| the Jack ( @ 2007-08-14 21:21:00 |
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| Entry tags: | lj |
Hold that 'yay' -- everything is NOT suddenly okay.
Yays, LiveJournal/SixApart are being reasonable again! -- or are they?
Let's have a look.
A single, easy to find policy document -- yay, right? Right...?So, we're working on creating a single policy document that is linked from the bottom of every page in the LiveJournal application. To be completely honest, it's going to take us a little bit of time to get that done, since we want to work with everyone from our community as well as the usual folks like lawyers. We think it will be a few weeks, and we'll update on progress as that happens.
Two problems.
One, there's no indication that any aspect of this forthcoming policy document will be discussed with the userbase while it is in draft form; indeed, the biz post implies precisely the opposite, since the 'Process Change for Non-Photographic Images' policy has apparently gone into immediate effect, despite having serious language problems (see lumping together and banned without warning below). Apparently 'everyone from our community' doesn't actually include everyone who uses LiveJournal.
Two, we have yet to see a statement promising that users will never again be (and should never have been in the first place) suspended, banned, deleted or otherwise penalised for 'violating' a policy which had never been shared publicly with LJ's customers prior to the punitive action. This kind of ex post facto attack is at the very heart of why both fandom and non-fandom LJ users have been outraged by the Strikethrough and Boldend user suspensions.
Yay, they're not lumping together fandom and child pornographers anymore! They say they don't -- right...?Today we're announcing a revision to the process of how we deal with reports of child pornography. (Please note: We *know* there's a difference between the vast majority of fan art and child porn. We're definitely not lumping these things together.)
Let's leave entirely aside their qualification that it's 'the vast majority of fan art' which isn't child porn. (In fairness, someone could, in fact, take a real photograph of a real child being sexually abused which was real child pornography, apply a couple of Photoshop or GIMP filters, and claim it's fanart.* They'd be sneered out of any fandom they tried that tactic in, and quite likely be reported by fandom users themselves, but that's neither here nor there.)
They say they know the difference. Yet they fail to distinguish between fanart and child pornography, twice, later in the very post in which they've made that claim:
To start with, the ground rules: We accept all reports of potential child pornography that are reported to us, regardless of the source, but will only take action when that material violates our policies.That means we will accept reports even from people or groups that are annoying or have an axe to grind, but if content is not in violation of the policy, it won't have any effect.This would be wonderful news, if it were reassuring to anyone other than a straw man.
(b) Our process for drawings, cartoons, animation and other non-photographic images is slightly different. An image of this type that obviously violates our policy will be treated the same as a photographic image of child pornography, but in questionable cases involving a non-photographic image we will adopt a "two strikes" process. [emphasis mine]Oh, the problems with this phrasing.
(b) Our process for drawings, cartoons, animation and other non-photographic images is slightly different. An image of this type that obviously violates our policy will be treated the same as a photographic image of child pornography, but in questionable cases involving a non-photographic image we will adopt a "two strikes" process.[emphasis mine]
Many of you have asked about whether or not it is OK to link to outside content that falls into the category of child pornography, and the short answer is no, it's not OK. Think about it: If we said it was OK across the board to link to child pornography, then people would make communities just to do so.There's a reason our online playground is called the Internet and the World Wide Web, and that reason is that different parts of it are hyperlinked together.
This new process might have changed the way that two members were recently permanently suspended without warning. In respect to their privacy, we aren't going to get into details of any individual suspensions. But you should know we are reaching out to these people'[M]ight have changed'...? Oh, I give up.