liz_marcs | Yup, LJ really did tell us to drop dead...

Current Mood: frustrated and furious

Yup, LJ really did tell us to drop dead...

xanphibian and

bubble_blunder have both found this gem in this

dw_news thread:

Source: http://news.livejournal.com/102095.html?thread=54713039#t54713039

Dear LiveJournal user

stormcloude ,

The comment you are referring to is correct; the content does not meet the legal definition of child pornography. As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, non-photographic content involving minors in sexual situations which does not contain serious artistic or literary merit is likely in violation of Federal obscenity laws, and is content LiveJournal has chosen not to host.

Additionally, the Terms of Service (http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml) does not include any statement indicating that users will be warned prior to alternate actions. Specifically, section XVI Member Conduct, at the bottom, explicitly states "If LiveJournal determines, in its sole and absolute discretion, that any user is in violation of the TOS, LiveJournal retains the right to terminate such user's account at any time without prior notice." While LiveJournal does not do so in the instances of many violations of the Terms of Service, the policy adopted for this particular violation is to terminate without warning. You can find information on other policies at http://ww.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml.

The standard for artistic merit is not whether a work simply has technical merit; it is whether there is serious artistic value that offsets the sexual nature of the content. A group consisting of members of LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff reviewed the content that was reported to us. This group decides whether material potentially in violation of this policy warrants consideration for serious artistic value. In this case, they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors.

Regards,
Eric
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team

The bolded bits above are mine.

This is why I was pissed about the complete lack of clarity that LJ kept wafting at its users just before the perm account sale. This is why I said people should keep their wallets shut until we got that clarification on what those nonsense words actually meant.

Look, I have no problem with LJ deciding they don't want to host some content but are perfectly okay with others.

My issue is that LJ has been blowing smoke up its user bases ass for two months about what is and is not acceptable content. They have not been clear (at all) about what will get you permanently banned from LJ with no warning whatsoever and what will get you a mere order to remove a single post. It appears that there will be no clear rules on this forthcoming. Oh, no. We have to learn how to read minds to figure it out.

Looks like all those vague statements (the ones I was screaming about last month) have come back to bit us all in the ass and all those nice little assurances that we got in comments on the last policy "clarification" from 6A/LJ was basically bullshit. In short, 6A can and will ban your ass without prior notification, is the 6A employees decide that you're not the sort of person they want to host anymore.

Add to the whole deal that there's now an easy peasy way for people to turn you in to the LJ cops with one click, and I think what we have here is the real potential that more than a few of us could sign in one day and finding your journal gone.

Think about this people who write slash: How much hate mail do you get? Now imagine getting tuned over to LJAbuse every time you post slash. In theory, you're posting about consenting adults. And maybe 99% of the people on LJAbuse won't give a shit about your slash story.

What happens when you get that one guy/gal on LJAbuse who doesn't give a shit about ages, but the fact that you've got a same-sex pairing and that's all the excuse they need? Or what if you got someone who thinks that all pr0n should be FLocked (I don't just mean under a an LJ-cut...but locked...)?

Yeah. This can definitely spread beyond FER THE CHYLDRERIN!

Continued from: And So It Begins...Again (The New 6A/LJ Journal Deletions) and Watch LJ Repeat Its Mistakes...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What a nice way to say 'fuck you guys'. Taking our money and then kicking us out of the apartment. Our stuff doesn't end up on the lawn, it gets destroyed without warning.

And here they are hiding behind obscenity laws, saying nothing directly, and then telling us 'we don't want you here'.

I feel bad for the people who think threatening to leave will affect anything, when that's clearly what they want.

I keep telling people...stop paying 6A, knock your journal down to basic with no ads, and keep posting. In essence, you'll be sucking up resources and not giving them anything in return.

I'd like to, but I'm pre-paid til 2008. No refunds.

I'm prepaid until July 2008 because back in Feb I had some extra cash and decided to even out payment for all the different services I was using. So, yeah, I'm here for another year no matter what.

Bastards.

