The timing of this shit cannot be a coincidence.

[emmagrant01]

Wow, I go offline for 8 hours and all hell breaks loose! Apparently there was a post on lj_biz* that implied that content depicting underage fictional characters having sex was no longer going to be allowed on LJ, because they seem to think it violates US law (where the servers are located). But that isn't true AFAIK. Once again, it looks like the people who run LJ are talking out of their asses and not thinking before pressing post.

There is a post about the case law here. I'm not a lawyer, but the gist of the ruling was that works depicting fictional children in sexual situations (i.e. animation, young-looking adults playing children) are not illegal, since (a) no crime was committed in the production of the material (i.e. it's not a record of actual abuse), and (b) there is no evidence that such material causes children to be victimized by pedophiles. As far as I know, that ruling was about visual depictions and doesn't necessarily cover written fiction. But AFAIK, written fiction doesn't count as pornography and as such isn't illegal. Edit: I forgot about the Red Rose Stories (Wiki link), so that's not completely true, though it's still exceedingly rare.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think LJ has a legal reason to ban any of our fanfic or art; i.e. they aren't violating any US laws by allowing that content to be hosted on their servers, which seems to be the argument they're making. (Photomanips are another issue, and I think there probably are legal grounds for banning explicit ones featuring underaged actors.) I know they can do whatever they want, but I'm not particularly worried. Yet.

*There are apparently DH spoilers in the comments of that post, but the post itself contains no spoilers.

Edit: Oh, and I'm emmagrant01 on JF, IF, and GJ as well. tarie is putting together a directory of everyone's alternate journals. Ever on top of things, she also has hilarious icons about this debacle ready for the downloading. ;-)

Son of Edit: They've just made another post on lj_biz that actually concerns me a bit more. :-/

Comments

[justsonya.livejournal.com]

They don't need a legal reason to ban it. They own the servers and the forums. All they have to do is decide they're a legal risk for hosting it, and that risk doesn't have to come from the government, and they'll make a resonable decision to remove it.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Right, but the justification they're using in their post is that it's illegal in the US, which is NOT true.

[justsonya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's just baseless justification for what they're going to do either way.

[daddybear716.livejournal.com]

aren't you glad you didn't buy that lifetime membership?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

SRSLY. :-P

[photograficnerd.livejournal.com]

Why do they feel the need to destroy our last vestiges?

And really, they had to have planned the release of this shit. It's ridiculous.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

That's what I keep thinking. They know half the HP fandom is offline today...

[photograficnerd.livejournal.com]

That's quite cowardly of them if you ask me. I bet they suspect that all us crazies aren't going to be checking so they can post this and hope to get away with it before the droves pour in. And they get flooded like last time.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I'm not a cynical person by nature, but where LJ is concerned... yeah. :-P

[wickedsix.livejournal.com]

wait why is everyone offline today? *totally clueless*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

You're serious, right? Okay, hint: What's happening tonight at midnight that would make everyone wary of being online these last couple of days?

[wickedsix.livejournal.com]

Ah I see. I'm so out of the loop these days with all that stuff, it's not even funny. I wasn't really aware that the book was coming out yet. I also didn't know people were avoiding the internet because of it..

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my comment on that post basically pointed out that using the law as their justification was bullshit, so just come right out and say it: we don't want your brand of fanfic here. Oh, and applauding them for their rather Slytherin behavior on the timing of the issue. I've since gotten 2 comments from people I don't know. I'm assuming since it's obvious I'm fen from my comment (and if they bothered to check out my journal) they're trying to spoil me. Too bad for them I'm not dumb enough to read the emails until after I've read the book. I mean, they could be agreeing with me, but the risk is too high for me to check.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I've hard the trolls are in full force on that post. :-P

They're just determined to drive away fandom, aren't they?

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just couldn't not say anything, especially when I know most of fandom isn't here right now. I didn't want to wait a few days and have the comments maxed out.

But yeah, they sure are determined. If we all got up and left in one go and ended up at the same location, I'd honestly be cool with it. I do like LJ's features, but I'm in fandom for the people, not LJ.

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

By basing their decision on the so called "obscenity laws", they're putting their foot in their mouths, because those laws are not directed at underage - it's directed at ALL obscenity, even for legal, consenting adults. They're picking and choosing, and completely misrepresenting "legality", and yeah, it's obviously because they don't want to come out and state "we don't want it here."

I'm still not locking my fic.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Me either. Of course, I don't have much fic that depicts underaged characters, but I do have a little bit.

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

I do have a few, but none of them are PWPs by definition. What I find ironically amusing is that I ship Remus/Sirius and I like to write them as teens, while you ship Harry/Draco and write them mostly as of age. :-P

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

LOL, true! Ironic indeed. ;-)

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

I'm not on top of the latest wank, but is this them just being retards with regard to their stated policy, or do they actually intend to go after fiction communities?

