On Boldthrough
You know, when I said to tell me if anything happened while I was on vacation, that would have been a good time to tell me that fandom/LJ had another explosion over the weekend.
In all the discussion of the suspended fanart, however, the following information seems to be passed over, which I find at least as troubling, as 6A was fairly clear that they would have different standards for text and art. But maeglinyedi pointed in this post by penknife to this one by wilde_stallyn which chronicles a situation in which LJ Abuse responded when asked that a fic did not have "significant literary merit" to keep it from being "probably obscene" ("probably"? wtf?).
Now, the "significant literary merit" absurdity is of course not 6A/LJ's fault, but the U.S. government's; Strikethrough did push me to finally send my check to the ACLU, and if anyone has any suggestions on ways to work towards changing the nation's laws other than sending people money I am eager to hear them.
And IANAL and thus cannot say whether the Miller test was correctly applied in this instance. If the fic really would have failed (passed?) the Miller test in real life, then I cannot blame LJ for not wanting it and/or trying to appear to not want it on their servers. (Although the caveat of allowing material which is found obscene under the Miller test as long as the participants are of age still makes no sense to me.)
But I have my doubts.
*
None of which should be taken as endorsing the differing standards LJ is using to evaluate written text and visual art, either. Once again I have no problem with not wanting illegal content on the servers, and as a private company LJ of course is not obligated to host all legally protected speech. But the fact that they have driven smut_wednesday underground and scared my favorite fanartists half to death doesn't exactly endear me to them, either.
*
A list of all of my stories with underaged sexuality can be found here. They are works of art, and I will not hide them, will not be ashamed of them, will not speak softly about them, will not flock them. In the words of kara_mckay," I’m going to continue tying my noose, and I hope that others will, too. See, the one detail that the folks at LJ missed is that while we may hang ourselves if given enough rope, they’ll end up swinging with us."
In all the discussion of the suspended fanart, however, the following information seems to be passed over, which I find at least as troubling, as 6A was fairly clear that they would have different standards for text and art. But maeglinyedi pointed in this post by penknife to this one by wilde_stallyn which chronicles a situation in which LJ Abuse responded when asked that a fic did not have "significant literary merit" to keep it from being "probably obscene" ("probably"? wtf?).
Now, the "significant literary merit" absurdity is of course not 6A/LJ's fault, but the U.S. government's; Strikethrough did push me to finally send my check to the ACLU, and if anyone has any suggestions on ways to work towards changing the nation's laws other than sending people money I am eager to hear them.
And IANAL and thus cannot say whether the Miller test was correctly applied in this instance. If the fic really would have failed (passed?) the Miller test in real life, then I cannot blame LJ for not wanting it and/or trying to appear to not want it on their servers. (Although the caveat of allowing material which is found obscene under the Miller test as long as the participants are of age still makes no sense to me.)
But I have my doubts.
*
None of which should be taken as endorsing the differing standards LJ is using to evaluate written text and visual art, either. Once again I have no problem with not wanting illegal content on the servers, and as a private company LJ of course is not obligated to host all legally protected speech. But the fact that they have driven smut_wednesday underground and scared my favorite fanartists half to death doesn't exactly endear me to them, either.
*
A list of all of my stories with underaged sexuality can be found here. They are works of art, and I will not hide them, will not be ashamed of them, will not speak softly about them, will not flock them. In the words of kara_mckay," I’m going to continue tying my noose, and I hope that others will, too. See, the one detail that the folks at LJ missed is that while we may hang ourselves if given enough rope, they’ll end up swinging with us."