'm getting back from it?" In my own case, the more I saw of what I stood to lose if I accidentally furnished a comic containing nudity to a minor whose parents would complain, the more I started asking myself, "Does this really have to be in there? Could I tell the same story, get the same emotional impact, if I show this person's body from a different angle or cut out this particular scene?" And, yes, there is a certain cowardice in that, which I'll totally cop to -- but the world is the way it is, and losing my house to a legal case isn't really going to do anything to change that; it's just going to screw me over.

And yes, 6A has acted like idiots when it comes to their own PR and to deleting journals without warning, but the number of journals affected is so tiny, the level of actual wankery so low -- I could see irritation, certainly, but not the up-in-arms response that I seem to be seeing. (On the other hand, you're right about Metafandom being sort of a mini-f_w, which is undoubtedly having a strong effect on how I see the apparent level of outrage. My own friend list has been quite calm. I just would hate to see people getting needlessly worked up over fear of their own journals being deleted, based on the "Sky is falling!" warnings of a few Chicken Littles out there.)

I should note on a (slight) tangent, though, that Warriors for Innocence freak me out. Those people are -- well, not dangerous exactly, in any real-world sense, but so utterly without perspective that they're scary. They're trying to organize a boycott of Amazon.com, for example, because it sells ONE book they object to. Unfortunately, they are playing into fears that a lot of Americans have, which means people will keep listening to them.

Well yes, I've seen comic publisher and artists under much greater pressure from courts too (though here it's usually violence or sex in combination with violence that is seen as objectionable). Actually one great comic publisher was brought to bankruptcy after years of court battles, because the prosecution kept going into revision (here in most cases both sides can appeal a verdict) until the publisher finally was forced to settle, because no amount solidarity events and defense funds from the comic community could make up for their millions in lost sales when police confiscated whole ranges of their comic circulation for many titles with little reason, and raided bookstores besides, so they lost years of work to build a distribution network, because frankly the bookstores didn't care to be subjected to police hassling for a few comics. And the prosecution kept threatening them not just with fines but with jail for endangering minors, iirc, so eventually they settled because they couldn't afford the lawyers anymore when in the third round the final federal court pushed it back to the state level for procedural errors that were made, and they were afraid to not just loose their business (which was sunk beyond repair anyway at that point) but end up jailed.

That there's worse doesn't make the other stuff okay though.

Ugh, that's just awful! "Endangering minors" by providing stuff for them to read ... ugh, just ugh.

That there's worse doesn't make the other stuff okay though.

No, I know. It's not okay; it's just that I feel that I'm seeing a level of outrage specifically directed towards LJ and 6 Apart that's out of proportion to the magnitude of offense. Directing that outrage towards 6A might change their policies in a small way, or get a few journals reinstated -- but the problem will just recur. Directing the same level of outrage and effort towards institutions in RL (lobbying for fairer copyright laws, supporting the ACLU and equivalent international organizations, etc) might not have nearly as much of an effect for fan writers and artists in the short term, but much more of an effect in the long term.

I'm not sure whether "endangering minors" is the exact legal translation to English, but afaik you could be punished with up to a year in prison or fines for making material that is considered unsuitable for children (mostly hard-core porn and certain things with extreme violence, like stuff glorifying war). There's extensive bureaucracy involved with protecting minors, that is there are state-run agencies keeping lists of media, i.e. an index, as to what is not allowed to be distributed freely (as I understand it here it only counts as censorship legally if the state interferes prior to publication, not if they impose restrictions afterwards). However these rulings expire after I think 25 years, so that changes in standards can benefit material if it isn't put on that index again.

Anyway, here you are not allowed to advertise hardcore porn where children could see, even if the ads are not porn, afaik you are not allowed to sell it via mail order, because anything short of handing it over directly to someone providing photo ID with age proof isn't secure enough to ensure minors wouldn't see it (I think selling over the internet against a credit card payment for example doesn't count as sufficient over 18 age protection either), you obviously aren't allowed to display it or to hand it to children, and so on.

So here what's actually counted as porn legally (which isn't everything with explicit sex or full nudity, much of my dad's softcore porn for example was rated with the local equivalent of PG-13, so you don't get nipple-gates or anything, or problems because somewhere a penis can be seen) is under a fair number of restrictions, though for comics often the restrictions on media depicting violence are more relevant as those are treated similarly.

