LJ Clamps Down!

[emmelinemay]

In case you don't read the LJ news, more people's journals have been suspended, and LJ has (either re-stated or changed, I'm not sure which) its 'Illegal and Harmful Contents' policy:


I. Content which violates LiveJournal’s policy against illegal and harmful content is:

a. Content that intrinsically violates existing United States or California law; in other words, where merely possessing, displaying or transmitting the content is a crime. This includes child pornography and threats against the President and successors to the Presidency.

b. Content that encourages or advocates hate crimes, the abuse of children in any form, or rape, even if the content itself is not illegal and may be protected by the First Amendment. This portion of the policy reflects the especially reprehensible nature of these activities; users who encourage or advocate these acts, regardless of their motivation, are simply not welcome on LiveJournal.

c. Content that solicits the commission of, seeks customers for, or provides instructions for illegal activities that would cause immediate and lasting physical or economic harm to others.

That bit in bold is interesting, no?



I've seen one of the pictures¹ that spawned the latest flap, and OH DEAR CHRIST MY EYES. I am not going to go and find it. I can't unsee it, but I can avoid looking at it. I can't say I'm sad, having seen it, that people that like to draw pictures like that are having their journals banned!

Freedom of expression, yeah whatever, but if you're turned on by the idea of grown men/women doing sexy-times to underage boys/girls, real or fictional, seek help. Actually, having seen some of the other pictures out there, if you're and adult and are tuned on by the idea of a number of underage children having sexy-times with each other? Fictional or otherwise? seek help.

I'm all for free speech, freedom of expression, any act any number of consenting adults want to do to each other. But the whole underage slash thing? Squicks me. I just feel it's wrong. I haven't yet been convinced by an argument otherwise. Feel free to try! yungfuktoi? You did rather well with the bestiality debate!



1 - it's a HP fan art picture of Snape performing an, um, sexual act on Harry. Harry appears to have already had a...sexual act... performed on his face. It's possibly the single most disturbing thing I've ever seen, in light of the fact this was drawn in all seriousness...

Comments

[bluekieran.livejournal.com]

The first amendment is only meant to protect the Septics from censorship by their own government - it (quite rightly) does not stop companies and individuals censoring all they like. It's not really about complete freedom of speech so much as stopping the government silencing the opposition/unpopular opinions.

LJ is entirely right to decide for itself what it thinks is acceptable, regardless of legality, and so long as it is open about what it is censoring even a wooly liberal like me should have no problem with it. If it goes too far, we simply leave for greener pastures.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Right to free speech != obligation for anyone else to provide you a soapbox. "Censorship" is only a concept that applies to governments.

[yaruar.livejournal.com]

The thing i personally don't get is how the people who write the HP sexytime slash don't actually get the point that depecting sex between underage people (especially with older people and especially authority figures...) for the purposes of titilation is child porn, it's not as if the atristic nature of their writing demands graphic sexual scenes, it's all about getting off on it.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

But they're NOT REAL PEOPLE and it's NOT HURTING ANYONE...

That seems to be the basis of their arguments.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I'm not particularly down on fandom, nor indeed down with, but in the words of South Park "That's some pretty fucked-up shit right there."

(And watching sections of fandom completely failing to do itself any favours in a thread in Making Light recently was like... Jesus. It changed my opinion from 'I don't dig what you do, but as long as it harms no-one...' to 'You really can't help yourselves, can you?')

On the other hand, it's a massively broad church.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I was supportive, at first, but as yaruar mentions above, the absolute refusal to understand how what they do can be considered child porn is baffling.

And i'm sure not *all* 'fandom' (you know, i actually really hate that word...) is not as mental as the few loud crazy voices.

Just like me and my vegan communities. It's the crazy few...

[ex-cooljohn507.livejournal.com]

OT, but I watched a program on US tele the other night called 'catch a predator'

Man that was some fucked up but highly amusing stuff.

