Shota Targeted?

[Cireus]

I read this and figured I'd share it with you all. I'm not asking where you stand on this issue or what you think of the genre, itself ... I can see both sides of the issue, myself. On the one hand, it seems like censorship at it's finest, but on the other, as the parent of two young sons (12 and 14), I can see their point. What do you think?

LiveJournal, Six Apart Incoporated's blogging community site which is popular in the anime/manga fan community, has permanently suspended its shota community and other accounts in a May 29-30 purge of alleged underaged sexual content. The shota community centered around fictional material on shotacon or shota, which is the Japanese term for attraction or relationships involving male minors. The Antiphonal journal on the site lists other fiction-centered communities, individual user accounts, and accounts for users' fictional role-playing characters as permanently suspended.

The organization Warriors for Innocence (WFI) has posted a blog entry on its website on May 30 that claims responsibility for sending requests to remove "over 500" unspecified sites or journals on LiveJournal "that promote pedophilia, child sex, child abuse, and other illegal activities." It also claims that "LiveJournal has revised their Terms Of Service (TOS) to include new standards that will ensure that they protect the safety and well-being of everyone who visits LiveJournal," although a text comparison of the current TOS and the TOS of April 2006 reveals no changes regarding sexual content. LiveJournal has not confirmed that WFI is directly involved in the suspension of the shota community and other accounts.

WFI says that it did not report sites that are about what it termed as "Lolita fashion." While acknowledging that "innocent journals were deleted," the group's organizers claims "we are not responsible" for the "mass hysteria over this," and further says that LiveJournal deleted journals independently of WFI. LiveJournal user Lizabeth Marcs has posted an email correspondence with the group.

LiveJournal's posted abuse policy says the site's abuse team "does not actively seek out violations of these policies or the Terms of Service" and "will only act when a complaint is filed." A maintainer for a suspended Harry Potter adult-themed fanfiction community (not directly related to anime or manga) has posted a response from the LiveJournal Abuse Team regarding the legal issues and the site's actions.

Neither LiveJournal nor Warriors for Innocence has responded yet to a press inquiry for comment.
Anime News Network, src (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-05-30/shota-community-other-livejournal-accounts-suspended)

[OROsan0677]

You're right, it does sound like censorship, but then again, they are talking about that it's minors viewing this stuff on the site.

[Cireus]

I'm not condoning or condemning anything in this. I can see both sides of it. Not just shota but yaoi, yuri, hentai should not be freely accessible to underage viewers, period. I am not familiar enough with LiveJournal to know whether or not they have any sort of filters available to keep young eyes out of it. It can be argued that it is an artistic expression. Okay, that's fine. Everyone views 'art' in their own way. People should be allowed to share and appreciate the things they view as "art", but there should be limits, too, especially in an area where viewership is not monitored at all. I'm not taking sides here. I just found the article to be interesting.

[DawnFire]

lol I might get flamed for this, but I honestly don't have a problem with what they're doing. Or well, maybe more that I can see why they're doing it. I do feel badly for people who are having their journals deleted that are just shipping pairings. And I mean, if you want to get really technical then my OTP and my journal should be deleted as well since Rukia is technically like 150 years old and Ichigo is 15 XD

I think doing that is getting a bit excessive. But honestly, there are a LOT of really creepy people out there and to think about all the perverts and pedophiles that could be lurking is really scary.

Shota and lolita to me falls in a really really iffy category, particularly when it involves characters that are like 10 or something. And there is stuff out there like that and I've seen groups that are about things like that. That's when it's not involving a specific anime character or pairing, it's just a general shota community or love for young girls or something and I honestly don't mind if those groups are deleted. Maybe I am too conservative, but when it involves a minor and an adult or two very young children or whatever, it's wrong. And I'm not talking about just pairings, this is when people draw whoever they want, or write about whoever, an original character. And then people get enjoyment out of it.