Actually certain extreme kinds of depictions of violence are illegal to distribute to anyone (much like porn with bestiality), not just to minors, like you aren't allowed to publish or distribute any media (including texts) that depict cruel violence against humans or humanlike creatures in a way that either glorifies or trivializes those acts or violate human dignity or something (unless you manage to get your stuff squeezed through on grounds of "artistic freedom" but popular art never seems to have much luck with that), but that complete restriction is somewhat rare, still, e.g. not even an adult is allowed to buy the uncut version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (bizzarely a DVD with a mutilated version that also contains the cut scenes seperately is not illegal). And yeah, it's another variant on these fuzzy laws, the most idiotic phrasing I've seen was part of the justification why some dark metal band called "Eisregen" regularly gets their music banned from performing even to adult audiences-- it was because their texts are (among other things) supposedly "sozialethisch desorientierend" i.e. "socio-ethical disorienting" which doesn't make any more sense in German than it does in English, but they can't sell or perform much of their music to anyone, though I think they are still in court battles.

But there's scores of reasons why comics run into trouble, and actually sometimes my comic store's weekly shipment gets delayed by airport custom officials who can prevent objectionable material from being imported and hold it back, which results in hassles for the whole.

I've been away from fandom these past couple of weeks, so I've only begun to make a dent in all the arguments & discussions. Because of that, I haven't really formed an opinion yet. (Other than it was definitely NOT good customer service to delete a journal without warning or allowing the person to comply by removing any offensive content.) I really just wanted to pop up to say that I just tried backing up my journal with LJarchive: program download page here (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143280&package_id=157384&release_id=403625). So far it works great, and it's formatted exactly as your journal was (paragraph breaks, comment threads, etc.) So that might work better for you. I haven't explored it too much, but so far I really like it.

LJArchive, alas, only works with Windows -- I should have mentioned that I've got a Mac, so my options are a little more limited. But, yeah, I've heard good things about it and I'm glad that you provided the link, for other people's benefit if not so much for mine!

Ah, my mistake. I thought there was a MAC or Linux version listed there. Nevermind then. :)

Well, I don't remember there being one when I'd looked at it awhile back, but things may have changed! Even if there's not, though, I certainly don't mind you listing it -- because it's an option for a lot of other people, if not for me.

First of all - YES. And THANK YOU, for being so very coherent in your arguments! I was actually just sitting down to write something about this when I saw your post, and now - there's really very little left for me to say. And that's a good thing!

Seriously, I don't know what I could add to this, because there's nothing here that I disagree with! But, um. Yeah, people confuse me? (Do people really think that moving to another journalling site is the answer? Really? Because I'd guess any host in the US would be subject to the same pressures that have forced LJ/6A to crack down on people...)

Oh, LJ Book! I've been using it for the past two years - forget about TOS violations and fandom migrations; I'm worried about the technology getting buggy and losing all my stuff! Haven't found a way to make the comments save with paragraph breaks; most annoying.

Thank you! And, yes, I think any journal site is going to go through something similar when it gets big enough. And the cycle of fandom moves on... LJ has been SO huge in fandom for the last couple of years, but it's inevitable that fans will move on eventually, just as they've moved on from mailing lists (yes, I know some still exist, but it's not where the majority of fandom discussion happens) or ff.net (and yes, I know a lot of writers are still there, but most won't admit to it *g*). Personally, I think LJ as a hub of fannish activity has quite a few years left in it, but that all depends on whether people desert in droves to somewhere else as a result of all this hubbub. And wherever they go will have its own brand of wank, and people will leave ... and so it goes.

Certainly people are entitled to get upset over whatever controversy strikes close to home for them ... I think all this would bother me less if I felt like it was genuinely raising people's concern over free speech issues in general, if every fan who thinks, "Wow, they might delete my journal for no reason; that sucks!" then went out and dropped a few bucks in the mail to an organization that supports free speech or defends journalists, for example. But I don't really feel that this is likely to happen.

And LJ Book is pretty nifty! Nice to know it's not just me with the comment thing, though. And I know it really *shouldn't* matter, because all my fic is backed up elsewhere and the rest of it is just me rambling about stuff, but I hate the idea of losing all those comments and reviews and just the whole thing as sort of a record of my last few years in fandom.

