Here we go again.

[pasithea]

http://firefox.org/news/articles/511/1/Livejournal-Bans-Underage-Adult-Fanfiction/Page1.html

Okay, so the only part that bothers me is this:

"This includes threats of physical harm against the President or other executive officers"

So under the banner of 'STOP PEDOS' comes political dissent.

Okay, sure, I do see that the word is 'threats'. Saying, "I wish Shrub would
fall in a wood-chipper." isn't a 'threat', but saying, "I wish I could take a brush-hog
to that Bush and prune off all its limbs." is a threat, if an idle one.

The problem, of course is that LJ can't possibly enforce this by filtering. I could easily have been talking about yard work in my examples above. That means that it will be enforced by self-appointed vigilantes. Read: Conservative ass-hats that will run screaming about anything they disagree with. I faced something similar on a MU* many years ago. Because I'm a rather vocal atheist and something of a hothead, the good christians took it upon themselves to report me every time I said 'ass', 'damn', or talked about anything even mildly inappropriate to a 'PG' area.

Other people of course, were free to talk about brutal rape and say 'fuck'. After getting banned a couple of times, I just started logging everything and was able to point out a half dozen examples where other people said/did similar or worse things.

MU*s are small though. A few hundred people at most. You can get your case reviewed. Something like LJ with millions of accounts? I'm skeptical. So hurray! One more win for the gestapo.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

How do I protest the inclusion of that?

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

This goes hand-in-hand with Tuesday's executive order permitting the Treasury to sieze all property and assets of individuals that the administration deems pose a risk of committing violence that has pretty much anything to do with Iraq.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

18 U.S.C. § 871(a) Threats against President and successors to the Presidency

(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Yup. I'm aware of that code. However I'm also aware that in the real world, the matter has come before a court a few times and is MUCH more narrowly defined than that. 99.9999% of the ways it's said in LJ would be rejected out of hand in a court. Never even get to trial. LJ, however, isn't part of the legal system and you'd have no nearing. It's at the whims of whoever is operating that particular day.

If they think your speech implies a real serious threat to government, the proper thing to do is turn it over to the authorities and let them figure out how to proceed. They should not take the law into their own hands and censor you. If you are a real threat, having your LJ account terminated probably isn't going to stop you and by destroying the evidence of you planning your crime, they may actually help you cover your tracks.

Any way you slice it, this is just poorly thought-out policy.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

There've been a lot of poorly thought-out policy decisions ever since 6A bought LJ.

Why this wasn't posted in news is beyond me. Oh. Well, looks like news is no longer on the front page of the site, logged in or out. YAY. I'm really fucking tired of them posting this shit somewhere new and obscure all the time; how many LJ news communities are there to keep up with now? I try to keep up with their "official" channels and I only ever hear about major policy decisions like this from outside sources.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Cool, now they'll send Tom Clancy to jail when he sends out his next manuscript.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

My favorite was "material that asks for assistance in committing illegal activities that cause serious physical/economic harm" [my emphasis]. Money has human rights, too! But legal activities which cause economic harm, like, say, NAFTA, or cutting public services, or offshoring, or the basic functioning of Congress, those are perfectly fucking American and all right.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

They moved information like this off news deliberately after Strikethrough went BOOM!