Migrants to IJ, 2007

Scarily enough, I learned (where have I been?!) that there's a strong fundie-backed movement to completely do away with social networking sites, period. And all they need is the right ammunition.

Oh, I've known that for a while. Happens when you're the daughter of two pastors.

I read that article, it made some good points, I didn't like the tone of the article as I read on. So in the end, it's a well-written article, it just didn't sit right with me.

RIP 0vary

*sniff*

Just as a kind of PSA: I looked at the beginning of the second article you link here, and that was enough to make it very clear that the author's understanding of how American law actually works is shaky enough that I would not want to rely on any of his assertions about it. (I say that as a lawyer, for what that may be worth.)

As a simple and obvious example, somewhere near the beginning he's got a bullet point saying that Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition is now "obsolete," because Congress passed new legislation after the decision and because there have been convictions in lower courts under the new law. This is akin to saying that the sun now rises in the West. Neither Congress nor the lower courts can render a decision of the Supreme Court on a point of constitutional law "obsolete."

What Congress can do is to pass legislation intended to avoid the constitutional infirmities of a law that the Court has struck down as unconstitutional. And indeed, Congress did just that with the child porn laws in 2003. But Ashcroft is still good law, and the lower courts are still relying on it. What Congress did was to try to bring the statute into line with the Court's requirements; how far they succeeded is still not entirely clear. (There's a case from the 11th Circuit that the Court granted cert. on this term, striking down the pandering provisions of the new law. That's not the provision of the law that everyone on LJ has been arguing over, but it gives you an idea.)

All of which is to say, this essayist's little bullet point about the Ashcroft case is seriously misleading. I'm sure that's not deliberate; he probably intended to convey something other than the idea that Ashcroft is no longer good law and cannot be relied on. But if so, the mere fact that he could say what he did say without realizing what it meant clearly demonstrates why it's a bad idea to rely on anything he has to say about American law.

Synecdochic works for or used to work for LJ, no? Not saying that some very good points were brought up there, but there is bias that LJ is best for Fandom.

Frankly, I found the "Terrible Secret" article to be incredibly condescending and irritating. While the author may have had some good points, he presented them extremely poorly.

In the end, I think they missed the relevent issues to focus on the fanart/fic and childporn rumor aspect.

It was not an issue of child pornography, but of obscenity, since obsenity was the reason cited for deletion of the two journals, so child porn is irrelevent.

It was not an issue of fanart because they didn't cite copyright violation as the reason for deletion.

The reason was obscenity. There is an obscenity issue which bothers me because that does smack of censorship.

There was also the issue of banning without warning, which bothered me. And an issue of banning a permanent account and then stating that they were not going to return the funds, or the funds of anyone whose account might have been banned. If someone pays you to provide a service and then you refuse to provide it, as a business you have an obligation to return the payment.

Now, whether or not it is wise to call attention to the issue due to the pornography/copyright infringement, that's another matter.

(Oh, and I have nothing in my journal that could even be vaguely considered to be child pornography and my most scandalous work is all orginal writing which, while I wouldn't particularly want my mother reading it, isn't any worse than material that can be found openly on the shelves at Barnes and Noble.)

"The Terrible Secret of LiveJournal" is what prompted me to make this post because I was terribly annoyed by it.

In my case, with the LJ/6A thing, I'm more annoyed by their behavior and possible breach of contract since I've been a Permanent Member over there since 2005.

I was amused to be singled out. *g*

Mark's essay can be boiled down to this: He believes "a lot of fandom material is illegal" because it breaks copyright, obscenity, and child pornography laws. But it doesn't, so the conclusions he draws are worthless.

Six Apart isn't being brave or admirable by ignoring fanfiction. In the U.S., there has never been a case defining whether or not it violates copyright laws. As long as fanfiction is not sold for a profit through traditional publishing outlets, the intellectual property owners [with a few exceptions, such as Anne Rice] ignore it. That has been the status quo for forty years, and there is no indication it is likely to change.

Scarily enough, I learned (where have I been?!) that there's a strong fundie-backed movement to completely do away with social networking sites, period.

This is true. Fundie parents do not want their children to have access to the Internet, where they can learn about opposing beliefs. In an essay I wrote back in June, I mentioned this movement. The enemy of groups like Warriors for Innocence isn't pedophiles, but blogging, period. Pedophile hysteria is how they get their foot in the door.

Mmm... I read both articles, and my reaction basically boils down to:

1. LJ was, and still is, the best place to be if you're in fandom because fandom is still there and it's unrealistic to imagine that the entire 35000+ members of fandom_counts will move to some other journalling site. They'll stay there. Note that I don't actually agree that LJ is the best place for fandom, because I think IJ is better, largely (but not only) because the admin is a whole lot more friendly to our cause than 6A will ever be.

But for the most part: fandom's gonna stay on LJ, or it's gonna be a long time in moving, because not only do a lot of fandom people not care, they stay because their friends are staying, who stay because their friends are staying - you see where I'm going here. And even if people leave and come here, they still read/comment on their friends' LJs.