Yeah, I don't really see how moving to an LJ clone is going to make a difference - the issues will still be around, unless it's at a journaling site like Journalfen, where there's an age limit and restricted membership, and even then... Laws are still laws.

I don't think it's a good thing that people are being banned and prevented from posting fanart, but it's like you say - to anyone outside of the fan community, something that looks like underage porn probably is underage porn. Which makes people upset, for reasons both rational and irrational, and as long as there are obscenity laws and the fear of paedophiles lurking everywhere on the 'net, ready to pounce... I just don't think the world at large is ready for the kind of "whatever floats your boat" mentality that fandom's accepted. I mean, it's a good thing that fandom can be so tolerant! But. The real world isn't quite ready for those levels of tolerance yet, and that is something to work on.

Again, you already mentioned the fact that there are all these free speech issues that are important on a much larger scale than fandom going on - that's where I feel all this outrage could be directed. I understand not liking what LJ/6A are doing, and I'm not overly fond of their means myself. But the reason they're doing this isn't arbitrary; it isn't because they just randomly feel like attacking fandom. It's because we live in a society with issues, to sum up a long tangent I was going off on, and working on those issues are a far better way to really make a difference than moving away from LJ. Especially since - who knows when 6A or Google or whoever will buy GJ/IJ/wherever people are moving too, and then it'll be the exact same thing all over again. Unless the new hosts get there first, once they start getting angry letters from people threatening to sic the feds on them...

Hm. And now I'm turning my comment into that post I was going to make! Oh, well.

And I know it really *shouldn't* matter, because all my fic is backed up elsewhere and the rest of it is just me rambling about stuff, but I hate the idea of losing all those comments and reviews and just the whole thing as sort of a record of my last few years in fandom.

But that sort of thing does matter! At least to me. I'm a... textual packrat? Ever since I got on-line, I've tried to save all my mails - transferring them every time I switched computers; backing them up compulsively, and today I'm *so* glad I did. Being able to go back and read fannish conversations from ten years ago when I was just starting out - it's... not to sound too self-absorbed, but it's really fascinating. Fanning, and gaming, and just exchanging mails with friends - it's all a part of who I am, and I like being able to go back and check when I first started watching One Piece, or read through old feedback. It's - nostalgia, but also a cool way to put things in perspective, and a good way to remember friends that have drifted apart - and those who are still around. ♥

Then again, I'm seriously thinking about getting a safe-deposit box at a bank just so I can store my dozen or so paper journals somewhere they won't get damaged if something happens to the apartment. Sooo... I might be a bit too much into the whole "saving words" thing!

I'm seriously thinking about getting a safe-deposit box at a bank just so I can store my dozen or so paper journals somewhere they won't get damaged if something happens to the apartment.

Funny you should mention that ... I was just talking to my husband about doing something like that last night. It's been a few years since I've done much writing in longhand, but I would be so utterly devastated if I lost everything that's stored on my computer. I have most of it backed up on disk, but they're all in my home, so if we had a fire or something, it would be gone -- and I know I'd have a very hard time dealing with that.

I love going back through old emails! Mine only go back to about '99 -- I really wish, now, that I had somehow saved the emails from my student account at the university, because there was just so MUCH interesting discussion that I vaguely remember from the mailing lists I was on, and it's all gone, gone forever! But, yeah, and with the way that people move around between fandoms, it's always interesting to be looking at an old discussion and realize, OMG, I had an email exchange with THAT person back THEN and I didn't even remember that's where I met them!

Er. Tangent.

I understand not liking what LJ/6A are doing, and I'm not overly fond of their means myself. But the reason they're doing this isn't arbitrary; it isn't because they just randomly feel like attacking fandom. It's because we live in a society with issues, to sum up a long tangent I was going off on, and working on those issues are a far better way to really make a difference than moving away from LJ.

Yes! That's exactly the feeling. I mean, having one's journal deleted is an inconvenience and an annoyance, and if you lost a lot of stuff that wasn't backed up, it could be pretty hurtful. But if you want to find real free speech horror stories, all you have to do is type keywords into Google such as "journalist murdered". I wish people would take their outrage at 6 Apart and, as you say, turn it to addressing the root causes of this sort of thing. Because if there's a witch hunt going on, it's not LJ that's doing it, and it's not just happening online. 6 Apart could've handled it better, I am sure -- but honestly, if every time they make an admin post it turns into 30 pages of comments along the lines of "OMG 6 APART IS TAKING AWAY MY PORN!", I don't think that's necessarily going to convince them that their customers are rational people who deserve to be treated like adults. *g*

Funny you should mention that ... I was just talking to my husband about doing something like that last night.