I can totally understand people being paranoid, but...ya know what I mean? Does LJ intend to go after fiction, or is it more a CYA situation with regard to genuine pedophiles, etc?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

This is them trying to clarify their policy after Strikethrough back in June. It's unclear if they are actually going to go after fanfic communities, but in their post they make it clear that they regard written fictional depictions as illegal content.

In their last post:

An example of some of the questions we'll ask in order to determine if material falls into this category are: is this writing intended to eroticize the sexual abuse of children? Is the fact that someone's underage, a critical element of the work, or is it incidental? Is the language excessively graphic instead of suggestive? Is there context beyond the sexual situation, or is the material designed just to focus on the sexualization of minors and nothing more? Does the work have an overall message, or is it written only to appeal to an adult's potential sexual fascination with children? These are only some of the questions we'll ask, and we have to consider everything that's reported to us in context and as a whole.

Over the years, we've looked at thousands of reported journals and communities, and we rarely have come across a case of creative fiction or fanfic text that warrants review. If the content is similar in tone, context, feel, and level of explicitness to something that could be found on the shelves of a national chain bookstores, we'll take that into consideration as well.

That sounds like they aren't ruling out banning fanfic comms that get reported to them.

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

...and they're trusting the same LJ abuse team that can't manage to work out whether a picture of a nursing infant is sexual or not to make this decision?

This is really not good. Especially since the vast majority of people who aren't fans don't really get fanfic in general and underage or sexually explicit fanfic in particular, and it's those people who are going to be making the determinations.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yikes. True. :-P

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like they aren't trying to go after fanfic at all.

I understand how fan folks are interpreting it that way, but I just don't see that as their intent.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's their intent, but it seems that a community like pornish_pixies could be purged under these new guidelines, whereas before they really couldn't ban the comm under their own TOS and had little choice but to reinstate it. So they've changed the rules by which we play, basically. Only time will tell how much of an impact this has on fandom.

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Do you honestly think they wanted to get rid of Pornish Pixies? I mean, that they were out to get it? Or do you think instead PP just got swept up in the great pedophile purge? Do you think they changed the guidelines in order to enable them to go after groups like PP? Or are they just trying to clarify (however badly) their position with regard to pedophilia?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I don't think they're going after any particular fandom community, no. But I do think they've decided that in general, they don't want things like chanfic hosted on their servers because they see its relationship to pedophilia as nebulous at best. They don't want to be another Red Rose Stories (see link in post above), and so they're changing their TOS to reflect that. I think most of us are safe for the time being, but if even a few of us get thrown off of LJ for the content of our fic or art, it becomes a slippery slope.

[glorafin.livejournal.com]

From my H/D point of view, I actually think most of what they wrote here is reasonable. They don't try to ban outright anything sexual about teenagers but only to single out posts and comms whose only purpose is to promote underage pornography.

I think though that they should really make a difference between stories between teenagers (are they going to ban One Tree Hill as well?) and stories between adults and teenagers. But if they will, there might be some heavy problems for HP/SS shippers though. That pairing always made me uneasy but I hardly think that those who like it are dangerous in any way.

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Here's their clarification of their clarification, recently posted: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241428.html?style=mine

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yes, I just saw that. It doesn't make me feel any better. :-P

[worn-words.livejournal.com]

that's bullshit. how are they going to police everything?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

According to the post, they aren't "going after" anyone, but will apply these rules when a comm or LJ is reported to Abuse. That's going to force some fandom comms underground, I fear. I'm not even sure that flocking such content would make a difference.

[worn-words.livejournal.com]

wow. this really absolutely sucks.

[chickadilly.livejournal.com]

Their timing really is suspicious isn't it?

:/

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. :-/

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Best. Icon. Ever.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Thanks to tarie!

[sciencegeek.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just a cynic about this, but the timing of this cannot be a coincidence can it?

We shall see how this goes.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

It's hard to believe it's a coincidence. :-P

[sciencegeek.livejournal.com]

bleh. I am hoping that LJ will come out with 'clarifications' that actually clarify things.

The stupid thing is, there are a lot of fandom people on LJ - not just from HP that could be affected. And all it takes is the banning of a BNF, or huge comm, and then all hell breaks loose. Again.

It just seems like LJ is shooting themselves in the foot right now, because they've convinced themselves it's the right thing to do.

[mamainak.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on! Again!?

Finally I get a good night sleep and when I wake up - THIS.

Shit happens over night. And now when I finally opened my 'slashy' LJ with fics and all...blah.

I wish if could all fandom just transfer to FJ or GJ...

[ktoth04.livejournal.com]

if only there was some easy way to get everyone to move at once >.>