journaling alternatives

[astolat]

Some people have been asking fanarchive about a journaling site in particular, but it's going to be a while yet before an informed decision can be made on what projects are going to be pursued, because we're getting the committees together now that will be studying the resource costs of a lot of the proposed projects, and also seeing what kind of human and

Comments

[sageness]

Here's a thought: if fandom were to build an LJ alternative and its hardware were located outside the US, the site's content (and TOS) wouldn't be subject to US law, would it?

[astolat]

I am not a lawyer and don't know the answer to this, but I suspect it is not quite that easy. I mean, the site would certainly be subject to the law of wherever the hardware is located, which means that you need lawyers who understand the law in that area to even think about it, and individual users are still subject to the laws in their own jurisdiction. So I don't know how much you can gain. It may be like that old joke about democracy -- "the worst form of government, except for all the others". :/

[nimnod]

I keep wondering why no-one does this. The US seems to me to be becoming increasingly conservative and restrictive in terms of its laws, and increasingly puritan and prone to witch-hunts. The rest of the world is very big and large parts of it are a lot more libertarian and open minded (the Netherlands for example - I've never seen a culture more relaxed about sex, where teenage boys walk past porn dvds for sale at Saturday markets and don't blink because they don't care because it's just not the big deal it is in the States).

[maryavatar]

Yep, when my websites and archives got TOSsed from a US-based webhost, I moved to Servage, which is entirely based in the UK. They're much more relaxed about pretty much everything, and I haven't had a problem since.

[athenemiranda]

No, no, no, UK law is really not relaxed, not any more. Well, almost not any more - still time to write a few more ranty letters about it yet. (I've heard the UK described as 'the most censored liberal democracy in the world' by free speech activists; I'm not certain on what grounds, probably partly because we still have blasphemy laws on the statute books, but the forthcoming CJB is definitely piling it on. It would only be an issue for fandom if the art was lifelike and really damn good - the law penalises realism - but I think it's worth considering if you're considering a UK host for fanarchive. Especially seeing as they're extending the child porn laws to cover illustrations, so could easily extend the CJB to cover illustrations too.

[ratcreature]

Blasphemy is still illegal in lots of places, in Germany and even the Netherlands (who are way permissible with porn, what with bestiality porn being legal and such), so that's not just the UK. Maybe it's because of the way libel law is applied? I've read about how slander and libel on the net are handled in the UK, where apparently someone had to pay £17,200 for calling a politician "lard brain", "Nazi", a "racist bigot" or something on a Yahoo message board, I admit I don't know whether it wouldn't cause as much trouble in the US (and here in Germany such defamation can get you problems too, afaik), but I've heard that the UK is especially favoring the plaintiff in these cases compared to law in other places (like in this case involving McDonald's), and that would be bad for a journalling service.

[astolat]

Yeah, all of this thread is mostly confirming my sense that moving offshore is not an uncomplicated win. We are all seeing the negatives in US law because it's what is actively affecting us right now via LJ, but other jurisdictions will have their own problems, which we don't know about.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. Most EU countries also have already stricter hate speech laws than the US, and they just decided on an EU hate speech law punishing any racist propaganda aiming to disturb the public peace (or some legal phrasing like that) with up to three years in prison, same for any public denial of genocides like the holocaust, which may not be that relevant for fandom content, but that does matter to a blogging site, especially since I'm not sure either whether these "safe harbor" for publishing services that exists in the US to protect them works for journaling sites in (all) EU countries for example

[sageness]

*nodnod*

I'm definitely curious about how the laws work in a situation like that, because it would be a convenient solution if it were viable -- plus, American conservative activist groups would have no business sending hatemail to a company located in a different country.

However, I do totally agree with your wariness about resorting to a journaling service owned and operated by a single individual. There are just too many things that could go wrong there. *ponders*

[brookmctirre]

This was posted on GJ by snipervalentine

Continued from above post.

[brookmctirre]

(9) "identifiable minor

[astolat]

Sorry, I think you've misunderstood -- the discussion is specifically about what the legal benefits would be of hosting sites offshore outside the US, not about the content of the US law.

I will also sound a note of caution: I really find that in general, trying to read statutes without legal training and an understanding of the context and caselaw often spreads misinformation and a false sense of understanding. You don't really know what a law means in practical terms until you've gotten the informed opinion of a good lawyer. (And even then nine times out of ten the answer will be hedged around with exceptions.)