Really? And here I thought I was the only one who worried that much about my... I keep coming back to "words", because it's not even things. But the words, and the pictures, too - they're such an important part of my life; losing them would hurt. I wonder how expensive a safety-deposit box is? And how much can fit in one...

I've also had thoughts of printing some of what I've been saving, because if ten years have made floppy drives so obsolete that I can't currently access my oldest backup disks, what's going to happen in ten or twenty or thirty years down the line? I've got a feeling the shiny discs I'm using for backup now might be reduced to just that - useless, shiny discs.

Anyway! Yes. Old discussions = fun! And I'm not the only one who thinks they're worth saving! ^_^

but honestly, if every time they make an admin post it turns into 30 pages of comments along the lines of "OMG 6 APART IS TAKING AWAY MY PORN!", I don't think that's necessarily going to convince them that their customers are rational people who deserve to be treated like adults.

Yes, about that... *facepalm* I don't know. I really don't know what people expect will happen from that kind of outrage in comments on a news post, especially when they're at the "I'm taking my toys and going home!" level. There have been some really good debates with LJ staff, intelligent questions asked and answered, but the general OH NOES MY PORN reactions? I have mentioned boggling, right? Because I am. A lot.

I think Innocence Jihad started after the first round of Strikethrough was caused by a self-appointed watchdog group called Warriors For Innocence managed to get a book club reading Lolita and a couple of rape survivors journalling as part of their therapy suspended for obscene content.

Yeah, it was a play on words of the Innocence Warriors group.

Aha! Well, the name of the group just raised my eyebrows -- not that I found it offensive, exactly, but perhaps hyperbolic to the point of absurdity ... like calling onesself a "victim" because someone cuts in line at the grocery store. It helps to know the history behind the name, though I still find it a bit ... much for the magnitude of the situation.

Oh, yeah, I agree that the name looks a little...extreme. Especially if you don't know the ironic intention dealing with Warriors for Innocence. I wonder if the mods kinda regret the name choice. Particularly "jihad" is a loaded word. But yeah, it was meant to be ironic. And a direct reaction to WfI.

oops, got logged out! This was me.

Exactly!
I don't really like the way LJ has (apparently) handled this - I do wish they'd issued a warning, given a chance to have the offending pictures removed and all - but what they did *was* firmly within their right, for all the reasons you gave. I also don't understand fandom's insistence that LJ make a public statement over the removal of *two* journals (though a clear TOS and explanation of what is and isn't okay and the process of dealing with those items wouldn't hurt).

(also, hee :) on your PC comment. And very much point. *sigh* people)

And I really do need to back up my LJs....been meaning to for months.

Yeah, exactly ... I mean, LJ's response *wasn't* the best, but I think the level of outrage I've been seeing is inappropriate to the situation -- and directed at the wrong target. Get mad at society for being stupid about sex, get mad at the government for overreacting to the cry of "Save our children!" ... do this before you get mad at LJ/6A for acting as many of us might have done when caught between a rock and a hard place.

Very well said.

Like you, I don't agree with how LJ/6A did what they did, but I do agree they were completely with in their rights to do so. I think that some in fandom forget that LJ/6A is a business. They doing this to make money - not to protect freedom of speech or as a place where artists can push the boundaries.

Also, I wonder if some in fandom realize the same thing is happening outside of fandom. This not about attacking fandom - this more about people being worried about anything that even hints at kiddie-porn. Is the fear justified? I tend to think not - but then people are not exactly rational when it comes a topic like that. No one wants to be seen to support such people. It just so happens that a lot of innocent people are getting caught in what is a very widely cast net.

Just before the first Strikethrough I read an article in a photography magazine that was talking about this very same idea. Parents (or grandparents) getting in trouble for pictures of their kids that someone felt was to close to child-porn. Police have talked to photo labs to alert the cops if the staff of said labs find the content questionable. I would not be surprised if the same could be said for photo websites. Given all that I was not surprised by everything that has happened.

I think the only way to have complete freedom is to pony up the money and put your stuff on a server that you in part in pay for. And maybe to have it in a country where there are few if any laws regarding internet content. As long as people use 6A servers we have to play by their rules - no matter how stupid we may think they are.