Under US Law, if a business changes the nature of a contract, you have the choice to cancel it and get partial payment back.

My paid account expired last week. *grins evily* Such lovely timing. I shall miss all my icons, but they're not getting a penny out of me after this crap.

Fantastic idea. Too bad mine has always been free anyway *g*.
I've always kept all my fandom material far, far away from LJ. Still, the sudden rise of Moral nazi is pissing me off. I have an extreme pathogenic alergy to censorship. As well as the bull it's used to disguise it.

Not dealing with any of the other (many!) issues you raise, but I don't get any hate mail. I remember getting ONE email long, long ago, maybe back in 2002, that was all "X character SO isn't gay, he would NEVER want Y" but that was it. I'd be curious, actually, to know how many people who write slash get hate mail.

Maybe it's because you've been in fandom long enough that you don't run into it any more?

I know I definitely got hopped on in a few quarters when I posted by DarkXander fic-a-thon entry that I had a Xander/Faith/Spike ship with a definite bi-Xander that wasn't even that explicit. *shrug* A few people commented on that post they get slammed quite a bit on their slash.

Maybe? I don't know. I mean, I NEVER really ran into it. Unless I've forgotten a lot of other people's posts (which I'll freely admit is entirely possible), I don't recall many incidences of people on my flist getting hate mail, either, at least not of the "You are sullying our beautiful characters by making them OMG teh gay!!!1!" variety. Maybe you got some with the fic you're talking about because people had an expectation that your fic would be gen/het, so it might depend on the readers' expectations more than the slash?

Also, this bit:

As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, non-photographic content involving minors in sexual situations which does not contain serious artistic or literary merit is likely in violation of Federal obscenity laws, and is content LiveJournal has chosen not to host

was, as it says, spelled out pretty plainly in at least one and possibly more other places, by LJ/6A reps, before today/yesterday. Maybe people weren't fully grasping it, but I do believe it was there.

Not that I'm happy about any of this, because I'm not. :-(

The problem isn't that it wasn't there. The problem is that every time they have said it, they've then backtracked either in a new post or in the comments threads and said that they don't really mean fandom, or that fandom only counts in extreme examples involving pre-pubescent children, etc.

What

bubble_blunder said. The released the new ToS right around the same time as the perm account sale. When people read over the ToS and went, "Hey! Wait! What does this mean?" Someone for LJ/6A went, "Well, it's not that draconian. We meant this." or "What we really mean is this."

But (and this is the big but), when people pushed them for details beyond the vague, "Well, we really mean this even though the ToS says this" there was no straight answer.

Frankly, I did find both pieces of art on the offensive and/or squicky side. And I agree that neither one of the artists were smart about how they went about posting those images or even hosting the images (I think LJ Scrapbook was used in at least one instance).

Now 6A/LJ has the absolute right to decide not to host something. But they kind of need to be upfront and honest about what they will and will not host, which they haven't been.

I can also understand if someone's a repeat offender and a journal is suspended after, say, three warnings within a given time period (to be really draconian, let's say 6 months). However, to suspend without warning, and then not refund the money prorated for that person's remaining time, that's just fishy. Yes, they've got the absolute right to shut down a journal, but if they're not willing to fulfill a contract, than they pretty much owe the customer a refund for the unused portion of that contract...which they don't.

Plus, the way LJ/6A is going about laying down the rules and enforcing them is not exactly endearing them to their customer base. It's a case of: this could happen to me/my friends/etc.

Yeah, it seems clear that LJ/SA doesn't WANT to "clarify" in a way that actually makes things clear, because as long as they don't do that, they can make decisions willy-nilly based on the moment's hot buttons and not be breaking their own rules.

Now 6A/LJ has the absolute right to decide not to host something. But they kind of need to be upfront and honest about what they will and will not host, which they haven't been.

Oh, I absolutely agree, and even though the feelings of insecurity this whole situation brings up make it tempting, I'm not letting myself slip into the mindset that it's "just" HP or "just" looks-underage fan art or whatever -- it's those things now, it could be slash fic next. And the way that LJ says one thing one minute and something almost completely different ten minutes later is just frustrating beyond belief.

