![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanSince I'm thinking that this page will be linked by people, I'll just specify first that I am also known as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shanaqui and edenbound, and I've formerly mostly been involved under shanaqui's username. But it's all one. Also, this post isn't a comprehensive round up of information, and nor does it claim to be unbiased.
This post is related to the recent events surroundingponderosa121 and elaboration, and their suspensions. They were both suspended for posting Harry Potter fanart of an explicit nature. There's debate over whether the fanart was intended to portray underage characters, but I haven't heard anyone say that the characters were clearly, say, ten years old. There's room for doubt.
ponderosa121 was certainly well known, and so this has stirred up the fandom community like you wouldn't believe. People have responded by declaring their intentions to leave LJ, with communities such as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fandom_flies, and demanding statements from LJ about what is going on.
First of all, let me specify that I don't believe this is an issue concerning the First Amendment. A company such as Six Apart can, legally, choose what to host on their servers, and what not to host. It is, however, for many people, about freedom of speech and freedom of artistic expression.
Why are people getting so bothered about it?
A large amount of the reaction, I believe, is due to what we refer to as "Strikethrough 07", in which many users and communities, regardless of their content, were suspended because of interests they had listed. The implication was that all these journals were devoted to encouraging and promoting paedophilia, and therefore had to be removed. In a move to pacify those protesting, the CEO of Six Apart came forward and promised that they would be reviewing the journals and returning all of them which were fiction related. This was, in fact, done.
However, since then there has been a lack of communication about the issue. Clarifications issued only posed more questions, and those questions went unanswered. The Terms of Service we're all held by have not been changed. And then came the two recent suspensions, sparking fears that Six Apart's apparent tolerance for fandom was simply feigned to persuade those in fandom to buy permanent accounts.
The suspension ofelaboration proves that a permanent account is no defence against having your content deleted without warning or chance for recourse.
In addition, both of the users were suspended over slash fanart, which is to say, depictions of homosexual relationships. There is speculation that this demonstrates homophobia on the Abuse Team's part.
LiveJournal, apparently, decided that the fanarts that caused the suspensions had no artistic merit. The test applied was, according to their clarifications, the Miller test, in which something is judged by the standards of the community. It is quite plain that many members of the community whose standards they should be using do not believe that at least one of the pieces of art in question had no artistic merit -- and many of them believe that there were no underage characters in it, either.
The anger, frustration, confusion and fear has not been in the slightest bit abated by the lack of response from LiveJournal. Well. Apart from that one thread where Abe Hassan (burr86) had time to mock us, instead of helping us.
People fear that all the LiveJournal/Six Apart management cares about is money. That fear is fuelled by the timing of all this -- Strikethrough, reassurances, permanent account sale, Boldout. People have found that of the places the donations from permanent accounts went to, most of them lead to charities somewhat connected to Six Apart, which was not disclosed: this could be a coincidence, but it's a worrying one. It's not helped by the fact that Six Apart has introduced ads to the site, including "sponsored moodthemes", which even those who shelled out $150 have to see. It's not that we don't want them to make money -- it's that we don't want them to make money while trampling all over their customers.
Why is it a freedom of speech issue?
The issue here is not defending child pornography, or paedophiles, because that's not what is apparently being banned. What is involved here is fiction. There are no real children involved. I'm not a US citizen, so I'm not very up on the laws, so I would ask you to look at the comment thread involvingpretentioustfu to see a more detailed explanation, here.
On the other hand,synecdochic posts: "In the eyes of the United States government, "child pornography" is defined as -- elisions and boldface mine -- "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that [...] depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex [...] It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist."".
Who are these people?
Concerned users of LiveJournal. They are no one thing. They are people who are unhappy at what has happened and that is all there is to it. They do not all like chan, they do not all likeponderosa121 or elaboration, they're not even all from fandom. They are just people who want to be heard.
What do these people want from LiveJournal, then?
I've seen people asking for many things. Among them:
-Clear guidelines as to what can and cannot be posted
-An apology for suspending people before such clear guidelines are produced
-An apology for making us wait for an answer
-An apology from Abe Hassan
-For Abe Hassan to lose or give up his job
-For the two artists to be unsuspended
Note: I do not necessarily want all these things. This is just a summary of what I've seen people asking for.
What are these people doing?
Some are making and posting on communities such asfandom_flies. Others are posting entries like this one. Some are trying to get the news sites interested in it. There are angry phone calls to the Six Apart offices, faxes, emails, support requests... Some people are spamming on news and lj_biz. Some people have cancelled their paid accounts payments and reverted their plus accounts to basic. Others are trying to contact the advertisers. Personally, I'm with the commenters over at news, which is what prompts the next header. I'm not reverting this account back to basic, at this stage, because I like having lots of icons and I don't believe it will do any good.
