August News

[news]

We bid a very fond farewell to rahaeli last week, who started working for LiveJournal back in January 2003 when the LJ staff consisted of just a few people. We're sending out huge thanks for all of her work and contributions, and best of luck in her future as an author. You can keep track of her writing career at mccuneblog. We'll miss you, D!

Updates To Your

Comments

[stormcloude]

I guess Six Apart has drawn a line in the sand:

Dear LiveJournal user stormcloude,

The comment you are referring to is correct; the content does not meet the legal definition of child pornography. As other, more recent entries in the community explain, however, 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.

Additionally, the Terms of Service (http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml) does not include any statement indicating that users will be warned prior to alternate actions. Specifically,
section XVI Member Conduct, at the bottom, explicitly states "If LiveJournal determines, in its sole and absolute discretion, that any user is in violation of the TOS, LiveJournal retains the right to terminate such user's account at any time without prior notice." While LiveJournal does not do so in the instances of many violations of the Terms of Service, the policy adopted for this particular violation is to terminate without warning. You can find information on other policies at http://ww.livejournal.com/abuse/policy.bml.

The standard for artistic merit is not whether a work simply has technical merit; it is whether there is serious artistic value that offsets the sexual nature of the content. A group consisting of members of LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff reviewed the content that was reported to us. This group decides whether material potentially in violation of this policy warrants consideration for serious artistic value. In this case, they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors.

Regards,
Eric
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team

Add that to the fact that they are going to be adding a "report abuse" button to all posts from now on and it looks pretty convincing to me that they are trying to chase fandom away.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[pariah164]

That last line made me giggle. LOL Hitchhiker's Guide.

[guardianmars]

Wait, but who decided that it had no artistic merit?

[stormcloude]

A group consisting of members of LiveJournal's Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff reviewed the content that was reported to us.

[guardianmars]

Oh. And they are the be-all-end-all of artistic merit.

Very nice. :D

[rejects]

I love you so much right now, reading all your other comments. ;_;

[kat_chan]

Thank you for the voice of reason.

It's not like they didn't make the new policy clear when Barak posted it. I remember telling someone at the time that it meant that most of what people had been getting away with up to this point wasn't going to fly any longer. And it's not like there aren't other places where you can archive the art and then post a link to it on LJ.

A lot of wank that could have been avoided if people didn't feel the need to walk up to the line, stick a toe over it, and dare something to happen.

[doro_chan]

I definitely did see artistic merit in ponderosa121's picture. What I did not see was a minor.

[pheret1]

I agree on both of those comments.

[guardianmars]

Agreed.

[ladypeyton]

I saw an obvious teenager.

[doro_chan]

Well, a teenager's not necessarily a minor. And I'm used to manga. Which is why it's really hard to determine whether a drawn character is a minor or an adult. To me, he looked like 18-22.

[ladypeyton]

Anyone under the age of 18 is considered a minor in the US.

[doro_chan]

I know. But I did not see a minor.

[bale_ikura]

Except the age of consent is 16 and no where did Ponderosa state that it was non-con so really, it's all legal.