Editor's note: This story was updated at 5:15 p.m. PST to clarify and elaborate upon some of the concerns raised by LiveJournal users.
LiveJournal users who patronize sex-themed Harry Potter fan art and fiction communities--and a host of other concerned users--are revolting a second time over account suspension notices they say are unpredictable and trample on their free-expression rights.
The most recent saga over user-generated Harry Potter artwork appears to have started late last week, when at least two users, "ponderosa121" and "elaboration," reported receiving notices from a LiveJournal abuse team member who informed them that their accounts had been "permanently suspended." (One user tracking the situation says an "undetermined" number of other Harry Potter artists have also been suspended in recent weeks, but we've yet to get official confirmation on that.)
The reason for the deletions? The users' journal entries contained "drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations," which represented a violation of LiveJournal's policies, according to copies of the letters posted by their recipients.
In ponderosa121's case, the offending image depicted an unclothed Harry Potter of ambiguous age receiving oral sex from sometimes-villain Severus Snape. The image posted by elaboration, who describes herself on an external site as a 21-year-old Atlanta sometimes-resident with a fondness for "zombies, pie and cold pizza," showed the twin brothers of Ron Weasley, Harry's good friend, in their own intimate moment. There were no ages listed in the fantasy images, however, so they could have been meant to depict the lads when they were 18 years old.
The uproar is reminiscent of an outcry around Memorial Day weekend, when thousands of users mobilized against LiveJournal parent company SixApart's deletion of about 500 journals of a seemingly similar nature. CEO Barak Berkowitz ultimately admitted the company had "really screwed this one up" and vowed to restore many communities deleted in an effort to wipe out allegedly inappropriate pedophilia-related chatter.
This time around, SixApart representatives have not responded to my repeated requests for comment on Monday. An official explanation has also yet to surface on LiveJournal's official news page, where the most recent entries have found their comments quotas maxed out by user gripes about the latest kerfuffle.
But one user miffed by the suspensions has posted what appears to be a copy of a response on Friday from a LiveJournal abuse team member who identified himself as Eric.
Although the content in question did not meet the legal definition of child pornography, "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," he said in that message.
A team of LiveJournal moderators, employees and SixApart staff reviewed the images and "clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors," Eric added.
The company also states in its Terms of Service that it "in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, journal, or account, and remove and discard any content within the Service, for any reason, including and without limitation, the lack of use, or if LiveJournal believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOS."
Those explanations hardly appeased some exasperated users, who alternately mocked or scolded that line of thinking. One user who goes by the name Guma Kawauso argued that by that logic, people could face journal shutdowns for posting images by the renowned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose common themes were flowers, portraits of famous people and nudes--which encountered charges of "pandering obscenity."
"'Obscenity' is the perfect tool to weed out everything that doesn't fit in a nice, clean, straight, male-dominated and preferably white world," charged a user named erestor.
"The policy makes LJ an unwelcoming environment for sexual expression and experimentation, which is a change; in the past, LJ has been a valuable environment for many groups who are expressing, experimenting with, or identifying as non-normative sexualities to speak free of constraints which are often backed by patriarchical [sic], racist, classist, or heterosexist behavioral norms," another user, who goes by the moniker "coffeeandink," wrote in a recent entry.
To make matters worse, some users have been complaining that a LiveJournal employee named Abe Hassan, who goes by the username burr86, has posted "mocking" statements about fandom communities, which they argue is unprofessional and deserves at least a reprimand.
While apparently on a much smaller scale, the latest episode has fanfic devotees once again encouraging livid LiveJournal users to switch to "clone" sites in protest and to register their discontent through feedback emails.
Update at 5:15 p.m. PST: Some readers have commented below that they're concerned this report doesn't reflect the breadth of concern from the LiveJournal community about these incidents.
Let the record reflect, then, that a number of users who wouldn't consider themselves Potter fans, per se, are fundamentally concerned about the way SixApart has handled these situations in recent months. They're taking issue with everything from its "customer service" practices to what concerned users argue is an unevenly enforced terms-of-service policy in the first place. Some said they're not so much concerned about what LiveJournal deems inappropriate as how the company goes about deciding that.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Harry Potter this, Harry Potter that, OMG-does-Harry-die, OMG-OMG-it's-on-BitTorrent... We're so ready to move on to the next cultural obsession from across the pond. Regardless, here's some video from Friday night of some of the people who showed up at the official New York book launch event hosted by Scholastic, the publisher that handles Harry Potter in the States.
The wizardly confab was held in New York City's shopper-friendly SoHo neighborhood, on a stretch of Mercer St. between Prince St. and Spring St. Conveniently, not only is Mercer St. right around the corner from the Scholastic bookstore, but it also happens to be paved with cobblestone--a rarity in Manhattan. Folks, welcome to Diagon Alley.
P.S.: In case you were wondering, this video is spoiler-free, unless you consider weekend book sales data to be spoilers.
Scholastic Publisher on Thursday sued the dickens out of DeepDiscount.com and its parent company, Infinity Resources, for allegedly making Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows available before the publisher's official release time of 12:01 a.m. Saturday. This breach led The New York Times and Baltimore Sun to lawfully claim that copies of the book could be obtained at a public retail outlet before publishing their book reviews, which included details considered spoilers.
Infinity Resources offers "perfect fulfillment," by which they mean perfect order fulfillment, I presume, and not some kind of state of Zen-like enlightenment. "Your search for perfection has led you to Infinity Resources," Infinity croons on its home page. With the page's dreamy blue colors and a super-sweet little lady tilting her head and smiling at you with, indeed, what appears to be Zen-like calm, you could use the site's graphic aesthetic for a day spa or spiritual retreat center.