What good do the people spamming onnews think they're doing?
We're protesting. I know that some of it does fandom no credit in people's eyes: cat macros, song lyrics, youtube videos, macros involving the banned picture... But at least we're not sitting on our arses ignoring the thing we care about. The content there might not be good, but it's a visible protest. A large, visible, and easy to organise protest. For sheer volume there is nothing to beat it. And there are intelligent comments there. Truly. I know every now and then I stop to reiterate why I'm doing it and what we want. I do think that if every single person there makes sure to do something else as well -- write an open letter, write an email to Six Apart management, etc -- then what we're doing will be much more effective.
Why the hell won't we just leave already?
Some people have done so. Some people are in the process of doing so, over atfandom_flies. Some of us don't want to leave, because we love the service. Some of us have poured so much energy into this site that it hurts to try to tear ourselves away: our fanworks, our meta, our communities, our friends, our entries -- entries which contain our hopes, our dreams, our loves, our fears, our desires... We've made friends here. I know I've made friends right there in the spamfest. There are strong ties binding us to this site and we want to stay. We want the management to hear us and say "yes, we recognise the concerns of our customers". This isn't a question of free speech as far as the First Amendment goes. But it is an issue of how a company will treat its customers.
Editlog:
-Added a section on freedom of speech.
-Corrected the comments on "charities linked to Six Apart".
-Tweaked a bit so that I'm not speaking for the whole of fandom.
-Clarified the issue with money.
-Added a link tosynecdochic's post.
shanaqui and edenbound, and I've formerly mostly been involved under shanaqui's username. But it's all one. Also, this post isn't a comprehensive round up of information, and nor does it claim to be unbiased.This post is related to the recent events surrounding
ponderosa121 and elaboration, and their suspensions. They were both suspended for posting Harry Potter fanart of an explicit nature. There's debate over whether the fanart was intended to portray underage characters, but I haven't heard anyone say that the characters were clearly, say, ten years old. There's room for doubt.ponderosa121 was certainly well known, and so this has stirred up the fandom community like you wouldn't believe. People have responded by declaring their intentions to leave LJ, with communities such as fandom_flies, and demanding statements from LJ about what is going on.First of all, let me specify that I don't believe this is an issue concerning the First Amendment. A company such as Six Apart can, legally, choose what to host on their servers, and what not to host. It is, however, for many people, about freedom of speech and freedom of artistic expression.
Why are people getting so bothered about it?
A large amount of the reaction, I believe, is due to what we refer to as "Strikethrough 07", in which many users and communities, regardless of their content, were suspended because of interests they had listed. The implication was that all these journals were devoted to encouraging and promoting paedophilia, and therefore had to be removed. In a move to pacify those protesting, the CEO of Six Apart came forward and promised that they would be reviewing the journals and returning all of them which were fiction related. This was, in fact, done.
However, since then there has been a lack of communication about the issue. Clarifications issued only posed more questions, and those questions went unanswered. The Terms of Service we're all held by have not been changed. And then came the two recent suspensions, sparking fears that Six Apart's apparent tolerance for fandom was simply feigned to persuade those in fandom to buy permanent accounts.
The suspension of
elaboration proves that a permanent account is no defence against having your content deleted without warning or chance for recourse.In addition, both of the users were suspended over slash fanart, which is to say, depictions of homosexual relationships. There is speculation that this demonstrates homophobia on the Abuse Team's part.
LiveJournal, apparently, decided that the fanarts that caused the suspensions had no artistic merit. The test applied was, according to their clarifications, the Miller test, in which something is judged by the standards of the community. It is quite plain that many members of the community whose standards they should be using do not believe that at least one of the pieces of art in question had no artistic merit -- and many of them believe that there were no underage characters in it, either.
The anger, frustration, confusion and fear has not been in the slightest bit abated by the lack of response from LiveJournal. Well. Apart from that one thread where Abe Hassan (
burr86) had time to mock us, instead of helping us.People fear that all the LiveJournal/Six Apart management cares about is money. That fear is fuelled by the timing of all this -- Strikethrough, reassurances, permanent account sale, Boldout. People have found that of the places the donations from permanent accounts went to, most of them lead to charities somewhat connected to Six Apart, which was not disclosed: this could be a coincidence, but it's a worrying one. It's not helped by the fact that Six Apart has introduced ads to the site, including "sponsored moodthemes", which even those who shelled out $150 have to see. It's not that we don't want them to make money -- it's that we don't want them to make money while trampling all over their customers.
Why is it a freedom of speech issue?
The issue here is not defending child pornography, or paedophiles, because that's not what is apparently being banned. What is involved here is fiction. There are no real children involved. I'm not a US citizen, so I'm not very up on the laws, so I would ask you to look at the comment thread involving
pretentioustfu to see a more detailed explanation, here.On the other hand,
synecdochic posts: "In the eyes of the United States government, "child pornography" is defined as -- elisions and boldface mine -- "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that [...] depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex [...] It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist."".Who are these people?
