Fifty Ways To Leave (without unduly inconveniencing yourself).

[icarus]

I've been following the whole debacle where two fan artists who posted Harry Potter drawings have had their journals suspended, all their unrelated journals suspended, and been issued permanent bans from LJ. It's now officially called boldthrough. The fact that LJ tried to cover its ass by unlinking deleted journals (thus no more obvious icarus) has irritated me the most. Cowards. Pick a policy, make it clear, and stick with it. Then you don't need to cover your ass when you've followed your own damned rules.

I described the whole situation to WG and he got that narrow-eyed look he gets when he's seeing through the bullshit. The guys at his work says he looks like a cop, and I agree.

He said finally, "They're being threatened at LJ."

Yep.

Based on the Rolling Stone article, Perverted Justice is just another hate group, one that's got a popular target. Like the KKK in the post-Civil War south.

The real fear is not online predators. It's a fear of technology with "online sex predators!" as a buzzword.

Regarding moving to another service:

It's hard for me to move. I'm scattered across four fandoms. The HP readers and friends might pack up and leave while the Stargate Atlantis and Supernatural people stay put. Wherever we go, we'll face the same problems from people who can't distinguish between art and reality.

I support the idea of a fan-created blog network, and I think femmequixotic's response -- "Let's think it through first" -- is the right one.

That's how I left Earthlink. I didn't get up in arms or inconvenience myself.

- First I bought my Slashcity account and moved all my fics to it from my old Earthlink page.
- Then I changed whatever links to my old site I could.
- I added new fics, got everyone up to speed and in the habit of using my new site for about six months beforehand.
- My next move should have been a redirect to the new site but I didn't know how to do that.
- I'd already moved my email to Yahoo and Gmail.

Finally, Earthlink pissed me off one more time, with a service outage for three days that they didn't even apologize for. When I canceled my service, I was transfered to a hard-sell guy in India.

Hard sell guy: "But you will lose all your contacts to your email account."
Icarus: "I use gmail."

He never brought up the web space which was the main thing keeping me there. I guess he understood I was serious.

Make it easy for yourself to move:

1) Go back through your posts and link all your art and fanfiction to a website or archive. If you have a comment feature there, so much the better. This has the plus of enabling you to track hit counts on your stories and protects you from any problems whether you leave or not (Slashcity.com is one fandom friendly option and their tiny plan is only $24 a year).

2) Back up your LJ at your leisure (how-to back-up instructions here). I found this process excruciatingly slow, by the way (archiving program LJArchive here).

3) Post elsewhere as well as in LJ from here on out. I understand if you use Semagic (download Semagic XP version here) you can post to multiple journals at once (snapetoy's how-to post to multiple journals here). That could save you many headaches as you're backing up every time you post.

4) Keep up on fanarchive and the latest fan efforts to create our own service. Do a little research. (fandom_flies is one community tracking the progress and direction of an exodus.)

Once you have a better alternative, or your flist is emptying like rats on a sinking ship ... all you have to do is turn the key in the ignition.

Comments

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

I don't know about lj being threatened, but there has been a massive increase in the upkeep of child pornography laws; the fact that they were fictional characters doesn't excuse the fact the image depicts underage sex and so, by law, they had to be removed.
Where I work? We'd have to do exactly the same, if not more.

I'm not saying lj went about it the right way but, the first time something like this happens there is no standard for them to go by. I hope that in the future, they can learn from these events and come up with a much more simplistic code of conduct that everyone can understand.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Apparently the artwork wasn't even underage. As for threats, read synecdochic's post. People in Perverted Justice are going after sites like Livejournal.

If I drew a stick figure drawing of two guys fucking and had an arrow pointing to one "Harry Potter - age 13," and a second arrow pointing to the other "Severus Snape - age 40," I bet you I wouldn't get banned, even though I've made it absolutely clear the ages of the stick figures involved.

I fully support those fan artists and their right to draw whatever they damn well please.

Icarus

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

If someone mentioned you drew that, you probably would get banned.
In the eyes of the law, graphic depictions of children in ANY form are paedophilic; to allow them to appear on your site is the same as allowing child porn to be shared.

...I'm not saying I agree entirely with how this law works but if we dont stick to it, we'll be the ones to suffer and not those that posted it.