Feelings of insecurity are the ultimate goal of all vague censorship rules, because then it leads to much broader self-censorship. If people don't know where the line is, then everyone will back away from the perceived line, and the censors win even more ground.

Well, personally I thought most of the "backtracking" or comments from "LJ people" in other people's posts/threads seemed to be careful to add that this WASN'T an official position and that they were trying to clarifiy what THEY thought the situation was. It does seem that the current focus is on HP fandom and I wonder if SA is getting pressure from JKR and Co.?

Not true.

ARTWORK falls under the US Obscenity laws here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00001466---A000-.html

Note that these are different from the Child pornography laws.

Barak was asked about fan fiction and illustrations in relation to child pornography laws.

Child pornography deals with *photographs* of *real children* in sexual situations, and thus does not apply to fan *fiction* or to *illustrations*.

However.

Child obscenity deals with drawings and other visual representations. And it doesn't matter whether it's a real child or not or a character. All that matters is if it appears that someone under age 18 is depicted in graphic sexual content.

Go read the US code I cited above, and then go reread this lj_biz entry:

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241428.html (5th paragraph)

Some people have noted a Supreme Court case from a couple of years ago striking computer-generated images from the definition of child pornography and asked whether, as a result, drawings of children in sexual situations can be considered illegal. The answer is, yes, in some cases. Congress reacted to the Supreme Court's decision in that case by changing the obscenity laws to put back what the Supreme Court struck down from the child pornography laws. Those obscenity laws are still on the books today and still being enforced. As a result, our policy prohibits obscene images of minors in graphic sexual contexts.

Note that the rest of the entry deals with fan FICTION, which is different from fan ART. People in fandom (as well as myself and others) apparently read that entry and didn't distinguish the laws for artwork as being different from those for fanfiction. Graphic content in artwork is a lot more likely to be noticed, a lot more likely to be reported, and therefore a lot more likely to get you banned.

The policy for Child Obscenity seems to be the same as that for Child Pornography: http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml#childporn

As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, non-photographic content involving minors in sexual situations which does not contain serious artistic or literary merit is likely in violation of Federal obscenity laws, and is content LiveJournal has chosen not to host.

The real problem is: Who decides what is artistic or literary merit. That's really the rub, isn't it? Who gets to be the thought police and what are their criteria, eh?

linked in roundup post over at

innocence_jihad

Nicely summed up.

My favorite part: "the policy adopted for this particular violation is to terminate without warning."

Um... where would I find this policy described?

::points at icon::

Can I gank icon?

Gank freely.

Is there a particular place all these icons are coming from? Cause I totally want to stock up. Some of these icons are hilarious.

Dunno. I made this one this morning.

Drats. Just thought I'd ask. Thanks anyways.

The policy for Child Obscenity seems to be the same as that for Child Pornography: http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml#childporn

WAIT. ::embarrasment:: Sorry, wrong copied link. Er. (That was an icon I found amusing. I meant this!

Platform to demand compensation from LJ or something.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/07refugees/14635.html

LJ = ASSHATS.

This is ridiculous. I didn't even like the fan-art pics that got banned (HP not my scene) but I don't think they should have been deleted.

What next? Are we gonna get banned for Buffy verse - Eeebil vampires shagging schoolgirl? Cause they're going to need to sue Joss for that one...he wrote the damn thing.

Are we gonna get banned for disscussing Rent - the - musical, because it deals with drugs, sex, Aids and unconventional lifestyles, not to mention gay, lesbian, transvestite and bi characters?

This is barmy. Seriously. 1984 was NOT a how to manual.

Sheesh.

I don't know if you've seen this (you probably have, but just in case); it's a pretty good round-up of all the times LJ has contradicted itself in this affair.

BTW, I friended you to keep up with this whole kerfuffle. Hope you don't mind.

Okay i don't want to get kicked in the head for this...But i'm gonna say it anyway...

I know what you guys are mad about or at least i think so: vague statements about what's acceptable on LJ...