2. Fanfic, fanart etc is at best borderline legal. I think we all know this, even if we don't particularly care to acknowledge this. If any of the copyright/trademark holders decided to actually take us to court we'd probably be sunk. Not sayin' that 6A should be justified in their behaviour, just that the second article has a point buried under all that tl;dr.

3. I have an aunt who ... well, if she's not fundie, she's damn close to it, and she and her husband didn't let their kids watch Disney movies when they were little because they have magic in them. If fundies ruled the earth, a lot of things would be illegal and not just fandom, so I don't see why that is particularly surprising. It'd probably be illegal to be online at all if they had their way.

4. I also think I'm probably just really jaded if none of this really surprises me..

Reposting comment from your IJ :D
--
For me though, the true problem came not from "We don't want to host this" but from the runaround and double-talk and outright lies and contradictions that are rivaled only by the Dubya administration.

It comes from their repeated lack of clarification, of addressing questions, of saying one thing and doing another, and overall general thoroughly piss-poor handling of the entire debacle.

The whole 'under 18, don't mention it, real or fictional' -- we wouldn't even be able to discuss the ramifications of Joss Whedon's writing in the Buffy season 2 episode "Surprise", where 17-year-old Buffy had on-screen, if not explicit, sex with a 200+ year old vampire.

It comes from their flat-out refusal to adjust their TOS, the outright contradiction of what was said by the CEO himself -- that permanent suspensions without warning would not occur, their declaration that even a link to something else offsite could have you permanently banned without warning, so on and so forth.

It's not about the porn. It's about the clusterfuck 6A turned it into all on their own, by their refusals to just say what they mean. When Xing banned NC-17 fics from FF.net, yes, there was grousing. But by and large, fandom on the whole complied and pulled their stuff, and there was actually a lot support on Xing's right to decide what to host. He didn't pussyfoot around, he didn't suspend people while saying it was still okay to post, he stated his terms, and fandom on the whole complied.

That's my problem.

It would be really nice if you updated the entry itself to reflect what's going on in the comments. V. misleading.

The understanding of American law in that article is shaky at best. In the comments, the OP actually says, "I've not been following the US legislation and case law on child porn carefully (Canada is a higher priority for me)..." Canadian views on copyright law and child pornography and obscenity aren't exactly relevant at the moment, no matter how interesting they might be. (And from all appearances, are significantly stricter than US ones, though my Google-fu and reading comprehension may be weak this early in the morning.)

In regard to the proanorexia/proselfharm flap, those groups are violating the ToS rather more clearly than fandom has been. I know that's why I, personally, am in a tizzy. No comm should be more equal than other comms (particularly when it comes to fictional porn vs hurting yourself in real life).

Also, the guy who wrote that article is quite condescending. If he wanted me to actually pay attention to and care about what he wrote (beyond a base desire to tear apart his arguments), he'd not treat his readers like idiots.

Scarily enough, I learned (where have I been?!) that there's a strong fundie-backed movement to completely do away with social networking sites, period. And all they need is the right ammunition.

I, like a previous poster, live with some of these people (and get to hear Focus on the Family on radio, whooo boy). Our social networking doesn't fit into their world view of what's right. (Also, they don't much care if we're all consenting adults - looking at or reading about naked bits is sinful, guys, even if everyone involved is 18.) Sure, we're good to target, but unless we want to follow Biblical law in our every online doing (and, personally, I think that's just stupid) they'd target us anyway.

'...Scarily enough, I learned (where have I been?!) that there's a strong fundie-backed movement to completely do away with social networking sites, period. And all they need is the right ammunition...' This above all is the reason I am leaving LJ. Anywhere that listens to fundie bullying (and I am really talking about the earlier LJ fracas rather than recent events) doesn't get my money.

But that is not a secret, from time to time there is a reminder that someday things like fanart can be tagged as illegal.

I'm not American, so the legalities are more difficult for me to understand but that is not the reason why I feel uncomfortable as a permanent account holder at LJ.

What upsets me is the way 6A staff has handled the matter. They have showed a great lack of knowledge of the customer-provider protocol. Their responses instead of clarify make things further unclear as many seem personal statements. No wonder why this Rachel person seems a volunteer instead of the head of customer service.

As the TOS is now I would happily leave but I won't get a refund, and the reason is not that they don't want to host objectable material but because they don't speak up front about it. I wish there could be a way to get the refund of my paid account but I guess that now that they have my money they don't care about what I think as a customer.

Just in case someone is interested. His article was also discussed here.

I quoted markf's comment then and I'll quote it again: "Right. And as has been mentioned a number of times in a variety of places, determining obscenity is a subjective matter. Because determining obscenity is so subjective, and because images of minors in sexually explicit content has such a high likelyhood of qualifying as obscene, it was decided that simply not allowing that type of content was the safest route to take"

This is not about what is legal or illegal. It's what about what could be, may be, might be illegal according to obscenity laws and 6A decided that getting rid of it was better than facing potential law suits.