Boldthrough07
This comment was posted by stormcloude in news here:
I guess Six Apart has drawn a line in the sand:
Dear LiveJournal user stormcloude,
The comment you are referring to is correct; the content does not meet the legal definition of child pornography. As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, non-photographic content involving minors in sexual situations which does not contain serious artistic or literary merit is likely in violation of Federal obscenity laws, and is content LiveJournal has chosen not to host.
Additionally, the Terms of Service (http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml) does not include any statement indicating that users will be warned prior to alternate actions. Specifically,
section XVI Member Conduct, at the bottom, explicitly states "If LiveJournal determines, in its sole and absolute discretion, that any user is in violation of the TOS, LiveJournal retains the right to terminate such user's account at any time without prior notice." While LiveJournal does not do so in the instances of many violations of the Terms of Service, the policy adopted for this particular violation is to terminate without warning. You can find information on other policies at http://ww.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml.
The standard for artistic merit is not whether a work simply has technical merit; it is whether there is serious artistic value that offsets the sexual nature of the content. A group consisting of members of LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff reviewed the content that was reported to us. This group decides whether material potentially in violation of this policy warrants consideration for serious artistic value. In this case, they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors.
Regards,
Eric
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team
Add that to the fact that they are going to be adding a "report abuse" button to all posts from now on and it looks pretty convincing to me that they are trying to chase fandom away.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
So. LJ Abuse admits that the art in question is not child pornography, but it is against their TOS because they've decided it has "no serious artistic value," and is therefore obscene.
This is what they told ponderosa121 when they permanently suspended her LJ:
Dear LiveJournal user ponderosa121,
It has come to our attention that one of your entries, located at http://community.livejournal.com/pornish_pixies/470020.html, contains drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations. Such content is in violation of our policies, and we take action when it is reported to us.
Due to the nature of this violation, your accounts have been permanently suspended, and we regret that we cannot allow you to create additional accounts on LiveJournal.
Regards,
Scott
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team
You will note that they don't specifically say that the drawing is obscene. They only say that content "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations" is "in violation of our policies." That exact language is nowhere in their TOS.
This is what is:
You agree to NOT use the Service to:
1. Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another's privacy (up to, but not excluding any address, email, phone number, or any other contact information without the written consent of the owner of such information), hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;[emphasis mine]
...
The TOS prohibits you from posting anything "obscene." It isn't limited to material "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations." LJ has decided to selectively enforce its obscenity clause against certain types of "obscene" material. Nor have they placed a blanket ban on all material "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations." Several authors have posted stories involving minors having sex and self-reported them, and have been told that their stories do not violate LJ's policies. (Ari-O, for example.) What is against their policies and what isn't comes down to whether or not their team of "art critics" decides your work has "serious artistic value." And if it doesn't? Their response is to suspend journals with no warning and no recourse.
I don't know about you, but I don't want a team of LJ and 6A employees deciding whether my stories or drawings have "serious artistic value." I don't want to wake up one morning and find my LJ gone because someone pressed the "report abuse" button on a Yu-Gi-Oh! story I wrote years ago.
How many of our fandoms involve teenagers under 18? Forget Harry Potter, what about Buffy? She had sex with Angel when she was 16 on the show. What about Queer as Folk? Justin lost his virginity at 15. I'm sure there are tons of others. Smallville, DCU, any show about high school students, a large chunk of anime-many, many fandoms include characters under the age of 18 that are the objects of fannish lust. Right now, they seem to be going after Harry Potter fans, because that's what's being reported to them. That can change any time. It could already be happening-it may be that we're only hearing about the Harry Potter cases because it's such a big fandom that the news gets around faster.
And there's no assurance that LJ's policies won't change to include erotica involving adults as well. That little word "obscene" up there covers pretty much anything they want it to. Obscenity has always been notoriously hard to define. (There's an interesting article at the First Amendment Center on Pornography & Obscenity.)
I know that LJ's TOS language is pretty standard, and most journaling services have similar clauses. There's no guarantee any service won't start deleting fannish journals if enough pressure is put on them. But LJ already has. They've permanently suspended journals without warning in two separate waves now. The first time, when they went after purported child abusers based on listed interests, they claimed they couldn't unsuspend the journals to allow people to delete the offending interests due to liability in case the person committed a crime later. (See this post, for example.) In the current cases, that doesn't apply because they've admitted the artwork in question is not necessarily illegal, so there's no liability to them if the person goes on to draw obscene artwork again.
As the situation currently stands, anyone posting erotica cannot know for certain whether or not what they're posting is acceptable. And if it isn't? Their journal goes boom with no warning.
If LJ/6A are not going to make objective and clearly understandable rules about acceptable content, I think that they owe it to people to notify them first and allow them to remove the objectionable material before permanently suspending them.
