(no subject)
May. 30th, 2007 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienHmm...
I was saddened by the loss of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
pornish_pixies, mostly for the authors who wrote there. I've read many a fine smutty story featuring adults who were not related in any way to each other! I think it's ridiculous for a business to commit such knee-jerk reactions that go against their ToS, when you get right down to it. I think it's terribly pathetic when a small, vocal, wacko group can wreak havoc with their threats.
I am going to take some actions. I'll turn off my automatic bill payments. I'm changing my interests to only one - "freedom of speech", as suggested by a few folks I saw while catching up this evening. I joinedfandom_counts (and will be joining with each of my RP journals). However, I'm not going to leave LJ. It's been my online home since 2002, and I quite like it here. They made a big mistake. We'll take a stand, and I bet we'll be heard. They'll learn from this and make the rules and the ToS better.
I am also going to make myself possibly unpopular here, but this is a topic I feel strongly about. The sexualization of children in our culture is a real and scary thing. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to even hear about chan and other pedophilia-esque forms of fiction (including the incest ones), much less read it. It, I feel, doesn't belong in an easily accessed public forum (if anywhere at all, to tell you the truth). I know - believe me, I know - that what you read and write isn't what you do, and most of the folks who read stories like these are normal fandom folks, but I have absolutely no problem with having that kind of content purged from LJ.
Now if you're talking age of consent and older (or for heavens sake, at least 16! Please???), they can do what they like in fiction (though I feel strongly that extreme NC-17 fic should be kept under lock, just out of courtesy to those who shouldn't be exposed to it yet). But the line between "just for fun fiction" and depiction of adult acts with a child is one that I feel is dangerous to cross. It's not free speech, in my opinion, to weed it out, and I don't mind one bit that it's gone. If that extends to an RP character, well, sorry. Pretendy funtime games should be pretendy funtime games, and not include illegal acts against tweenage children or younger.
ETA Yes, I know that real literature contains situation when pedophilia is written about, and that fanfic about the topic can be therapeutic. This is when the Supreme Court definition of obscene comes in. Is it a prurient fic about Tom inna Diary screwing Ginny Weasley at age eleven, or is it an account of an incest survivor's experience? These are two totally different subjects. I am much more concerned about the former.
Now do I agree with the nutjobs behind the latest furor? Uh, hell no. But I have to wonder if the nutjobs voices get loud enough for the mainstream to hear because the mainstream doesn't speak loudly enough on this particular topic.
*steps off soap box*
Even with my strong feelings on the subject of pedophilia, I do recognize the creep of censorship. I don't feel that LJ was wise to make blanket deletions of journals based by interests alone, and I will stand up for my freedom of expression.
I was saddened by the loss of
pornish_pixies, mostly for the authors who wrote there. I've read many a fine smutty story featuring adults who were not related in any way to each other! I think it's ridiculous for a business to commit such knee-jerk reactions that go against their ToS, when you get right down to it. I think it's terribly pathetic when a small, vocal, wacko group can wreak havoc with their threats.I am going to take some actions. I'll turn off my automatic bill payments. I'm changing my interests to only one - "freedom of speech", as suggested by a few folks I saw while catching up this evening. I joined
fandom_counts (and will be joining with each of my RP journals). However, I'm not going to leave LJ. It's been my online home since 2002, and I quite like it here. They made a big mistake. We'll take a stand, and I bet we'll be heard. They'll learn from this and make the rules and the ToS better.I am also going to make myself possibly unpopular here, but this is a topic I feel strongly about. The sexualization of children in our culture is a real and scary thing. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to even hear about chan and other pedophilia-esque forms of fiction (including the incest ones), much less read it. It, I feel, doesn't belong in an easily accessed public forum (if anywhere at all, to tell you the truth). I know - believe me, I know - that what you read and write isn't what you do, and most of the folks who read stories like these are normal fandom folks, but I have absolutely no problem with having that kind of content purged from LJ.
