Constant vigilance!

[sunnyskywalker]

So, more people have been banned from LJ in a smaller, slower version of Strikethrough '07. synechdocic points out that LJ isn't doing this just for kicks or even for ad revenue, but because they're rightly afraid of running afoul of US law. I'm in very little danger of getting TOSed (I think), and I don't know anyone involved, but I still don't like this. If the characters look like they might be of age, shouldn't LJ at least ask the artists about it (or ask them to take it down if they still think it's too iffy) before deleting?

This is depressing. If it were just LJ policy, it would be a lot easier to put pressure on LJ to cut that out, or to just move to another site. But it looks like either option would only be a short-term solution. What to do?

But in case LJ does explode, or everyone just leaves in a Great Fannish Migration, I have a GreatestJournal and an InsaneJournal set up for the short-term solution. (IJ says it also uses the Miller Test, and that it won't take anything down without an official takedown notice, for the record. On the other hand, they haven't been pressured like LJ yet as far as I know, either.)

Another benefit to having those journals? Backup. Of course, there is ljArchive, which backs up your LJ (comments included) on your hard drive. (ETA: screecapped tutorial here.) This is good to have. But multiple backups in different places are also good to have, just in case a magnet attacks your computer. I've recently started transferring my LJ entries to my GJ and IJ with LJ-Sec. There's a handy guide on how to do so here. I've also just started using Semagic to post to all three journals at once. Guide on how to do so here.

I recommend backing up things regardless of external events, since you never know when your hard drive or the internet might explode. The backup journals serve as both storage and as a way to find lost friends should something happen to LJ, so they're doubly convenient.

Now that I have backups on the brain, I need to get on backing up some of my personal documents...

Comments

[plasticinecupid.livejournal.com]

quoted from synechdochic's post (http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/147625.html):

"'It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.'"

OK, I didn't realize before that the law is this ridiculous. That's like Jesus saying that thinking about sinning is the same as sinning. But even Jesus didn't mean it like this law does. "Sins" of fantasy go to the confessional, not to court! This sort of thing doesn't belong in the law. Not only is this unjust and unconstitutional, it's a waste of government resources that should be committed to incarcerating/prosecuting people who actually harm children.

I don't blame LJ at all for taking this sort of thing seriously. The internet doesn't exist in a vacuum, though a lot of people who use it don't get that yet, apparently. People need to start at least glancing at the terms of service agreements that they agree to when signing up for services like LJ. For crying out loud, all hosting admins reserve the right to delete your shit for any reason whatever. And they usually specify "No sexually explicit materials," or something similar. People who want more control do have other options (self-hosting, or even choosing less public domains).

Thanks for the backup links!

[sunnyskywalker]

It's so ridiculous. Don't we have better things to worry about than whether a fictional seventeen-year-old is having fictional sex for unknown reasons?

I don't blame LJ at all for taking it seriously. I'm much more upset about their poor customer service - how hard is it to set clearer guidelines and then stick to them? The TOS isn't very clear, and the clarifications in ljbiz and news aren't very clear either. If they had just said "no sexually explicit art with under-18s involved" back in May, when people were asking for clarifications like that, we'd be fine. But instead it's been months of waffle like "Well, some explicit material is allowed, within certain guidelines of taste and artistic merit and trying not to be illegal, so, um, try not to step over the invisible boundaries." And while they have the right to delete with no warning, it would be better policy to, say, delete the offending entry and warn the user rather than permabanning the user from LJ for ever with no warning. That's just dumb.

[plasticinecupid.livejournal.com]

Ugh. You're right; guidelines like that need to be clear. Subjective qualities such as "artistic merit" still end up getting tested in court-- one doesn't have to be pre-law to know that. What a mess. Still, if I had a twincest fanfic community, I wouldn't be surprised if the mods deleted it upon discovery, even without a clear policy against its contents. It would piss me off, but it would also be understandable. That example doesn't cover LJ's deletions, I realize; I was merely defending their wish to avoid hosting pedophilia, not the poor way that they handled it.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yes, I can definitely see why LJ doesn't want to host certain content. I can also understand how a lot of things that seem obvious to fans (like AUs and the fact that the kids in HP grow up to be legal adults) aren't so obvious to outsiders, and I see how they could make mistakes sometimes because of that. So yeah, I think we agree :D