My other journals and blogs are listed in my profile. Come visit me there.
I guess Six Apart has drawn a line in the sand:
Dear LiveJournal user stormcloude,
The comment you are referring to is correct; the content does not meet the legal definition of child pornography. As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, non-photographic content involving minors in sexual situations which does not contain serious artistic or literary merit is likely in violation of Federal obscenity laws, and is content LiveJournal has chosen not to host.
Additionally, the Terms of Service (http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml) does not include any statement indicating that users will be warned prior to alternate actions. Specifically,
section XVI Member Conduct, at the bottom, explicitly states "If LiveJournal determines, in its sole and absolute discretion, that any user is in violation of the TOS, LiveJournal retains the right to terminate such user's account at any time without prior notice." While LiveJournal does not do so in the instances of many violations of the Terms of Service, the policy adopted for this particular violation is to terminate without warning. You can find information on other policies at http://ww.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml.
The standard for artistic merit is not whether a work simply has technical merit; it is whether there is serious artistic value that offsets the sexual nature of the content. A group consisting of members of LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff reviewed the content that was reported to us. This group decides whether material potentially in violation of this policy warrants consideration for serious artistic value. In this case, they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors.
Regards,
Eric
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team
Add that to the fact that they are going to be adding a "report abuse" button to all posts from now on and it looks pretty convincing to me that they are trying to chase fandom away.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
So. LJ Abuse admits that the art in question is not child pornography, but it is against their TOS because they've decided it has "no serious artistic value," and is therefore obscene.
This is what they told ponderosa121 when they permanently suspended her LJ:
Dear LiveJournal user ponderosa121,
It has come to our attention that one of your entries, located at http://community.livejournal.com/pornish_pixies/470020.html, contains drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations. Such content is in violation of our policies, and we take action when it is reported to us.
Due to the nature of this violation, your accounts have been permanently suspended, and we regret that we cannot allow you to create additional accounts on LiveJournal.
Regards,
Scott
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team
You will note that they don't specifically say that the drawing is obscene. They only say that content "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations" is "in violation of our policies." That exact language is nowhere in their TOS.
This is what is:
You agree to NOT use the Service to:
1. Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another's privacy (up to, but not excluding any address, email, phone number, or any other contact information without the written consent of the owner of such information), hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;[emphasis mine]
...
The TOS prohibits you from posting anything "obscene." It isn't limited to material "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations." LJ has decided to selectively enforce its obscenity clause against certain types of "obscene" material. Nor have they placed a blanket ban on all material "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations." Several authors have posted stories involving minors having sex and self-reported them, and have been told that their stories do not violate LJ's policies. (Ari-O, for example.) What is against their policies and what isn't comes down to whether or not their team of "art critics" decides your work has "serious artistic value." And if it doesn't? Their response is to suspend journals with no warning and no recourse.
I don't know about you, but I don't want a team of LJ and 6A employees deciding whether my stories or drawings have "serious artistic value." I don't want to wake up one morning and find my LJ gone because someone pressed the "report abuse" button on a Yu-Gi-Oh! story I wrote years ago.
How many of our fandoms involve teenagers under 18? Forget Harry Potter, what about Buffy? She had sex with Angel when she was 16 on the show. What about Queer as Folk? Justin lost his virginity at 15. I'm sure there are tons of others. Smallville, DCU, any show about high school students, a large chunk of anime-many, many fandoms include characters under the age of 18 that are the objects of fannish lust. Right now, they seem to be going after Harry Potter fans, because that's what's being reported to them. That can change any time. It could already be happening-it may be that we're only hearing about the Harry Potter cases because it's such a big fandom that the news gets around faster.
And there's no assurance that LJ's policies won't change to include erotica involving adults as well. That little word "obscene" up there covers pretty much anything they want it to. Obscenity has always been notoriously hard to define. (There's an interesting article at the First Amendment Center on Pornography & Obscenity.)
I know that LJ's TOS language is pretty standard, and most journaling services have similar clauses. There's no guarantee any service won't start deleting fannish journals if enough pressure is put on them. But LJ already has. They've permanently suspended journals without warning in two separate waves now. The first time, when they went after purported child abusers based on listed interests, they claimed they couldn't unsuspend the journals to allow people to delete the offending interests due to liability in case the person committed a crime later. (See this post, for example.) In the current cases, that doesn't apply because they've admitted the artwork in question is not necessarily illegal, so there's no liability to them if the person goes on to draw obscene artwork again.
As the situation currently stands, anyone posting erotica cannot know for certain whether or not what they're posting is acceptable. And if it isn't? Their journal goes boom with no warning.
If LJ/6A are not going to make objective and clearly understandable rules about acceptable content, I think that they owe it to people to notify them first and allow them to remove the objectionable material before permanently suspending them.
My other journals and blogs are listed in my profile. Come visit me there.