I'm not sure what to think.
If you're not part of fandom, you probably don't get it. There are fandoms I don't get and I'm in it! And beyond general fandom (making up new stories and adventures for characters you love), there's ship (hooking up opposite sex characters that don't ever hook up in the show). And then there's slash (so named for the / mark between character names - "Ship" is short for relationship). Slash is when you hook up two same sex characters from a show.
I'm a slasher. I <3 it. My fandom is X-men (I know, you're shocked!) I've never run in to any trouble here at LJ. But my characters, while engaging in graphic sex, are all over the legal age.
You might have heard of Strikethrough '07. Around 500 journals were deleted or suspended by Live Journal/Six Apart. Now, I can't claim to really know the ins and outs of what happened, but I know that a great deal of the journals deleted were fic oriented. And not just fic, but slash ones.
People screamed. A lot. A lot of it I didn't read because, well, sometimes these people are odd and make completely erroneous statements. But in the end LJ/SA issued an apology, saying they were trying to get rid of journals that promoted child pornography and that they got a little over zealous. They were reviewing all the suspended accounts and would reinstate ones that didn't go against the ToS.
Fast forward to yesterday. Live Journal started deleting again. On a much smaller scale, it seems, and it started with some fan art.
Fan art, as you might guess, are drawings of your fandom. Some fan art depicts your characters in a sexual situation (and just to clarify, fan fic really is pr0n a lot of the time). SOMEONE drew some fan art of Severus Snape and Harry Potter in a sexual situation. I didn't see the art in question (I'm not into the HP fandom and, well, fan art generally just hurts my heart), but I've heard from other fen that it was over the top.
In any case, LJ deleted the user account without warning. People are outraged again, saying it wasn't illegal, blah blah blah. So now people are threatening to leave LJ in protest.
Now, like I said, I'm a slasher. Over at ultimatemarysue I've got tons of stories posted, almost all of them have graphic sexual content. I'm also a member of several fanfic communities, some dedicated specifically to slash. There's even 50_smutlets. Hello, not much ambiguity as to what THAT community is about! We've not been touched by Strikethrough or Boldout.
I've heard reasonable people, like liz_marcus say that the reason to be mad at LJ/SA is that they are being very secretive and unclear about how they are interpreting and enforcing the ToS. When asked exactly what is acceptable and what is not, they hem an haw.
Part of me thinks that this is not my problem. They're targeting the HP fandom, which is rife, for obvious reasons, with underaged sex. But then I think of that poem First They Came and I wonder, is this just the beginning of them trying to get rid of everything "indecent" on LJ?
As is PAINFULLY obvious from this post, I have no idea what I think and only have a quarter grip on what is really going on. It's hard to find out what is going on, as well, because of the overabundance of lunatic rantings.
So I don't know. I'm sticking to LJ for now. I have friends here, on all of my various journals, and I don't want to leave them. I do hope that LJ/SA will get their shit together and have a little more transperency in what they're doing and more clarity as to why.
But, so, yeah. It's a sad thing.
I'm a slasher. I <3 it. My fandom is X-men (I know, you're shocked!) I've never run in to any trouble here at LJ. But my characters, while engaging in graphic sex, are all over the legal age.
You might have heard of Strikethrough '07. Around 500 journals were deleted or suspended by Live Journal/Six Apart. Now, I can't claim to really know the ins and outs of what happened, but I know that a great deal of the journals deleted were fic oriented. And not just fic, but slash ones.
People screamed. A lot. A lot of it I didn't read because, well, sometimes these people are odd and make completely erroneous statements. But in the end LJ/SA issued an apology, saying they were trying to get rid of journals that promoted child pornography and that they got a little over zealous. They were reviewing all the suspended accounts and would reinstate ones that didn't go against the ToS.
Fast forward to yesterday. Live Journal started deleting again. On a much smaller scale, it seems, and it started with some fan art.
Fan art, as you might guess, are drawings of your fandom. Some fan art depicts your characters in a sexual situation (and just to clarify, fan fic really is pr0n a lot of the time). SOMEONE drew some fan art of Severus Snape and Harry Potter in a sexual situation. I didn't see the art in question (I'm not into the HP fandom and, well, fan art generally just hurts my heart), but I've heard from other fen that it was over the top.
In any case, LJ deleted the user account without warning. People are outraged again, saying it wasn't illegal, blah blah blah. So now people are threatening to leave LJ in protest.
Now, like I said, I'm a slasher. Over at ultimatemarysue I've got tons of stories posted, almost all of them have graphic sexual content. I'm also a member of several fanfic communities, some dedicated specifically to slash. There's even 50_smutlets. Hello, not much ambiguity as to what THAT community is about! We've not been touched by Strikethrough or Boldout.
I've heard reasonable people, like liz_marcus say that the reason to be mad at LJ/SA is that they are being very secretive and unclear about how they are interpreting and enforcing the ToS. When asked exactly what is acceptable and what is not, they hem an haw.
Part of me thinks that this is not my problem. They're targeting the HP fandom, which is rife, for obvious reasons, with underaged sex. But then I think of that poem First They Came and I wonder, is this just the beginning of them trying to get rid of everything "indecent" on LJ?
As is PAINFULLY obvious from this post, I have no idea what I think and only have a quarter grip on what is really going on. It's hard to find out what is going on, as well, because of the overabundance of lunatic rantings.
So I don't know. I'm sticking to LJ for now. I have friends here, on all of my various journals, and I don't want to leave them. I do hope that LJ/SA will get their shit together and have a little more transperency in what they're doing and more clarity as to why.
But, so, yeah. It's a sad thing.