Big Brother Where Art Thou?

[eumelia]

It's so odd that Americans, who are the biggest free speech advocates, wish to put as many restrictions as possible on free speech and all that.

Most of you know that Live journal has, again, decided to protect us (or, you know, cater to their conservative share-holders and submit themselves to the neo-liberal financial market) from all the "bad" content on the Internet.
That would be Sex, Sex and Sex that isn't vanilla between two consenting adults.

I'd talk about the paradoxical and irony of these cases as seen in the context of modern society and mass consumerism, but what for when it's just so painfully obvious.

In any event, LJ it seems, does not know the difference between promotion, solicitation, pandering and fiction or discussion. And are going Big Brother on us again.

Seeing as my personal LJ has no content that can be seen as questionable (other than my discussion of Slash) I feel secure that I will not be targeted. I am, however, sick of these neo-fascist rules that they are pilling one on top of the other.

There's already someone working on an alternate site (twocorpses here) and I will be following the progress of that site.

In addition, the genocide in Darfur must be stopped.

וכמו כן, צריך לעצור את רצח העם בדרפור.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

The problem is that as soon as lots of people go to greatestjournal, or wherever. THey will end up going down the exact same route as livejournal. Investors will sniff money, advertisors will move in, and the rules will follow.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

*nods*
I know, which is why I'm thinking I'll learn Wordpress, or whatever other template is available and create my own independent blog which I'll cross post here until I have enough of a readership... but, you never know :)

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

Which is why I like twocorpses idea.Especially if she and astrata from fandom_flies do the thing together, as astrata committed to whatever service fandom_flies gets up being incorporated as non-profit organization and twocorpses's pledge for clear and concise TOS as well as her pledge not to put ads in personal journals.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Of course this whole thing may not be about censorship or obscenity at all, there's some interesting rumours around that it's actually about copyright and trademark infringement, and the powers that be are cracking down on those who use their trademarks for purposes they are not comfortable with. Like Harry Potter characters having sex for example.

If there was one fandom that was going to bring in the lawyers to stop the fandom party, it was always going to be Harry Potter.

In which case it doesn't matter where people go, the lawyers will follow with cease and desist orders.

It may be that after being born on email lists, and then migrating to blogs, fandom might have to go back to email lists again.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

If there was one fandom that was going to bring in the lawyers to stop the fandom party, it was always going to be Harry Potter.

Which is odd, because Ms. Rowling has stated more than once that fanfiction doesn't bother her (I'm inclined to believe she reads and took some ideas she liked from stories, because I've read stuff in the books that I know read online before. Not to mention that her own characters in her books get up to their own shenanigans of their (despite being of the PG kind, though the violence is most definitely R. Why "meaningless" violence is more acceptable than "meaningless" sex, I'll never understand).

I mean the age differences between some the couples is immense!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I'd be incredibly flattered if people wrote fanfic about something I created. True sign of adoration that.

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

if it's anything like tv contracts, she should be obligated not to read fic. i know sorkin and such are not allowed.

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

Um, I think that Rowling is more in the position of Lucas- she had a huge amount of pressure she could extend on the publisher the moment she became bestseller, since she's "the goose that lays the golden eggs", or more correctly, diamond studded eggs.She makes them lots and lots of money- it isn't worth the hassle and potential PR damage from their POV for what is ultimately a rather small issue.

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

i don't think you're aware of the size of damage a copyright lawsuit might do.

although i do believe that, at this point, everyone has written any possible idea about harry potter so if she got anything by mistake, it really could be just an honest mistake.

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

It *is* possible.But the fan would have to prove it was his/her idea first, and that s/he wasn't infringing on Rowling's intellectual property by writing that fanfic, as much of the reason fanfic isn't C&Ded is the fact that clever publishers and producers consider it good publicity.

Add in the fact that a small(say, less then 10%?) portion of the Potter revenue could hire some very good lawyers and I suspect that for big leaguers like her it isn't much of an issue.

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

so how do you explain tv writers not being allowed to read fic?

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

I think they're exactly in that uncomfortable place:too big to be ignored by lawsuit-happy fans, too small to be able to squash them without harming the profitability of the show considerably.

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

C&D isn't the issue here.At least not according to LJ- there was one user who has been banned due to C&D issues recently that I know of and even fandom communities agree it was warranted(he published a page-by-page review of HP7 twice, and had two outstanding warnings besides).The artists were banned without warning for drawings somebody thought looked like "underage sex"(I saw one of them, both participants look like adults to me)- a wholly different kettle of fish.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw one of the drawings too, and *definitely* not underage. Kinda makes me think the LJ Abuse team member who banned it was probably operating under homophobia rather than a desire to protect the children from the evil abusing Harry Potter fans.

[aesiron.livejournal.com]

I have no strong opinion on this controversy or the one that proceeded it, though my own does differ from yours (and is summarized quite well by redcoast in her journal but it's locked, unfortunately) and I am going to miss your presence on LJ if you actually follow through with this.

You'll have an RSS feed, right?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Care to tell me your opinion :)

[aesiron.livejournal.com]

I don't care anywhere near enough to try to put her words into mine so I just asked her permission to copy and paste her entry, which is thus:

LJ is suspending fandom members again. They've also gotten rid of the strikethrough symbol that used to represent suspended members, like so: ponderosa121. Now it's just bold.