Concerned users of LiveJournal. They are no one thing. They are people who are unhappy at what has happened and that is all there is to it. They do not all like chan, they do not all like
ponderosa121 or elaboration, they're not even all from fandom. They are just people who want to be heard.What do these people want from LiveJournal, then?
I've seen people asking for many things. Among them:
-Clear guidelines as to what can and cannot be posted
-An apology for suspending people before such clear guidelines are produced
-An apology for making us wait for an answer
-An apology from Abe Hassan
-For Abe Hassan to lose or give up his job
-For the two artists to be unsuspended
Note: I do not necessarily want all these things. This is just a summary of what I've seen people asking for.
What are these people doing?
Some are making and posting on communities such as
fandom_flies. Others are posting entries like this one. Some are trying to get the news sites interested in it. There are angry phone calls to the Six Apart offices, faxes, emails, support requests... Some people are spamming on news and lj_biz. Some people have cancelled their paid accounts payments and reverted their plus accounts to basic. Others are trying to contact the advertisers. Personally, I'm with the commenters over at news, which is what prompts the next header. I'm not reverting this account back to basic, at this stage, because I like having lots of icons and I don't believe it will do any good.What good do the people spamming on
news think they're doing?We're protesting. I know that some of it does fandom no credit in people's eyes: cat macros, song lyrics, youtube videos, macros involving the banned picture... But at least we're not sitting on our arses ignoring the thing we care about. The content there might not be good, but it's a visible protest. A large, visible, and easy to organise protest. For sheer volume there is nothing to beat it. And there are intelligent comments there. Truly. I know every now and then I stop to reiterate why I'm doing it and what we want. I do think that if every single person there makes sure to do something else as well -- write an open letter, write an email to Six Apart management, etc -- then what we're doing will be much more effective.
Why the hell won't we just leave already?
Some people have done so. Some people are in the process of doing so, over at
fandom_flies. Some of us don't want to leave, because we love the service. Some of us have poured so much energy into this site that it hurts to try to tear ourselves away: our fanworks, our meta, our communities, our friends, our entries -- entries which contain our hopes, our dreams, our loves, our fears, our desires... We've made friends here. I know I've made friends right there in the spamfest. There are strong ties binding us to this site and we want to stay. We want the management to hear us and say "yes, we recognise the concerns of our customers". This isn't a question of free speech as far as the First Amendment goes. But it is an issue of how a company will treat its customers.Editlog:
-Added a section on freedom of speech.
-Corrected the comments on "charities linked to Six Apart".
-Tweaked a bit so that I'm not speaking for the whole of fandom.
-Clarified the issue with money.
-Added a link to
synecdochic's post.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:31 pm (UTC)First Livejournal is [i]huge[/i], and the idea of a "fandom" is a rather vague and amorphous. There are lots of people who are fans of various works, who haven't even heard of the shenanigans involved here. Perhaps more to the point, if the entirety of the fandom left, live journal would still be around doing just fine. The fandom is not monolithic.
Second, on the issue of money, all companies like to make money. In fact, its a legal requirement for a corporation to do what it can to look out for its economic self interest. Muttering darkly about
Third, as you've said you're stuck with speculation. Speculation, in my experiance is bad.
Fourth, the legality issue. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not an expert on this, but you've got a two fold issue. The first half, is according to the Terms of Service, SixApart can do pretty much whatever the hell it wants until it runs into certain fraud or civil rights laws, which it has not clearly done yet. The second half deals with United States (and other nation's) laws and related social mores. Child pornography is a problem under two sets of laws, and social mores that say "this is wrong." Various laws against child abuse, sexual abuse of minors, support thereof, are focused around the victimization of a real child, especially in a sexual context. Since art is a fictional representation, and presumably (I haven't seen it) is not an encouragement of the activity, nor so photo realistic as to suggest an actual victim, this is not your problem. Obscenity laws, and the social mores that correspond to them are. The Miller test talks about "community standards," a vague useless term as there can be. What is the community? A town? A state? A region. Add in the internet, and we've got brand new problems of how to define a community. "The Fan Community" or at least this particular one, doesn't have a problem. The community of LJ administrators apparently does, and they seem to be attempting to represent either the larger community of LJ users, or the larger community of... civilized people perhaps? Which one should have precedent? My point here is not that what SixApart is doing is right, but that it is simpler than "we are right, and you are wrong." Dealing with what is "obscene" and thus in contradiction with the "standards of the community" is debate with poorly defined terms and grounds.