Now if you're talking age of consent and older (or for heavens sake, at least 16! Please???), they can do what they like in fiction (though I feel strongly that extreme NC-17 fic should be kept under lock, just out of courtesy to those who shouldn't be exposed to it yet). But the line between "just for fun fiction" and depiction of adult acts with a child is one that I feel is dangerous to cross. It's not free speech, in my opinion, to weed it out, and I don't mind one bit that it's gone. If that extends to an RP character, well, sorry. Pretendy funtime games should be pretendy funtime games, and not include illegal acts against tweenage children or younger.
ETA Yes, I know that real literature contains situation when pedophilia is written about, and that fanfic about the topic can be therapeutic. This is when the Supreme Court definition of obscene comes in. Is it a prurient fic about Tom inna Diary screwing Ginny Weasley at age eleven, or is it an account of an incest survivor's experience? These are two totally different subjects. I am much more concerned about the former.
Now do I agree with the nutjobs behind the latest furor? Uh, hell no. But I have to wonder if the nutjobs voices get loud enough for the mainstream to hear because the mainstream doesn't speak loudly enough on this particular topic.
*steps off soap box*
Even with my strong feelings on the subject of pedophilia, I do recognize the creep of censorship. I don't feel that LJ was wise to make blanket deletions of journals based by interests alone, and I will stand up for my freedom of expression.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 06:30 am (UTC)I've got a stupid question here... So I've seen a crapload of posts referring to something or other with LJ deleting a bunch of users now - what exactly is this all about? I'm sure I'm just oblivious because I don't write fanfic, but the idea that there are mass-deletions of journals is pretty creepy...
Any enlightenment is appreciated :)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 07:36 pm (UTC)Basically, some people (seems to be a rather self-satisfied group called Warriors for Innocence) reported to LJ Abuse several journals that they saw as encouraging, facilitating, or otherwise participating in pedophilia, child pornography, etc. After (I believe) some back and forth about whether anything illegal was actually being committed that went beyond the bounds of simple talk (and therefore free speech), WfI wrote another letter essentially threatening to bring this stuff to the advertisers' attention. At that point, SixApart/LJ made the decree that journals involved in this would be summarily suspended permanently.
It was enforced -- as a policy, not as the LJ Abuse team's judgement call, so don't blame them -- as a zero-tolerance policy, with little in the way of communication or review. Over 500 journals were suspended, based on what they had listed in their LJ interests: incest, pedophilia, child love, lolita, that kind of thing. Some of those were in fact predatory journals and communities; others were communities for survivors of incest, for discussion of the book Lolita or other such literature, for fanfic involving underage but wholly fictional characters. Initially, at least, they were told that there was no recourse for getting any of these journals unsuspended, for legal reasons of liability.
There's been a huge outcry, primarily from fandom (so far as I've seen, anyway, but my friendslist is pretty fandom-heavy), and the fact that SixApart was silent on the matter for long enough for everything to spiral didn't help. Some have been calling for people to move to GreatestJournal or JournalFen or one of the other free journal services; others have called for people to cancel their paid accounts and otherwise refuse to give LJ their money until they have changed their policies satisfactorily.
SixApart's CEO apologized here, with discussion in comments continuing in the previous News post when comments maxed out in the apology post, and at least some journals are now being unsuspended after review.
For myself, I can see multiple sides of this. I do think the initial impulse was well-intended, if unfortunately clearly a response to what I'd characterize as economic blackmail, and I do think there were undoubtedly some journals suspended that really, really needed to be. It wasn't all just fanfic journals, which some grandstanders seem to be forgetting or not realizing. It was done in a hamfisted fashion that's just plain bad business practice, though, and without sufficient attention to or understanding of their constituency, and is to my mind a textbook example of why reactionary zero-tolerance policies rarely work well. I'm waiting to see how the review process goes, and whether SixApart's management will learn from this as I'm hoping.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 08:18 pm (UTC)