Reporter pretends to be kid on internet, tells people in chat rooms to come to a house for sex, come in via back door and take all their clothes off (although a bit more subtle in its wording)

Sick perv comes around and does as instructed - pounced on by camera crew and reporter, they start to run away, bundled by police who jump from bushes as they flee.

20+ guys actually get caught and jailed.

I guess it should put a few people off at least, with any luck.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

There's been a lot of drama about that in one of my communities - people claiming it's unfair because the people haven't actually committed a crime, because they didn't have sex with any kids, they just thought they were going to, and it's unfair to arrest them for 'having thoughts'

O_O

[mark13.livejournal.com]

Not really - it's pretty standard. All it's doing is indemnifying them against people trying to sue them when they do remove their extremely dubious Harry Potter slash from LJ. 'Just because it's legal, that doesn't mean we want it on our servers' seems to be the gist.

I'm far more interested by clauses a and c - 'threats' against the president and providing instructions for illegal acts, etc, etc, seem rather open to interpretation.

Surely "Mark my words, Bush, I'm gonna vote you out!" is a threat against the president.

And if I said "If you want to speed, all you need to do is get in a car, turn it on, put it in gear and put your foot down till you reach 120mph", that would be breaking the third one.

I hope they wouldn't be that severe (cos I've just fucked myself if they are!), but it always makes me nervous when rules are published that contain that much leeway.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I find all 3 clauses fascinating!

A - because the way it's worded it appears that threatening the president is against the law. So if you made a joke Bush, and a neighbour reported you, you can be arrested? Scary stuff! But i guess we probably have similar laws about the queen...

C - i just find this one funny!

[aliasrob.livejournal.com]

I'm going to kill the shit out of the President.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

OMG YOURE LIEK TOTALY BANINATED

aliasrob

[s0b.livejournal.com]

there were many discussions on usenet about censorship, usually after the start of an academic year or shortly after aol launched when people called for the "moderator"[1].

The thing is that LJ/6 apart is a business and, as a result, it has to consider the investors as well as the customers.

If they come the heavy handed censor then we vote with our virtual feet.

If you want technocratic freedom of speech, usenet is still there - it's possible to get people kicked off (alt.gothic.special-forces were rather good at it), but in most cases if you kept to your own specialist areas and didn't feed the trolls it was pretty easy to just get on with things)

I suspect Slash was born on usenet, an unlikely coupling of the alt.hierachy and unix sysadmins who were uncertain of their sexuality; back then Christianity had yet to discover the internet and we were ruled by the worshipers of Shub-Internet[2] and the Usenet Cabal[3]

If you want to play a ball game with no rules then you need to use your own ball.

[1] most usenet groups were unmoderated, and even those that were were pretty easy to hack - indeed alt.hackers was moderated but had no moderator, if you couldn't work out how to post you couldn't post.

[2] [MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the Internet, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail -- its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of the Web, FTP and TELNET when the system slows down. The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon.

[January 1996: It develops that one of the computer administrators in the basement of the Pentagon read this entry and fell over laughing. As a result, you too can now poke Shub-Internet by pinging shub-internet.ims.disa.mil. See also kremvax. -- ESR]

[3] "Remember--there is no Cabal."

[yaruar.livejournal.com]

Slash was pre internet from what i remember about it's dark and dank spock/kirkien history, although usenet certainly gave people the impression they were more normal than they were before.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Now don't get me wrong, I love Freedom. I don't mind paying for LJ as it provides a service that is useful to me, but paying users are a tiny minority here (is it even 5%?) and I have never been entirely comfortable about subsidizing furries/slashers/larpers/polys/whatever. If they were to go to another host, it would be no great loss. Usenet still exists, and it's "free"...

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

what exactly are larpers doing wrong? What do you mean 'subsidisng larpers'? You know a lot of our friends do that, right?

I may not be down with furries, slashers or polys, none are my thing AT ALL, but as far as i'm concerned anything consenting adults want to do with other consenting adults is A-OK.

But dude, what's the beef with larpers? not cool. And what on earth do you mean by 'subsidising' them?

