Strikethrough...er, I mean, Boldthrough 2007
I'm not going to personally post the image, but if you want to see the image Ponderosa posted that caused her to be permanently suspended without warning, go here.
A.
1. Harry doesn't look underage there. Look at how muscular and tall he is. One could easily argue that he is 18 or older in that drawing. I think the LJ staff simply made a quick decision based on the fact that the Harry Potter books are all about a boy between 11 and 17 years old. But they're disregarding the post-Hogwarts world, and the AU world. You can't simply assume Harry is underage when he looks like he does there.
2. According to this, livejournal objected to the image because "they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors". What the hell. First of all, I definitely see artistic merit there. Their expressions, their clasped hands, the detail and skill of the drawing. It's definitely a sexual drawing, but it also definitely has artistic merit. Second of all, art is subjective! They're objecting to a picture that isn't depicting minors, simply because they didn't like the art!
3. They didn't give Ponderosa any warning whatsoever before they permanently suspended her. They could have asked her to remove the post. They could have removed the post without warning and left her account intact. The fact that they skipped straight to suspending her implies that they feel she is a threat to children and that she has no meaningful contribution to the livejournal community, and is simply here to promote pedophilia. Not only am I offended on her behalf, I am offended on behalf of the entire Harry Potter fandom, most of whom are doing absolutely nothing wrong. (If you're writing about 2 consenting adults having sex, there is nothing wrong with that. If you're 18 and you're writing about two 15-year-olds having sex, it's a little icky to me but I don't think it deserves suspension.)
B.
This makes it pretty obvious that livejournal doesn't want fandom to stay. Between all the contradictory statements and the maddening silence from LJ/6A, we as fandom can no longer assume we are safe.
Livejournal wants us gone, but they refuse to say it outright. Last time, they apologized and claimed it was an accident. This time, there is undeniable evidence that shows it was a deliberate attack, and they knew exactly what they were doing. Now that the users are uprising in protest, LJ/6A are probably kicking themselves for it. But they aren't going to apologize for it. Is anyone honestly expecting an apology in the news community? To do that they would simply bring more attention to the issue, more attention to the porn, and people would post the image in the comments, and livejournal staffers would blush and squirm as they went through the post trying to screen all the comments. Last time, they could apologize without bringing too much attention to 'obscene' fandomers. Now, they can't do that. So they won't apologize.
Fandomers have 3 options:
1. Stick around and continue to write fanfic until LJ/6A deletes even more journals for increasingly asinine reasons, until eventually they delete yours.
2. Leave livejournal for GJ or IJ or something similar.
3. Stick around and censor yourself and hope that livejournal will apologize and change their policies and everything will go back to the way it was.
C.
Personally, I won't be leaving livejournal. I've made so many friends here, and it's hard to rebuild social networks on alternate sites, now matter how hard you want to. However, I will have alternate journals on greatestjournal and insanejournal. I've already used LJ-Sec to transfer my entries over. It worked like a charm. After a week or so, when we see how this is panning out, I'll let you guys know to what extent I'll be using those alternates. I might simply keep them as backups, or I might seriously start updating and using them. I haven't decided yet.
A.
1. Harry doesn't look underage there. Look at how muscular and tall he is. One could easily argue that he is 18 or older in that drawing. I think the LJ staff simply made a quick decision based on the fact that the Harry Potter books are all about a boy between 11 and 17 years old. But they're disregarding the post-Hogwarts world, and the AU world. You can't simply assume Harry is underage when he looks like he does there.
2. According to this, livejournal objected to the image because "they clearly did not see serious artistic value in content that simply displayed graphic sexual acts involving minors". What the hell. First of all, I definitely see artistic merit there. Their expressions, their clasped hands, the detail and skill of the drawing. It's definitely a sexual drawing, but it also definitely has artistic merit. Second of all, art is subjective! They're objecting to a picture that isn't depicting minors, simply because they didn't like the art!
3. They didn't give Ponderosa any warning whatsoever before they permanently suspended her. They could have asked her to remove the post. They could have removed the post without warning and left her account intact. The fact that they skipped straight to suspending her implies that they feel she is a threat to children and that she has no meaningful contribution to the livejournal community, and is simply here to promote pedophilia. Not only am I offended on her behalf, I am offended on behalf of the entire Harry Potter fandom, most of whom are doing absolutely nothing wrong. (If you're writing about 2 consenting adults having sex, there is nothing wrong with that. If you're 18 and you're writing about two 15-year-olds having sex, it's a little icky to me but I don't think it deserves suspension.)
B.
This makes it pretty obvious that livejournal doesn't want fandom to stay. Between all the contradictory statements and the maddening silence from LJ/6A, we as fandom can no longer assume we are safe.
Livejournal wants us gone, but they refuse to say it outright. Last time, they apologized and claimed it was an accident. This time, there is undeniable evidence that shows it was a deliberate attack, and they knew exactly what they were doing. Now that the users are uprising in protest, LJ/6A are probably kicking themselves for it. But they aren't going to apologize for it. Is anyone honestly expecting an apology in the news community? To do that they would simply bring more attention to the issue, more attention to the porn, and people would post the image in the comments, and livejournal staffers would blush and squirm as they went through the post trying to screen all the comments. Last time, they could apologize without bringing too much attention to 'obscene' fandomers. Now, they can't do that. So they won't apologize.
Fandomers have 3 options:
1. Stick around and continue to write fanfic until LJ/6A deletes even more journals for increasingly asinine reasons, until eventually they delete yours.
2. Leave livejournal for GJ or IJ or something similar.
3. Stick around and censor yourself and hope that livejournal will apologize and change their policies and everything will go back to the way it was.
C.
Personally, I won't be leaving livejournal. I've made so many friends here, and it's hard to rebuild social networks on alternate sites, now matter how hard you want to. However, I will have alternate journals on greatestjournal and insanejournal. I've already used LJ-Sec to transfer my entries over. It worked like a charm. After a week or so, when we see how this is panning out, I'll let you guys know to what extent I'll be using those alternates. I might simply keep them as backups, or I might seriously start updating and using them. I haven't decided yet.