Just my 2 cents: I can't for the life of me see Harry Potter as a consenting adult for a relationship with Snape...

It was adressed earlier in the comments.

The image is merely one of many 'poster children' (no pun in intended) for this movement now. The problem is LJ/6A being extremely sketchy on details, fucking us over by taking our money without clearly stating things in their TOS, and then tossing us out on our asses. Along with several other moral and ethical problems.

Re: that easy-peasy way to tattle--

A troll could have a lot of fun complaining about utterly innocuous posts, just sayin'...

Yeah, I just had an evil thought--everyone who is moving to another journal site should come back to LJ as an anonymous and click the "report abuse" button for every single one of their old journal entries. It would be for to laugh.

The fact that they have stated that there are no set rules, no set standards for their decisions is really distrubing. The fact that a small number of LJ/6A employees get to decide what is acceptable and not acceptable, to me, is not acceptable. Who are they to decide what is acceptable to the community at large? Who are they to determine if something has merit? Personally, I don't think a whole hell of a lot of art/movies/music/etc. has merit - but that doesn't mean all of that stuff shouldn't be allowed to be seen by others.

Speaking of the new "Report Abuse" button ... what would happen if we all decided to report stuff we didn't like? What would happen if we spammed the abuse mailbox with just a crap load of stuff - they'd have to sort throught it ALL to find the few things that THEY might actually find objectionable.

::waves:: Hello, just adding to the cause by point out . . . well, this, In which burr86 demonstrates how LJ continues to deal with customer service (http://community.livejournal.com/efw/117416.html?thread=2475176#t2475176)

It's been screen-capped for prosperity and put in one of the news posts.

Sere

No such entry.

That's cause the mod of that comm deleted it. Try the link here (http://community.livejournal.com/innocence_jihad/166634.html), there's alternative links of all the comments while the alternative link lists the whole thread.

http://bad-wolf-bitch.livejournal.com/2597.html#comments

Here's a way for people to stick it to LJ in a way that will hit them hard and where it counts.

They want to claim they are a business making business decisions? Cool. Now they can deal with the business response.

Good idea! I linked to you.

Great idea! . . . Even if I'm not a paying customer. Sometimes I wish I was just so I can complain.

I just linked to it in a post to innocence_jihad, here's hoping it'll help.

Sere

People may need to be reminded to turn off automatic payments too. I've already moved to IJ and bought an account there, but I nearly forgot LJ would charge my card automatically without notice. Unfortunately it was too late for the SO who just got renewed last month for the same amount as my new permanent account.

But.

The abuse policy statement that comment links to DOES talk specifically about warning users. It DOES talk about temporary suspensions. It DOES talk about giving 72 hours to respond. WTF. It's at the very bottom,and that bit is specifically referred to in the bit about illegal content.

And the TOS yes, do say they can terminate, but also say,

JOURNAL CONTENT

You agree to follow the following guidelines for posting Content to your online journal:

...2. Should any Content that you have authored be reported to LiveJournal as being offensive or inappropriate, LiveJournal might call upon you to retract, modify, or protect (by means of private and friends only settings) the Content in question within a reasonable amount of time, as determined by the LiveJournal staff. Should you fail to meet such a request from LiveJournal staff, LiveJournal may terminate your account. LiveJournal, however, is under no obligation to restrict or monitor journal Content in any way;

So...yeah. To say they don't say these things is a bit odd.

To say they don't say these things is a bit odd.

lmao - really?????????

(pointless comment, yah, yah, but I couldn't resist)

you have to figure they just say whatever suits them from day-to-day because that's all that makes sense to me at this point. I'm not positive that their corporate lawyets have any idea what some of the employees are saying/writing. i know a lot of real world lawyers, all of them in various disciplines of the law, and i'm pretty damn sure they'd tear LJ/6A to pieces for their acts of random banning and the qualifications that follow said bans. Tear them apart according to their OWN ToS/abuse policy statement(s) as you guys have quoted above.

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Yup, LJ really did tell us to drop dead...

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the feelings of insecurity this whole situation brings up

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