And let's have a look at DeepDiscount.com. The site looks flashy--clunky, but functional. Hey, what's that grinning mischievously in the corner? A toothy, grinning shark. In sunglasses.
So let's see. Here we have a distributor of digital and print media that claims to satisfy a publisher's "search for perfection" in order fulfillment, with easily the most sought-after contract of the entire book publishing industry, working with a subsidiary whose logo is a shark, apparently--oopsie!--making the book available days in advance. Something smells fishy!
How did newspapers know of DeepDiscount's broken embargo? Wonder whether it was worth more to the retailer than what they'll lose in the lawsuit?
Meanwhile, while I was writing this missive, a CNET News.com tipster in Chico, Calif., reported that she got her Harry Potter shipment early--almost. She got an empty Amazon box. She suspects that someone in delivery chain opened the box, removed the book and packing slip, and retaped it for delivery. Call it the Spell of the Disappearing Book.
An Amazon.com customer service representative told our tipster that there was "no way" the box had contained the book, but could not explain why an empty, tampered box was delivered to her, especially since she hadn't placed any other orders with the online retailer recently. She was told to wait until Saturday, and then she could ask for her money back if she didn't receive the book. Talk about a teaser.
And if this really is a case of the book being sent early and stolen from the mail, is it really worth risking a federal charge of tampering with the mail for a few extra hours with a book that will be widely available this weekend?
We'll be sitting back and watching to see how these mysteries turn out.
J.K. Rowling is probably not going to end up in a bread line as a result. Nonetheless, pirated copies of the author's latest book are cropping up online four days before the scheduled release.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment of the iconic Harry Potter series is due to go on sale Saturday morning.
A check of some of the BitTorrent search engines shows that the book is typically broken up into multiple parts. The copies appear to originate from photographs taken of leaked copies of the novel. One version found with the torrent-tracking site, The Pirate Bay, had pages 496 to the end of the nearly 800-page fantasy about a boy wizard.
This, of course, means that the mystery of how Rowling concludes her series is now in the clutches of file sharers.
According to a Tuesday report in Canadian newspaper The Globe And Mail, Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher of the Harry Potter series, is pleading with the public to keep the ending a secret.
Fat chance.
This, from one of those who made the book available online: "These are from an advance copy," wrote a person calling him or herself Yamathan. "Wholly leaked, same quality, same legitimacy. This is the real (stuff), boys and girls. Seize the day!"
The hits just keep coming to Google Video.
Pirated versions of Hairspray, Bruce Willis' Live Free, Die Hard and last weekend's top grossing film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, were available at YouTube's sister site on Monday.
The films were first flagged by the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group that tries to prod public figures to act ethically. The NLPC argues that Google treats the entertainment industry unfairly by allegedly looking the other way when users post pirated material to its sites.
For a month, the NLPC has dug up hundreds of full-length films and TV shows at Google Video to dramatical show that the company should be able to find unauthorized videos if a group of lawyers can.
"For all of the content we host," said Gabe Stricker, a Google spokesman in an email, "whether from premium content providers or creative end-users, we require the content provider to hold all necessary rights to the material. We cooperate with copyright holders to identify and promptly remove any infringing content. Of course, no system is bulletproof."
In addition, while YouTube has long been at the center of a controversy over whether the company is responsible for copyright clips posted to the site, the NLPC is trying to draw attention to the infringing content available at Google's other video property.
One of the things that stumps Ken Boehm, the NLPC's chairman, is why Google doesn't enforce a maximum clip length. At YouTube, the clips must be 10 minutes or less, a restriction designed to prevent feature-length material from being posted.
Another issue Boehm has with Google Video is that the site doesn't appear to be suspending users for posting infringing content. YouTube has said that it boots users for violating the site's user agreement, which specifically outlaws the uploading of copyright content.
"It looks like the link I sent you for the Harry Potter movie was yanked," Boehm wrote in an e-mail. "I found it again. The kicker is that this new link was obviously put up by the same person who posted the first one."
A court has ruled in favor of children's author J.K. Rowling over fraudulent copies of Harry Potter e-books, according to reports out of the U.K.
Warner Brothers, who produces the Harry Potter films, and Rowling filed a lawsuit against eBay in 2004 over illegal copies of Harry Potter e-books that have been sold from the Indian version of the Web site.
According to the Times Online, an Indian court has ordered that eBay remove the entries for unauthorized copies of Harry Potter e-books from its site until a hearing scheduled for May 23.
But an eBay spokeswoman said in an e-mail that those reports were inaccurate.
"To clarify, an injunction has not been issued against eBay. What has happened recently is that the court issued an injunction against certain sellers on eBay who had been selling e-books. This injunction has nothing to do with eBay Inc.," Nichola Sharpe, senior public relations manager for eBay, said in an e-mail.
While eBay did confirm the ongoing lawsuit with Rowling and released a comment regarding the issue of injunction, it did not respond as to whether it has received a court order to remove those sellers from its Indian site.
CNET News.com was not able to obtain a copy of the court order at this time, but if the Times Online assertions are true the order could have larger implications. Other companies, such as Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, are suing eBay for not doing enough to stop the sale of counterfeit versions of products, such as handbags, over its site.
J.K. Rowling announced in early February that her final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is scheduled to be released on July 21 in the U.K. and U.S.
- prev
- 1
- next