(Comment limit, continued in reply)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:31 pm (UTC)Sixth, and finally: Doing something stupid is not better than doing anything. Getting angry and expressing your anger, is not inherently productive. Remember, LJ can probably live without you all. I would wager a large amount of money theres a line of thinking with LJ staff that says "we're probably better off without these nuts, why are we even bothering?"
All of that having been said, the anger, frustrations, and concerns that people have are completely understandable. There is a significant amount of time and energy that people have invested into their journals, and their art, and the communities that exist on LJ. This makes people pissed off with that is threatened. This all makes sense. Now comes the catch.
Marshalling the energy of a loosely affiliated group of angry customers is really hard, as is making them put on a civilized face. It is definitely worth it. If you make this battle a legal one, you'll probably lose. You don't have the money for the lawyers, and the balance of the law isn't on your side to begin with. If you make this battle one about loud, angry protesting, you'll probably lose, blending in with the rest of the sound and fury of the internet, signifying nothing. If you come in as civilized, concerned customers, and make LJ [i]want[/i] to keep you, I think you'll do just fine. I suggest lining up behind the more clearly reasonable and uncontroversial requests (say, requesting clarifications) while discarding the ones that are just going to be flame/fight bait (firing of Abe)
At the end of all controversies, there is a choice. Someone can bite the bullet, get organized and productive, or they can not, and the controversy disappears into the aether. Having a productive discussion is the first step, and kudos to you for doing what you can to clarify and state what you believe.
-K
P.S I can't find the post where Abe is to have mocked people. Could you provide a link?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:55 pm (UTC)I'm not a leader, in fandom. I doubt I'm a BNF to anyone beyond my tiny circle, so I cannot really influence anybody to do anything. The things I mentioned in this post are not things I necessarily believe in or encourage. I do believe Abe Hassan was unprofessional and a bit of an asshat really, but I agree with you that it's probably one of the requests we shouldn't push at.
Re: P.S. I'm afraid I can't, because I haven't been bookmarking things and besides, that thread (or entry?) was deleted by the mod of the community. People have screenshots and stuff over at
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:04 pm (UTC)Ah. But you [i]could[/i] be. Believe me, all leadership takes is effort. If you lead, they will follow.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:40 pm (UTC)I agree that fandom is a large thing and it's impossible to refer to it as one single block. I'll go through and fix that up a bit.
I don't have any objection to LiveJournal earning money. I never said I did, if you read it closely. However, they've broken promises about ads formerly made to the users, they're forcing even paid and permanent accounts to see these ads,
As for the Miller test, what I said about it based on the reactions of everybody I've spoken to about this issue, which is a lot of people and not just confined to the fan community. I remember four distinct people who said it was disgusting, and I can't count how many I remember saying that they don't see anything wrong with it. The problem with the application of the Miller test is, however, not our greatest concern, really.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:45 pm (UTC)I don't have any objection to LiveJournal earning money. I never said I did, if you read it closely. However, they've broken promises about ads formerly made to the users, they're forcing even paid and permanent accounts to see these ads, and they've contradicted themselves now about things which were said before the permanent account sale.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:34 pm (UTC)(I have one of each -- permanent, paid and plus, so I'm pretty sure what I'm saying is correct. xD)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:48 pm (UTC)LJ user johndoe123456 posts a piece of artwork that involves sexual contact between say... two minors. We'll call them a male 11 year old and a male 15 eleven year old. Just to confound the issue even more, the younger male will be bound, and feminized with make up and a dress.
Random member of the public sees the work and complains to SixApart because (s)he offended. The line "Think of the children" is flung out there.
SixApart reviews the work, and decides, within context its not obscene material, and does nothing.
The previously mentioned random member of the public decides to get offended, calls up a local conservative church, who calls up a lawyer, who calls a friend in the state government, who calls more lawyers, and suddenly SixApart is named co-defendant in both criminal and civil legal proceedings. (Yes, this shit happens)
The first court to see it, decides that the case cannot be thrown out because of the vague nature of obscenity law. Months and months and years and thousands of lawyer hours later, the case goes to trial, and the jury determines the facts of the case show that Six Apart was negligent and thus liable, in policing its site for obscene material. Six Apart appeals. OR Six apart wins, and the government and/or Concerned Citzens against Slash appeals.
SixApart is already several tens of thousand dollars in the hole by now because of lawyer fees. Somewhere in the decision of the case is a tiny line from the judge that says "This work can be reasonably construed as obscene by a member of the community." Notably, it won't dictate in particular WHY its obscene. It won't address its because of the age difference, the age of the younger, that they're both minors, that its male/male, that it has elements of non consensual sex, or the feminization of the younger male. It will just say its reasonably construed as obscene.
That could happen, and if it did, it could be a decade before the case is even close to settled. Six Apart's lawyer is probably advising them to avoid the situation I just described, because of obscenity law, which is determined by the Miller test.
Thus, it is somewhat a concern.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:56 pm (UTC)