Yeah, exactly, to all of this. It's not happening in a vacuum; there is a very disturbing, to me, climate of "protect the children at all costs!" becoming ever more rampant. I would never want to be a teacher these days, due to crazy stuff like the Julie Amero case (http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/434/), and there are times when I honestly wonder if the risks (legal, political, social) that I'd open myself up to by becoming a parent are worth it. I know that might sound kind of stupid or paranoid, but things you mentioned, with parents getting arrested for developing totally innocent nude pictures of their children (and I have heard of insanity like that happening) ... it's not the only example of that sort of thing by a long shot, and it just makes me wonder whatever happened to common sense and moderation. Not that I think it's a bad thing to want to protect children, of course (and how sad is it that I feel compelled to add that caveat?) but not when a teeny tiny bit of additional protection brings some pretty significant detrimental effects for the society as a whole.

Exactly.

There really is a great deal of fear out there these days. I don't know if things are as bad as some make it out to be. If thing really are worse then they were in the past or if it is thanks to 24 hour news coverage we just know more about the bad things that happen.

One of the things in the article I mentioned is that part of the problem is that most normally functioning think like normal functioning adults. Most of us are not at all sexual interested in a two year old, a ten year-old or whatever. But to someone who spends their lives trying to catch the small percentage of people who are sexual interested in children they can see what will appeal such people. The question - not just for fandom but for the general online community is how do we go? Should we look at everything through the eyes of perverts and/or a group of people with a mental illness?

I am not sure what is scarier - the monsters or the things we do to try and protect ourselves from the monsters?

I read a book some time ago, when I was in college, on the psychology of serial killers, written by a police psychologist who specializes in catching them. I don't remember much of the book at all, but one thing that stuck in my head is that he (or possibly she) says that there is NOTHING, short of locking yourself in the house and never going out again, that you can do to protect yourself 100% from a serial killer or rapist. I mean, obviously there are common-sense precautions like locking doors, but the answer to the question of "How can I make sure that I don't become the victim of a serial killer?" is -- you can't. If you fit the profile of what the person is looking for, and you catch their eye, then they'll do whatever they have to do to fulfill their fixation.

On the surface, this is scary. But the actual number of people killed by serial killers is incredibly small -- and for "serial killer" one might reasonably substitute "terrorist" or "earthquake" or "tornado" or "serial rapist and killer of children" or anything similar. You can make the risk less, but there is no reasonable way to make the risk drop to nothing. And there is an entire continuum of precautions that can be taken, ranging from, on the one end of the spectrum, absolutely common-sense things like not walking alone in a bad neighborhood at night if you can help it, and, at the other end, ridiculous overreactions like moving to a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere in the middle, there's a large gray area where you can do a lot of little things that decrease your risk a little bit, but also reduce your freedom or other people's freedom almost as much.

I think we, as a society, are approaching this from the viewpoint of making the risk drop to nothing. But you can't. Of course, one victim is too many if the victim is your own loved one -- but you can't create a world in which there aren't any victims at all without making it a world that's completely intolerable to live in. And rather than worrying about becoming a victim and taking increasingly unreasonable precautions to protect yourself and your kids and everyone else's kids, I think it would be far healthier for us to relax, accept the small risk of being a victim, and take what reasonable precautions we can while still allowing ourselves and others as much freedom as possible.

And by "the artist's responsibility" I don't mean that an artist, or a writer, HAS to conform to society's mores in their work -- of course not. But understanding that your work has real-world consequences and taking responsibility for them -- that's something we all ought to do, always.

Which neatly brings us back to writer responsibility, something which, when people get frothy at the mouth over the concept has always, always boggled me, because: Heck, yes. If we put it out there, it will be read and it will have consequences, so a little thinking about what we post would be smart. Thinking before we speak would, too. But heavens knows how often I forget that, myself.

But, seriously: It would take very little time to give a little bit of thought before hitting post. Those who do it: Great. I seriously applaud you. Those who don't, because they have "the right of free speech / artistic freedom / freedom of the written word": Stop it with the entitlement and start thinking.

And, sorry, about the pictures, but: yeah. If it was hard to determine whether or not this was a drawing of an underage person, then it's always safer to err on the side of caution. Has LJ handled things badly? Yes. Was reacting to the thing in general wrong? Heck, no.

