Clearer, but With Interesting Wrinkles

[mishalak]

There has been a lot of talk, including by me, that we wanted a clear guideline to go by to know if we were in violation of whatever metric LiveJournal and Six Apart use to determine if they will host an entry or not. Notably there was a draft Open Letter by bubble_blunder with something like 1000 comment 'signatures' on it. Many of the questions asked have been answered by this post by theljstaff in lj_biz.

It seems that LJ does not want to host anything that could be remotely construed as child pornography, especially in visual arts. Regardless of if they are right or wrong with this policy it seems prudent that any sexual fanart of a character that is underage (less than 18) in the primary source material about him/her should be hastily locked and then moved to another host. Even if it is only vaguely sexual. There seems to be some greater latitude afforded to fan fiction since it is clearer if a person is over 18 in text (mostly), but I would still error on the side of caution and investigate a host like http://yaoi.y-gallery.net/ very quickly.

But it is also interesting that they specifically state that in addition to anything that might be construed as child pornography that "Content that encourages or advocates hate crimes" is also on their hit list. It will be interesting to see how this works in action. It could just be a feel good sop to everyone offended that they appeared to ally themselves with the gay bashing group 'Warriors for Innocence'.

The next line is interesting as well as it is not expanded upon as the fan fic/fan art aspects are in the Q&A. "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."

It was and still is a very bad idea to write about illegal activities, even under a pseudonym. It is probably a bad idea even in an encoded physical journal, though probably less so than writing about it in 'locked' posts on the internet. (I wonder if I should write a short story about someone writing in their teens in an anonymous online journal being rejected for a job in his twenties by a company that uses a program to 'connect the dots' on different pseudonyms and names to connect someone to online writings.) It seems like, from this, that if a person is only harming him or herself in things like speeding or recreational drug use they are not going to come down on that. But the drug use is probably on the fuzzy edge of what they're going to toss without warning.

As of now I still find LJ useful. Though this three month slow moving episode has served as a useful reminder that it is not just my friends listening in on my journal. It is anyone who cares to look and at times that might not be to my liking. I am also thinking that I should, perhaps, write under a stronger nom de plume. As even though I think a coming of age story about a gay teen is interesting it might get me in trouble if I published. Just to pick the example that I am most likely to write.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Surely the Oceans * heist films would be banned by that? And they would object to my posting the 16 digit hdvd code a few months back. And what if I wanted to espouse my revolutionary politics?

No-one thinks that crime fiction encourages crime, the hex code issue was an complaint about the lunacy of a company claiming copyright on a number, and most political talk is just hot air.

Making your journal friends only solves the employer issues, but the sysadmins and the feds can still read anything you write. This should not bother me because my views are a lot less dangerous than others, but in the post-911 lunacy days of computer filtering, idiotic laws and the abandonment of habeas corpus, I'm not so sure.