Comments | mariness: Here we go again:

mariness

Here we go again:

Aug 03, 2007 10:55

LJ News is full of excitable squeaking that Lj is suspending journals again, without notice.

A few thoughts and problems here:

1) As queerbychoice and others have noticed, Livejournal has chosen to use California's age of consent, 18, which is not the age of consent in all countries or even all U.S. states. What this means is that LJ may be restricting ( Read more... )

fandom, lj

Comments 11

technoshaman August 3 2007, 17:22:10 UTC

Link is busted.

Part of it is, repeal the DMCA, which requires the insty-takedowns, IIRC, and is bad law in general...

palusbuteo August 3 2007, 21:24:38 UTC

Sorry but my only gripe here is that LJ has every right to establish it's own standards and age of consent - Obviously it's impossible to cover every country and state law, and LJ should not attempt to do so. Just because LJ is "based" in CA doesn't nessearily mean they're using CA laws - although they could be held to them because of the server location. Perhaps LJ decided that 18 was an appropriate age outside of CA law ( ... )

mariness August 5 2007, 02:09:59 UTC

The LJ user might not have followed a 24 hour delete or else threat, in which case, LJ then could have suspended the account. 24 hours is pretty normal on the internet, and I don't think that Warner Bros would have objected to a 24 hour wait period.

As far as the age of 18 is concerned, LJ stated that they would be using California law, and that California law was the basis for their decision. That really brings up the general issues of trying to police anything on the internet; try to bring down porn sites in the U.S., for example, and said sites just head off to Caribbean countries. I agree that LJ has the right to set its standards. But as a business matter, they might want to consider that the majority of their potential customers do not live in California.

blondeheroine August 3 2007, 23:54:04 UTC

I'm with LJ on this one so far. Perhaps I'll see something that changes my mind, but I'm definitely behind them.

mariness August 5 2007, 02:01:42 UTC

The quibble I have with LJ on this -- and it's a quibble -- is that I think, given that they were just coming from a a major firestorm that angered many of their paid customers, I think it would have been wiser on their part to first contact the LJ user with a 24 hour notice -- that's actually fairly standard on a number of websites.

Otherwise, Lj is certainly not required to host material that may be in violation of copyright or may be illegal.

athenakt August 7 2007, 15:00:49 UTC

Something to think about: If it came down to the entire copyright issue being cause to ban accounts, your icon (however cool looking I think it is) and mine would become an issue. ;)

For that matter, who took the picture of those pandas, Mari? Did you pay someone to use the picture that they took? You see where I'm going with this? Sighs...

mariness August 7 2007, 15:06:38 UTC

Actually, I do have permission to use that particular panda picture, and I was allowed to use it for free -- but I suspect that depends upon the photographer and the source.

Thread 6

athenakt August 7 2007, 14:57:11 UTC

24 hours does seem reasonable, but frankly (and as you probably know), I don't always have a chance to check all of my email accounts every day. Yes, we're in an age where everything is now now now, but I'm kinda laid back in my own now now now style. ;)

As to what's going on in LJ fandom, I've adopted a wait and see attitude. If people organize and migrate to another journal, I'll likely make an account where they are and continue my fandom activities there. I'll still keep this journal to keep up with my RL/etc friends here though.

mariness August 7 2007, 15:10:09 UTC

Oh, I know that not everybody can or will check e-mail every 24 hours -- but frankly, when Warner Brothers comes-a-knocking, these pages were probably going to come down anyway. It's more of a PR/politeness thing from Lj, no more -- so that they can say, hey, we did warn people. Because outside some members of the fandom community here, the real issue doesn't seem to be the banning exactly, but the methodology. Give 24 hours notice, and you do eliminate at least some of the complaints. It doesn't solve the other argument -- should LJ abuse be judging the artistic quality of posted material -- but it at least ensures everyone's chatting in a happy civilized manner.