LiveJournal responds to 'Harry Potter' deletions

Earlier this week, we reported that LiveJournal set off a new round of criticism from its tightly knit user base after it permanently suspended two accounts housing fan art of Harry Potter and friends in sexual situations.

After days of silence, the site's staffers on Tuesday evening published an entry on their business journal in an attempt to clarify the online-journaling server's policy on "illegal and harmful content."

In short, the staffers said they don't review content unless it is reported to them, and when policy violations aren't "clear," they congregate members of the site's Abuse Prevention Team members, LiveJournal staff and parent company Six Apart's management to make a decision.

In an effort to comply with federal and California child pornography laws, the staffers said they have opted to treat any "graphic visual depiction of a minor...engaged in sexually explicit conduct," apparently fictional or not, as a policy violation. "Any stated age of the individuals present, the apparent age of the people or characters present in an image, and outside knowledge of the person or character's age are all taken into consideration," the staffers wrote.

They also said that besides a "limited number of exceptions," they're sticking to a line in their Terms of Service that stipulates that paid LiveJournal accounts aren't refundable. And as for some user gripes that the offending account holders weren't warned to remove the violating content before their accounts were suspended, LiveJournal said it cannot continue to host content that would likely violate child pornography laws but said users can appeal their suspensions.

The post quickly sparked thousands of new comments and questions, ranging from "I believe that your stance on how to tell if characters are of a certain age is still rather vague" to "Thank you. Hopefully this will silence Generation Whine a bit more."

[Mousefinger]

Generation Whine!

Hah! "Generation Whine" ... that's an awesome description of the current crop of toddlers being raised on the notion that "everything goes on the Internet" and if you so much as say "no", they scream oppression.

Kudos to LiveJournal.

That said, their act will probably do them more harm than actual good as they've become the arbiters of decency and that never plays well with hippies or kids ... and that's pretty much the 'Net populace in totality.

Good luck LiveJournal. Your days of creativity are fading.

[HamatoKameko]

You're missing an important point, however.

See, you (and far too many others) just don't get it.

We're not just upset over this deletion/banning nonsense; many (most?) of the LJ community is furious over the hypocrisy being displayed by LiveJournal and Six Apart.

Communities with FICTION that portrays non-existent, underage characters (even if they're of the age of consent), something that hurts no one and in some cases provides an outlet for those working through the after-effects of abuse themselves, is instantly permanently banned, in many cases with no warning whatsoever and no chance to remove the offending content.

Meanwhile, pro-anorexia communities (among others), which actively and clearly support and ENCOURAGE a self-destructive and ultimately fatal disorder (to the point of even giving tips!), are perfectly fine and within the rights of free speech. Never mind how many people are hurt and ultimately killed thanks to such encouragements.

Arbiters of decency, indeed.

[Suzene Campos]

Selective reading

I notice that you left out the bit about how, though LJ/6A is implementing new interpretations to the ToS, they've refused to actually update the ToS that members agree to upon signing up for an account to reflect these changes, in violation of California law.

Also note that they've made this "clarification" of the ToS in the relatively low-profile LJ_biz community, instead of in their news comm.

[Paramnesia]

Quoting that LJ/6A offical again

"We told people in a recent news post that if they wanted to continue to follow the issue, they should watch this community. [http://...|http://...] The people who want to know about this will find out about it."

True, they already mentioned it, but people politely asked to cross post at least a link in their news feed rather than the less watched lj-biz. It was a simple request. It's good business practice to notify your users of changes, thus their refusal to do so makes me suspect they want to keep people in the dark.