The mantra is act first, think later; unfortunately the first people to fall foul of an unseen event are always treated the harshest. But then, personally, I'd much rather lj learns from their mistakes in harsh dealings than ignore it and get the entire thing shut down - which is the first in a long line of punishments they'd get if someone were to pursue the matter further.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I think laws like this should be fought. I know someone who's on a pedophile list because, drunk, he slept with a 16-year-old who got into a gay bar with fake ID. These laws are bullshit and don't distinguish between pedophiles, teenagers who sleep with each other after one of the two crosses the age line, and guys like my friend who just screwed up.

The pedophile hysteria is creating lists that look a lot like our Homeland Security terrorist lists -- a total useless mess.

I feel we should fight this stupidity before it does more damage.

1 - In letter campaigns to wrong-headed senators who need your vote (I've already contacted McCain).

2 - Educating those who are afraid of technology and are therefore being lured along by hate groups like Perverted Justice.

3 - Then, finally, by making it incredibly difficult to enforce by increasing the number of NC-17 fics and art available, supporting the affected artists, and spreading the works that exist all over the internet on difficult-to-reach servers such as those in Russia.

Mirror it everywhere. The more offensive the better. That's my feeling.

Icarus

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree *totally* with laws needing changing; I know of people that have been stuck in that situation.

However, the law is the law until it is changed - people being lied to, not cool, but underage kids depicted in sexual acts with adults will always be seen as advocating child pornography, fictional or not.

I've always thought the image Vs literary argument was a shady one that needs revising, but images are deemed to have a greater, more immediate impact than words (how little they know).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha.

Things aren't looking good for LJ right now. Brad Fitzpatrick, LJ's creator, is leaving for Google. They're looking for a buyer (apparently) and they're not doing their much-awaiting IPO as a result. As one of the top 65 internet sites in the world, the buyers (if they materialize) will have dollar signs in their eyes.

This is the first shoe falling.

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

The best thing that could happen to lj at the moment is if facebook or even google picked it up; surely they know how big a cash cow this could be if they reverted back to its' original purpose.

[elf]

One of the issues is that the pictures must be found to be "patently offensive" by community standards, and be lacking in "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

Both of those are very touchy when they go to court. Community standards, in particular, is very unclear, and there's been no coherent internet test case. The last case that was relevant was a California couple that got busted for supplying "obscenity" to someone in Texas--the receiver was on their BBS. But there's been nothing involving webpages open to the public.

And LJ's staff decided both of those things--and isn't willing to tell people what community's standards they're using, nor how they decide "artistic value."

The impression we're left with is "if our staff members think it's offensive, it's offensive by community standards, 'cos we're members of the community" and "if we think there's no real art here, there isn't."

And, of course, nothing requires them to remove the journal without warning. Unless, of course, they think that it's not "maybe someone might think this could be a violation"--which isn't what they said... if they think this *is* a violation, they need to report it to law enforcement, or else they're complicit in the crime.

PJ may be happy to learn they've lost their Safe Harbor status by deciding what does, and does not, qualify as obscene by the Miller test.

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the first instances are always left to the judgement of those in charge - and we are told that, if in doubt, remove and then discuss with your superiors. I've seen what happens to someone when they let something slide - it's not pretty!

LJ should have foreseen this and had a policy, maybe, but as you said - no real test cases mean no help when setting out guidelines.

I do think that over the course of the next few months there will be a major overhaul in the TOS; if there isn't, they are just asking for more trouble - and it can be easily avoided.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

"we are told that, if in doubt, remove and then discuss with your superiors"

Who's we?

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

Any widespread media organisation has to pay strict attention to these laws (one of which I work for); luckily for us, we have a legal department on call 24hrs but, even then, we have to err on the side of extreme caution.

I've seen people fired for using one word instead of the other because of the lawsuits that would follow, it's a cutthroat business.

What with 6A now becoming a recognisable name in corporate business (they provide a hell of a lot of companies with offical blog hosting), I can understand their paranoia... I don't agree with the lack of clarity on their behalf, but I do know why they are doing what they are.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how many laws are completely unenforceable. Hmm. Seems to me that LJ might be picking a few public victims to make an example of to change how the users do business.

I'm not getting all hot and bothered about it, though I'm supporting my local fan artist as we speak. It's too blazing hot today.

Icarus