Thanks for adding another word of reason.

Writer responsibility is a dirty word in fandom circles, isn't it? But it just seems like common sense to me. Of course there are consequences for everything you write (or draw) and put out there. And you can consciously think about it, and accept the possibility and do it anyway, or maybe you decide after-the-fact that it's not worth it and pull it down ... but I sometimes feel like an awful lot of creative people in fandom keep trying to insist that their work exists in a social, political, legal and moral vacuum. Which is just absurd. Everything you put out there is going to touch other people, in a positive or negative way. I don't think writers or artists should just sit on their work and keep it out of the public eye for fear of offending people -- in fact, it's likely that just about anything worth reading will provoke a negative reaction in SOMEONE -- but it's important to think about it enough beforehand to understand what the possible reactions are likely to be, and where your work fits in the broader social climate: if it's likely to be seen as offensive by a lot of people, if it's likely to get you or someone else in trouble. And maybe you decide it's worth it, and you go ahead and post it anyway ... but it is important to put in that thought beforehand. I really, strongly believe that.

... and thanks.

I think what concerns me besides them deleting the LJ with the "offending" material without warning or previous requests to please remove the material, it's that they deleted ALL their LJs regardless of content on them. As a community moderator this concerns me greatly.

Basically, I'm gradually moving everything over to the other journal sites because I don't want to lose all my posts for the last 5 years because someone hits the abuse button because I'm recommending or posting fics they don't approve of.

I'm also going to have to find another moderator for my one community I run solo, hopefully I can find one that has nothing "offensive" in their LJs.

At the moment Gen fiction writers are safe. but as someone that does occasionally write dark and violent fiction from time to time, I feel like I'm racing against this imaginary clock and I never used to feel like this on LJ.

And yes, I do like my porn too... :) I just don't like being equated with child abusers because I do read fics with 17 year olds having sex. Hell I think I started reading stories like that picking romance novels up off my mom's bookshelves.

I'm giving a lot more thought to supporting ACLU more than ever before because I don't see this problem with LJ going away, it's just going to move to the next place fandom goes to. the laws need to change from the top down. Because while we think LJ is doing well financially speaking, fighting legal battles is very expensive.

And basically, in a country where a substitute teacher could face up to 40 years in jail because of pornographic pop-ups...I can't say I blame the company for trying to cover their bases. Their methods just totally suck.

I'm giving a lot more thought to supporting ACLU more than ever before because I don't see this problem with LJ going away, it's just going to move to the next place fandom goes to. the laws need to change from the top down.

EXACTLY! That's it in a nutshell, the gist of my gripe with all the venom being directed at Six Apart, because it's really not them, it's the social and legal framework in which they exist, and where all that negative energy SHOULD be directed is at changing those institutions in positive ways. Because yes, the problem is just going to follow to a new journaling site and the same story will play out again.

If every person who's upset or worried or angry at LJ/6A right now were to drop a few bucks in the mail to the ACLU (or whatever their local equivalent), if every one of them were to write a polite but firm letter to their local government representative voicing their opposition to DCMA-type legislation, if every one of them were to start organizing grass-roots support in their hometown for fairer copyright laws -- then things really might change. If we're scared and worried and angry over what's happening on LJ, then we (fandom) ought to USE that energy to mobilize RL support for free speech. Not that people shouldn't (politely) let 6A know how they feel about the journal deletions, because obviously their tactics and policies for dealing with TOS violations DO need some modification, but it seems to me that there's a whole lot of energy being squandered here in ways that are very unlikely to get a positive response.

And I still don't feel like LJ is on a slash hunt. I'm just not seeing that. From my perspective it appears that the vast majority of slash, as well as dark and violent gen, is perfectly safe -- or more accurately (and I cannot emphasize this enough) as safe on LJ as it is anywhere online. I've always been careful about what I put on my journals and my personal webspace, because cyberspace isn't a fannish utopia; the outside world is looking in, and I've always felt as if I needed to consider that in the things I post online as well as the things I've published in real life. This doesn't necessarily mean that I go around censoring myself; I've had a piece published in a porn anthology, for example, under my real name. But the latest stuff with journal deletions isn't making me feel any less secure on LJ than I ever have, because this stuff happens everywhere, and it's always been happening. In order to carve out a safe space for ourselves online and have it stay safe, the real change is going to have to happen in RL.