Or is this another 'I'm Guy, I'm going to say something inflammatory to piss people off, oh har har' thing?

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

I'm significantly more worried about the part where there T&C now appears to cover *text based links* to anything they would deem objectionable content if they were hosting. (not embedded pictures etc, just a 'fred smith explains why *this picture* is a criminal balh blah') I need to go digging to see if that's been reported correctly, but if it has ... that's not a good place to draw a line, LJ.

But the whole underage slash thing? Squicks me. - but underage het doesn't? Sorry - the way you worded that is sliding two things together in a way that bothers me. (Surely, presenting children in an erotic manner = wrong regardless of the gender patterns?)

lets finish my post before i click 'post' this time!!!

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I've C&Pd directly from LJ_Biz, so assuming LJ staff have not reported their own policy incorrectly, it's correct reporting.

I think you are deliberately nit-picking my words there, i'm not sure why. You;ve taken a comment out of context, of course it reads wrong. I'm rather offended that I'd need to spell it out.

ok with slash = not ok with child slash
ok with porn = not ok with child porn.

Better?

On re-reading your comment, perhaps it's simply my misunderstanding of 'slash' seeing as you mention gender. I was under the impression that slash = fanfic where fictional characters bang each other. If it's specifically gay sex, then that's me not knowing the terminology.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

okay - that's a terminology problem.

fanfic=fanfic

slash = same sex pairings
het = opposite sex pairings
gen = no pairings

I have a hot button about <-- this --> wide about the way homosexuality and paedophilia are slid together, consciously and un, and I was pulling you up on the language, precisely *because* I didn't think you really meant what you'd said.

[angel-emma.livejournal.com]

Well I must say I do agree with you even though I used to be very into the whole HP fandom. I do still have newsletters on my fl and two have now gone on hiatus as they can't link to anything anymore. I have always HATED anything chan with a passion as it is wrong and wrong and yes wrong. What I do find interesting though, is that it is nearly all women who are into slash and chan (underage) slash certainly in the HP community. Not that it makes it any less squicky/wrong/weird but I don't think it's quite the same as a male paedophile who grooms young kids or uses the net to pretend to be a child etc.

The other thing is that it is fantasy. So where do you draw the line?

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

You saying women can't be paedophiles? Careful now ;)

I think if someone is being turned on by the idea of underage sex, there is a problem, regardless of wether it's fiction or not.

Many convicted paedophiles actually *can't* tell the difference between where their fantasies end and reality begins- hence the often held belief that the child 'really wanted it'.

I'm sure most of those women would baulk at the thought of ever actually *doing* anything, but to flatly deny the connection is naive at best.

[jaketherat.livejournal.com]

The trouble with your point is that you're trying to answer several different questions in one.

Firstly the question over whether LJ is entitled to censor its content - absolutely yes, no question. It's not under any legal obligation to tell us why, even. Morally I'd say it should, but for a business venture like LJ these type of questions are ultimately established by market forces rather than morality - if they felt they were losing more users/revenue through people taking umbrage at censorship than they were through people taking exception at the content that would be subject to that censorship then the decision would automatically be made for them. I'm pretty certain that this will be the basis along which the lines are finally drawn, although they are bound to swing around a bit at first whilst testing the consensus.

The second question inherent in your point is whether or not people should be held to account for their sexuality when the nature of that sexuality transgresses social norms. This is the abstract of the question we were discussing in the bestiality debate. For me the simple answer to this is no - sexuality is not a matter of choice. Others feel differently. Which leads to question three:

Is it ok to act on fantasies that involve sex with kids? The current social consensus, with which I am in agreement, is no. The basis of this position is in the belief that children are unable to freely give consent, therefore that the paedophile's right to a physical expression of their sexuality is null and void because it impinges on the rights of another (i.e. the child) to live a life free from molestation and involuntary sexual activity, which leads to point four:

Does the making of images or writing of texts which are graphically descriptive of acts which fall into socially transgressive categories, and the subsequent censorship/criminalisation of said material/acts represent thought policing and villification of an unchosen sexuality as described in point two, or does it constitute an infringement on childrens' right to a harrasment free life as per point three? On the one hand, you have the argument that people are entitled to self-expression, regardless of the nature of that self and whether society finds it acceptable or otherwise. On the other hand is the argument that the making and distribution of this material could titillate individuals who already fantasise about such things and encourage them into making their fantasy manifest. This question is by far and away the most complex one to answer, and also strikes to the heart of related debates such as the whole violent porn issue (and in fact the pornography debate in general). I remain agnostic on this one, although leaning towards the freedom of expression camp simply because censorship in general sticks in my craw.

