InsaneJournal Announcements

Potential Move to AWS

InsaneJournal Announcements

Potential Move to AWS

Previous Entry Add to Memories Tell a Friend Next Entry
I'm reading through the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. I don't think anything there precludes hosting InsaneJournal there. I feel that our existing Terms of Service falls in line with this. I'd love to have an open discussion about this, so please comment with concerns. Please keep all conversations civil.


No Illegal, Harmful, or Offensive Use or Content

* You may not use, or encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to use, the Services or AWS Site for any illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive use, or to transmit, store, display, distribute or otherwise make available content that is illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive. Prohibited activities or content include:

* Illegal, Harmful or Fraudulent Activities. Any activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation, including disseminating, promoting or facilitating child pornography, offering or disseminating fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions, make-money-fast schemes, ponzi and pyramid schemes, phishing, or pharming.

* Infringing Content. Content that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others.

* Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts.

* Harmful Content. Content or other computer technology that may damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept, or expropriate any system, program, or data, including viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, or cancelbots.
  • The idea makes me extremely uneasy, to be honest. I prefer the general peace of mind of living on a privately-owned server, here. I know that you, as the owner of the site, know the line between fiction and reality and support our rights as roleplayers to explore things which could easily be seen as "offensive" in the real world because it's just fiction. Larger companies and general society as a whole make me uneasy with that, especially since the term "offensive" is such a buzzword and not even really defined by those Terms and Conditions. It makes me uncomfortable, honestly, not just for fear of losing my stuff but for fear of some kind of legal ramifications.

    Far too often, such as back in the day with Livejournal strikethrough and boldthrough, larger companies lose sight of that line between reality and fiction. People were persecuted, run off, and had their content deleted without any chance to back it up back then because of fictional acts being portrayed in fanworks. Plenty of people explore non-con, obscenity, abuse, 'objectionable' content, etc. through roleplaying - some as a means of storytelling and some as a means of coping with things they've experienced in their own lives.

    Also, what exactly constitutes something objectionable? It doesn't specify, and that's disconcerting. In fact, as an example, I happen to live in a state where the fact that I write queer characters could be considered "objectionable." In other parts of the country, portraying the villain character who resembles the people I deal with on a daily basis might be considered "objectionable" when all I'm attempting to do is work through my own issues as someone living in a bigoted area. Also, what if someone's writing a relationship between fictional teenagers - such as tends to happen in games based on, say, Riverdale or Harry Potter? Some people don't understand the difference between that and CP.

    Beyond that, it makes me uneasy as an icon maker, since technically what I'm doing is making and distributing smaller versions of images which don't belong to me. I'd hate to lose the ability to share what I make just because the cloud server sees that as copyright infringement. Even moreso, I'd hate to end up on the radar of some movie company or whatever and have my entire life destroyed by legal issues over simple 100*100 images. Would that likely happen? Probably not. Would you potentially have to force iconmakers off the site? That I worry could happen. I have anxiety issues, though, so I'm not sure where the line between plausible consequence and implausible is; the lack of actual definition in those Terms and Conditions, however, makes it seem like literally anything they decide on a whim to disallow can get IJ kicked off their service.

    But finally, what I find the most unnerving is this bit: "Any activities that [...] may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation." I can imagine the content of most roleplaying games, fanfics, etc. would be considered harmful to the reputation of any company that doesn't solely specialize in hosting specifically these kinds of things like IJ does. There are also people who (imo, very wrongly) believe that fiction can be harmful to others if it contains certain topics, even with proper trigger warnings. What happens to us if the people at AWS agree with that standpoint?

    I don't know. I just worry about what it might mean for IJ. I really don't mind a little downtime here and there in exchange for the security of knowing this is a safe place to explore my writing, share icons, and roleplay without fear of the same thing happening to IJ which recently happened to tumblr.
    • Well, that came out five times larger than I expected. Sorry for the tl;dr.
Powered by InsaneJournal