For now I'm just taking some precautions just in case. But ultimately, the real world laws will continue to affect what happens online as long as people stand idly by and do nothing.

Mostly, I'm just upset about the way LJ handled this whole situation, not them protecting their site from legal action, that I understand with and am okay with. The main reason I'm getting my stuff moved over to the other journaling sites is hopefully for better customer service. I don't like the lack of communication and their arbitrary changing the TOS without letting members know.

the hard part is leaving though...however I got by without LJ for years I still have my websites and etc...It's just I got comfortable here and felt safe and since 6Apart bought the LJ they've been rocking the boat a lot and I like stability.

At some point I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is and that's not easy.

I do respect that -- I've left businesses because of lousy customer service (Discover Card comes to mind here) and, above all, I certainly think that nobody should feel compelled to stay in a place that makes them uncomfortable.

Someone in one of the Metafandom'd discussions suggested that the very best solution would be some kind of journal site or reader that can pull in content from ANY journal site. Personally, I really like that idea, and we've basically got the technology; we just don't have a good one. RSS feeds are the closest thing, but I have yet to see an RSS reader I like, and you've still got issues with locked content and commenting and all those things that work so smoothly when everyone has an account on the same service. But honestly, I would LOVE to see something like that get developed and go into widespread use, because then it wouldn't matter where people were journaling; everyone could still interact.

that does sound like a good idea. :) Though the problem with rss feeds is that it looks like you need rss reader programs. at least that is my impression.

Yeah, you do need a reader. I'm pretty clueless about RSS readers; the ones I've seen looked and functioned kind of like newsgroup readers back in the day, but I'm not sure if that's really what I'd want. Ideally I'd want something that integrates smoothly with a browser and gives a browser-like viewing experience, without having to learn a whole new interface. And there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't have something like that, I wouldn't think.

i could get behind that because there are some feeds outside of fandom I'm interested in keeping track of as well.

LOL late response!

I dunno... The whole dramatic issue has gotten sort of stale and tiresome to me. LJ does stupid shit in a stupid way; fans squall stupid shit, nothing productive really gets done. I wouldn't have a problem with things if, you know, I thought that these clean-ups prevented immoral acts from actually occurring... and underage pr0n is really illegal in the US, so hey, follow the law, sure, whatever.

LJ could've handled things so much better though, instead of alienating a bunch of fans and deleting... well, maybe "innocent" isn't exactly the word, but non-guilty journals.

Then things like this (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/240498.html?thread=11868274)
come up, and I really don't know what to think. The whole dramalama is just getting stale.

The whole dramalama is just getting stale.

That's kinda where I am. I think it's gotten to the point where I'm taking the side against the dramallama people just because they are SO loud and SO insulting that I'm tired of listening to them. It'd be different if LJ was on a wholesale crusade against "teh pr0n", but they're not. Deleting journals without notice (rather than warning people and letting them remove content instead) really does suck a LOT ... but they've done to to exactly TWO people out of millions, which is hardly even enough to establish a pattern. For all we know, it could've been some overzealous new LJ technician going overboard. I'd certainly hate to have it happen to me, and I can see people being upset over that, but nowhere NEAR as upset as they've become.

I mean, I think the thread you linked to says a lot more about the "We hate LJ and LJ can do no right" mentality of LJ users than practically anything else I've seen so far -- because EFF and Creative Commons are two of the big names in online free speech and copyright-reform advocacy. At the beginning of this whole thing, I remember seeing a lot of bloggers recommending that people donate to the EFF as a way of helping out this issue in real life. But if LJ says it, it's wrong? And if LJ has real-world ties to these organizations, doesn't that just mean that they're at least TRYING to commit themselves to furthering the cause of free speech in the real world? Encouraging people to donate to a NONPROFIT organization doesn't line the pockets of the people in charge of it (unless the organization is corrupt to begin with, of course). It just means that more money goes to the cause it supports. Once again, LJ screwed up on the PR, because they really should have mentioned their ties to these organizations up front -- but if they HAD, there's no doubt in my mind that LJers would have come out of the woodwork castigating them for promoting their pet causes, just like happened anyway.

It's gotten to the point where there's not a move LJ can make without fans yelling at them for it. And while it's true that their PR bungling has helped get them to this point, I don't think the LJ fanbase is being reasonable, either.

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About the latest LJ kerfluffle...

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