Could someone in the community who is legally minded...

[msinvisfem]

...answer my questions on lj_biz.

My problem is that after reading the lj_biz post and the link on the US law definition of sexual child exploitation, that the law doesn't cover the content that was used to delete the artists' accounts. That is:[t]his definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting

Comments

[little_ribbon]

I'm not sure if LJ was talking about the laws against child pornography, though? I thought they were hiding behind the obscenity laws. =/ I'm sorry if I'm not very helpful, but LJ is going "... it isn't illegal, but we still don't want it!" so I'm not really sure what's going on anymore. xD

[emarkienna]

Well this is the point - as you say, it's obscenity law that they're concerned about, but for some odd reason they linked to a law that was about child porn (actual or realistic).

I pointed this out to them too. I put it down to incompetence - but I do find it worrying that if they're banning "because it's the law" and making decisions on the law, they seem to be somewhat clueless about the law.

And, I do wish they'd stop conflating obscenity law with child porn law.

[little_ribbon]

Exactly! ^^;; I'm sorry I couldn't really get a coherent sentence out anymore after reading all those threads on lj_biz! xD I just meant to point out that it might be illegal according to the obscenity law, but it's so easy to forget about it's existence because LJ seems to be completely mixing it up with the laws about child pornography. O.o

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place, huh? I mean, if you argue about one law... they'll just bring up another. *g*

[frabjously]

This isn't a legal question. LJ is in its full rights to ban whoever they want for whatever reason because it's their private site.

[msinvisfem]

I know that it is their server and they can decide what is allowed on it. However, they are the ones who are disingenuously claiming that the reason for the deletions are legal issues and not because they are actually censoring.

The point of addressing the legal issues is to strip away LJ's argument for the rest of the users to see and let them decide how they feel about LJ censoring content out of hand. The best outcome I can hope for in that case is that more people will take their money and content elsewhere.

[frabjously]

In the first round of deletions that is what they were certainly claiming. Now... not so much.

I. Content which violates LiveJournal’s policy against illegal and harmful content is:

b. Content that encourages or advocates hate crimes, the abuse of children in any form, or rape, even if the content itself is not illegal and may be protected by the First Amendment. This portion of the policy reflects the especially reprehensible nature of these activities; users who encourage or advocate these acts, regardless of their motivation, are simply not welcome on LiveJournal.

My emphasis. Quoted from recent lj_biz post.

[msinvisfem]

Then I take it that they will be deleting the accounts of any users who display photographs of ancient Greek pedophilic ceramic pieces/sculpture, as that falls firmly into the bolded part of b. If they are being selective about what content they do and don't agree with subjectively, then this a censorship issue. (They of course have every right to censor but they should be honest and let the users of LJ decide how they feel about them censoring content.)

Furthermore the issue of legality is something they continue to push, as in they used it 9 times within the lj_biz post.

[kengr]

There's another law that Congress passed and hasn't been challenged in court yet that explicitly makes drawings and the like illegal if they are of under 18 characters. How they determine that the characters are under 18 isn't specified.

And since it was a deliberate attempt to get around a supreme Court decision saying that such *weren't* covered by the "child pornography" statute the odds are that it will have trouble if it gets into court. Though with the current Supreme Court it might get upheld.

Y'see, the only reason that the child pornography statutes themselves survived is that they covered material that could only be made by abusing and "exploiting" real under 18 people. Drawings and the like fail to meet that.

But Congress and certain folks in the executive branch want to use "protect the children" as an excuse to shut down *all* "adult" material.