Has anyone asked lj....

[heidi]

While driving today it ocured to me that doing an img-src tag to incorporate an image, or even linking to something you don't host, can be catastrophic for an lj user who's had his or her site for years

I know some of the domains I linked to or did img srcs on, or some of the memes I posted in my lj over the last almost-six years have changed domain names and/or owners since then and I don't know the current content on those pages.

So given that lj has now said that linking to something can generate a suspension if the linked-to content, then some content that has changed since originaly linked to can result in suspension and deletion of your lj and every comment and post you've ever made. I know that the content can change because one of the thebadplace registrations from circa 2001 lapsed in, iirc, 2004, and was bought by someone who did some technological trick to make any link to the site or anything at the domain show a close-up of an extremely private place on his anatomy.

If you link to a thread that gets a comment later that lj deems obscene, or where someone later does an img src of "obscene" or "underage-sex" content, are you violating the ToU? Are you responsible for continuously checking the urls of things you linked to 2, 3, 6 years ago?

I can understand LJ concluding that such links and/or img src's are a ToU violation under their current policies, and either asking for them to be removed or even locking the user's account until s/he signs in next or clicks an url in an informing email but at this point, LJ says they have the option to ban/delete and that?

Overkill. To put it mildly.

Comments

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

They have 'said' that that sort of linking won't necessarily result in being banned. That they understand you can link to something and then afterwards content could change.

But since they have no real system of redress, I rather doubt it'll be any skin off their nose if they just ban you. Because they really, really don't seem to care one way or another.

Is their decision incredibly stupid? Yes. Do they really care? No. Because they don't have to enforce this decision. At least, they can enforce it selectively. So they won't have to start trolling through everyone's every link. All they have to do is target someone, and then check them out. And then it's just another tool for them to get rid of us.

I don't think lj at large needs to worry about this. I think it's our people. Because it is systematic. Rule one gets rid of the artists. Rule two gets rid of the supporters. Rule three gets rid of...

And we already know that they will get rid of who they want, however they have to, while conveniently ignoring the "rule" when we try and explain that A, B, and C are breaking it as well. A, B, and C look good to advertisers and the general public. A, B, and C can do whatever they want.

WE are the ones who have to look over our shoulder. And that's just what they want.

[ancarett]

Overkill is a very good word, here.

LJ is being very, very stupid here. If they have the technology (and they do!) to suspend individual entries, they should do that with a ToU violation. Only if there are repeat violations (this could be spamming multiple comms with the same spam advertisement, say, or continuing to post explicit child-rape fantasy stories after receiving an explicit warning to desist) should there be suspensions and bannings.

LJ has no one but themselves to blame over the outraged fan reaction to their hasty suspensions. As I said, they have the technology to make individual entries unseen while they're dealing with possible violations. That they're not doing this but, rather, banning whole journals on the basis of questionable judgment calls shows they don't really understand either their technology OR their users.

[folk.livejournal.com]

they have the technology to make individual entries unseen

O RLY? Proof, please.

[ancarett]

Ya, rly. It's built into the LJ system as an administrative privilege that can be activated by certain superusers: contrib_edit

We also know that the LJ administrators can look at any entry that any user makes, even if it is private (which makes the whole plan of flocking questionable entries a futile endeavour). I'm not sure if their screening function would allow them to take a page "offline" without changing the URLs, mind you (since they would also, at the same time, want to freeze the ability of the original author to edit the work subject to administrative decisions), but they have the ability to yank individual entries, yup, yup!

Way back when I used to work as website community manager for another dotcom, I had the ability to get into any user's account and yank individual pages, images or the whole damned thing (we did the latter only when the accounts were spam or warez sites). It's standard operating procedure in any of these sites to have a pretty clearly coded backdoor which should, ideally, be accessible only by trained and responsible personnel.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the details.

Heidi, what's the legal position with DMCA SH/CC stuff wrt "editing" of content via taking part of it offline?

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

hey, um, so, not that this is your responsibility or anything, but I'm unclear; does stuff that's under friends lock follow the same rules, or what?
This kinda sucks.

[ceilidh]

Yes, it does. If someone reports it, it doesn't matter if it's friendslocked or not. Or even private, for that matter.

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. That really sucks. But I can't help but think they're just burning themselves. Even though there are probably only a small component that actually posts stuff they don't like/want as part of their community; the rest of us are here because fandom exists here because of them. I mean, if the fanfic and fanart people leave, everyone who reads it will leave with them, and eventually everyone interested in meta will leave too. I don't quite understand who livejournal thinks will also pay for their services, I mean, to be honest, casual users aren't really... interested in paying for it??