ough to be sleeping but distracted by hugh dillon

[_unhurt_]

(and lj being total fucking eedjits, but i haven't the spirit to get into that right now. i did go and grab my name, sans underscores, at greatest journal and insane journal as a kind of psychological insurance. but i FEAR CHANGE. *whimper*)

Comments

[_unhurt_]

oh, no, it's fine: it's the fact that 1. it seems to me that the american legal system is perfectly well placed to go after internet paedophiles using current laws, and that lj was already going to cooperate with them in the investigation of any actual or suspected crime but equally that 2. it is plainly NOT illegal in america to write/publish fiction in which legal minors have sex with each other or with adults and 3. that as a private blogging service they ought in fact to simply have said "we have decided not to host material that meets these criteria/contains the following". (as of course, they can declare anything they want off-limits, up to and including cat macros: their servers, their rules. this i appreciate.) making clearly false claims - "the law says that fiction in which people under 18 have sex is illegal", for example - and announcing this without clarifications re: fanfic shortly AFTER the big deletion blowup and one of their high heid yins actually stating that fanfic was ok? not very smart! in my opinion, anyway.

also, i'm no internet lawyer, but the many criticisms of their references to obscenity laws seem sound. obscenity laws apply to adult porn too, and they haven't suggested they'll be cracking down on that.

basically, i suspect that they already had a perfectly solid base from which to deal with paedophilic material - you don't need a TOS violation to deal with that, you can presumably refer the material to the authorities and remove it on the grounds of illegality (i should check the TOS ut it says "no illegal stuff [based on laws in our location]!" i am certain). convincing half of fandom they might be subject to random deletions of their journals for writing 15 year old harry/ron or high school aus? based on recent uproars, could they not have predicted the reaction? and i also don't think any of this is actually much help in reducing the sexual exploitation of children.

ok, not very nut-sized. phew!

[woolly_socks]

it is plainly NOT illegal in america to write/publish fiction in which legal minors have sex with each other or with adults

Doesn't it depend on the state? I haven't a clue, I probably resemble an internet lawyer (or any other kind) even less than you do.

i also don't think any of this is actually much help in reducing the sexual exploitation of children.

I think it's only partly about that. Call me cynical, but I think it's about 6Apart covering their asses and trying to abide by the law as they understand it, as well as doing The Right Thing (TM).

I gather from geeklite's comments in my journal, as well as some other things she linked to recently, that they are dealing with bona fide kiddie-fiddlers, and trying to put together a policy that deals with them as well as possible, while not attacking people (some of them kids themselves) who are writing fic about teenage sex. Personally, I don't know how I'd write that policy, if it were my job. Do you, do you have an inkling of what kind of words you might use, where you would draw the boundaries?