Previously, they suspended mightygodking for posting a review of the new Harry Potter book before it was released. Now, I just don't like mightygodking. He gets on my nerves. And there are some extenuating circumstances pertaining to this (his "review" was a page-by-page summary of the book, his journal receives a buttload of hits due to his alleged funny Civil War comic spoof, and he took down the post in question and reposted it, which is probably what got him suspended anyway), but mostly that is total bullshit. I wish Six Apart would side with its members against bully moves by Scholastic, especially prominent members like mightygodking.

[...]

But still: if I move (it'll have to wait until I have money again!) I'm not doing it for the Harry Potter fandom. jim_smith is right, nobody in fandom protested when mightygodking was suspended, but when this girl is booted for drawing porn, then they protest. Pornography has always taken precedent over everything else in fandom.

In a big way, Livejournal Harry Potter Fandom, this is your fault. Yes, YOU. You tolerate and encourage this sort of thing. This is not a constant over fandom, I've participated in several fandoms where if you began joking around about statutory rape or incest, you would have the hell shunned out of you, if that makes any sense. You could make the argument that fictional depictions don't hurt anybody (sometimes it does, actually), but it certainly isn't responsible or respectable.

Honestly, what do you expect from 6 Apart/nonfandom? Bring in an objective nonfandom third-party (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1837941,00.html) and you get reactions like this:

It's a seminar analysing Hermione Granger-Professor Snape fan fiction. That is to say, a relationship between a teenage girl and a fortysomething man, which often, it transpires, takes the form of a rape narrative. There are 200 women in the room. And a whole lot of talk about female empowerment and gender reversals, but, frankly, if it was 200 men talking about rape narratives involving underage schoolchildren, it would be a matter for the police, and I don't think this is empowering anybody.

But then, when it comes to fan fiction, there really are no limits. In 'Written in the Dark of Nox: Fan Fiction and the Social Taboo', the speaker does a quick poll to see who present writes narratives involving bestiality. Hands shoot up. There's just one man in the room who spends the entire session staring at the carpet.

I corner him on the way out. 'I came with my girlfriend!' he says, quickly.

I thought it was just about liking nice cuddly wizards, I say.

'So did I!' he says. 'Jeez! I mean.'

Naturally the reporter was near-universally attacked by fandom for being "unfair" or something.

The defence of things like Hermione/Snape rape fics is that they have "artistic merit." Like that fic of underage Dean/Sam which was basically a story about child molestation from the POV of the molester. Sure, it was well written, and the person who wrote it explained that she was molested by a cousin when she was young and was trying to work through her issues - artist merit, right? Well, the first page of reviews (before general opinion turned on her) didn't say, "Boy, that really makes me think." No, it was "OMG so hot I am wanking so hard right now."

Anyway, how is it not pedophilic or at least ephebophilic for adults to get off to the idea of children having sex? Do fandom members feel exempt because most of them are women?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, I see your point.
Personally, I didn't know about the other person who posted the spoilers, had I known I would have protested as well, since spoilers are a whole lot less explosive than porn, but oh, well.

Now, speaking in the context of HP which is where this all coming from, I'm a Hermione/Snape Fan. Fanfiction, in many ways, is like fantasy, fantasy is not always, in fact often does not mean that we wish them in real life.
Everyone who known me, my family, my friends and my readers, know I oppose rape, think sexual exploitation is bad, to say the least, and that pedophilia is one of the most disgusting things in existance.

An example: A few days ago a British actor I admire was accused of having sexual relations with a fourteen year old and I said "awww, crap, I really liked him". I wish we were back in the days when people's private lives were private.

I really have no problem with thoughts, and certainly not fantasies which more often than not do not correlate with reality. Rape fantasies, as we know, are more common than not and yet you cannot say that a rape victim asked for it.
I'm sure more people, of both sexes, think of sex with people who are underage as fantasies than there are actual people who pursue it.

The thought of pedophilia or ephebophilla are not criminal or inherently bad. Pursuing child pornography is and I'm sorry but writing and drawing fictional characters is not the same, it isn't the same medium.
Warnings about content must be put up and one can safely ignore the offending material.

More often than not I've not read fiction which depicts sexual content with people under the age of 15 or 16, simply because that was when I began to be sexual with people other than myself.

The point is Porn does take precedence because it's fantasy. And Fandom is all about the fantasy.

This comment kinda turned into a post, didn't it?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Ah, crap I forgot to close the bold HTML.

[aesiron.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I don't care anywhere enough to argue or debate about it and the only thing that bothers me about this whole ordeal is that I might lose you, her, and other friends over it if or when you leave.

Also, while I agree with redcoast, I do see what you're saying and, for what it's worth, one of my chief fantasies is non-consentual.

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

Actually, mightygodking was suspended for blatant copyright infringement(i.e. was breaking the law), *and* was warned specifically about that same post before.These artists did neither, they weren't even given the opportunity to chose to remove the offending drawing.

This isn't about two artists.This is about borders.This is about trust.6A,in the person of Barak Berkiwitz, their CEO, *promised* fandom at large that no journal will be banned without warning because of content.They broke their word, and they are ignoring requests for clarification.Therefor they aren't worthy of the trust fans put in them.They had their chance, they didn't use it.Their problem.