And that is my ten pence worth!

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

good answer!!!

[jaketherat.livejournal.com]

Anyway Harry's 17 now, that makes him totally legal! :P

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

i think you have to be 18 to be in porn though - so he may be legally viable to have hte sexy-times with, but not to be in porn...

Also, the picture that started the fuss showed Snape, um, doing the thing that he's doing. I'm pretty sure teachers aren't allowed to do that!

Of course Harry's not a real person, but you get my drift!

I now have this whole other disturbing tail-off tangential mind-drift about the wizarding porn industry, and wondering if there would be one, of if they watch muffle porn, and if there is wizard porn, how much more interesting it would be, but how many bad jokes about wands there's be, and it wouldn't be about fixing the fridge, and...and...and...

Please lobotomise me now, it WON'T STOP.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

learning is fun!

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

the thing with ponderosa121's picture - i'm guessing that's the snape/harry pic you're talking about, since i know it's making its way around the internets - is that harry is apparently supposed to be over eighteen. she didn't draw fifteen-year-old harry getting down and dirty with snape. but she also didn't have any kind of note or disclaimer or anything stating that her harry is of age, and her style tends to show guys as looking younger than they are anyway. people outside harry potter fandom can't easily conceive of harry being old enough to have sex, because he's so young in the books, and that's where some of the disconnect is. i'm not defending harry/snape, because the student/teacher thing squicks me, but if some fan artist wants to draw an adult harry having sex with an adult snape, they should be allowed to do so without fear of getting suspended.

also part of the problem is that lj/6a had previously said that they were targeting art of actual kids in their search for child porn, and not illustrations of fictional characters. yeah, ponderosa should've made a point to say that the harry in her pic was of age, but she was also working under the assumption that fanart was pretty safe. also, harry could've been twenty in her pic, and the fact that she drew a young-looking guy having sex acts performed upon him does not mean she advocates child porn/abuse/molestation, or that she gets off on the idea of fifteen-year-olds having sex with adults.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

Trouble with a picture like that, is that the characters are known. If they were two random characters, fine, you don't know their age, but this is harry potter, everyone knows that. A picture is like anything, it will mean what the audience believes it means, as well as whatever the original author meant.

Personally, i found that picture completely vile. Harry Potter are children's books. Ok, the later ones are suitable for young adults, but they are teen fiction. Not adult fiction. You can tell me the characters in that picture are any age you like, but at some point it *has* to be accepted that the vast majority of people, seeing that picture, are going to say 'that's disgusting'. It's a teacher performing a sexual act on a young boy, regardless of his age.

And in the books, he's 17. Not old enough to act in porn ;)

I'm with yaruar - i am baffled as to how so many in this version of 'fandom' can't see/accept that this is on a par with child pornography.

FWIW, i think it's Germany where banned child pornography includes fictional images. I believe there's been problems with second life for that reason, people having child avatars and seeing cyber-sex with adult avatars. I'm not necessarily saying i agree, i think some images may have artistic merit. Trevor Brown is one artist off the top of my head that probably walks that perilous line between artwork and WRONGness.

But when the primary intention is to sexually titulate, and i can't see what other intention such a picture as the one in question would have, where is the artistic merit? I am afraid i fail to see it.

[minigoth.livejournal.com]

The "Threats against the President and successors to the Presidency" worries me as there seems to be only a few slight changes from...being put away for your view. Too Nazi Germany for my liking, really.