So yeah, I do feel badly for those who are having their journals deleted for what pairing(s) they like, but I honestly can see why they are doing this and it doesn't bother me as much as some people. I do think livejournal might have gotten a little carried away with how they handled it, but 'child sex' or whatever you want to call it is serious and I don't think it should be something that becomes enjoyable.

And well honestly, if you want to post about something like, then make your journal friends only or lock your post ;) Then no one will see it that you don't want to!

[DawnFire]

Here's a news update from livejournal, it's pretty long so I'm putting it behind spoiler tags just to cut back on length


2007-05-31
Well we really screwed this one up…


For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.

What we did wrong;
1) Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.
2) It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.
3) Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.

How we are fixing it.
1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.
2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.
3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.
4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.

So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?
As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;
Issue one was profiles.

There were a number of profiles that expressed “interest” in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably pedophilia and child rape. Both in the instructions for profiles and in other places on the site we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of “I like x”, “I’m in favor of x” or “I support x”. As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in pedophilia with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as “I like or I support or I’m in favor of it.” For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.

Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It’s often very hard to tell the difference. As such, we intended to have suspend reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these a reasonable person would think supported these activities. while at the same time portraying them.
We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our standards not theirs that we use to make decisions about the complaints. The source of this complaint was not the source of the problem we created.

We never intended this policy to cause the removal of journals that were have perfectly valid discussions about literature, law or culture. We never intended the policies to take down journals or communities clearly opposed to illegal activities but clearly we did. We love our members of fandom and respect their role in our community. We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it.

That is it. We have always been strong supporters of free speech and at the same time we believe deeply that children deserve special protections as well as the victims of violence and hate. We tried to implement a policy that walk that line and we did it poorly, we are all sorry. One could say that no matter what we did we would either be accused of opposing free speech or endangering children but I am sure we should and could have done this much better. I hope you can forgive us and we can regain your trust.

Barak Berkowitz
Chairman and CEO Six Apart



updates:

Talking to press:
It seems that people are very upset that I did a phone call with cNet before posting here. Probably a mistake but I did make it clear to them that we were still looking in to this and that I would have a better answer by the end of the day. Sorry but it really took some time to figure out how messed up this was.

Isn't this all just a panicked reaction to WFI?
Not really. WFI or anyone else may complain but we are responsible for applying our policies to those complaints. . Even idiots can be right about some things. We try not to judge the complaint by the source but rather judge them by our policies. I believe the problem here was not the complaints or the policies but our very poor execution.

Why did it take so long?
Well when you mess up some times you really mess up and it takes a while to even sort it out, It was really bad timing, so many people were traveling and even out of touch. When we did get it figured out I thought it would be worse to make a statement that was incorrect than to wait and try hard to get it right, I may have been wrong, I don't know. I would hate to be apologies every hour, Its late.

Will you make mistakes again?
I’m sure we will. These policies are hard to define and harder to enforce consistently. We are trying to walk a fine line between our love of free speech and our desire to protect children and others. The vast majority of these issues are clear but there will be time we make the wrong call, we will try hard to correct our mistakes faster and not make them on such a big scale but I’m sure we will make them.

Where is Brad?
He is on a well deserved vacation. He has worked so hard for so long to make this site great. He probably would have responded faster. I will need to beg his forgiveness too for doing such a bad job of filling in his absence.



So it looks like they're going to try to fix things, which is good. I do think that they had the right intentions, but I'm glad that they're recognizing that they went overboard with how they handled it. I respect that at least they recognized that they made a mistake and are attempting to fix it.

EDIT: and more!


2007-05-31
Journals being restored


As promised below we have reviewed the journals that have been suspended and are now in the midst of unsuspended about half of them.
The class of suspensions that are being reversed are;
1. All Fandom journals
2. All fiction journals
3. All journals who that had problems in their profile only

Are large number of journals that are clear violations of our policies will remain suspended.

I will write a post in more detail soon but I wanted to get this up now as promised.
We are truly sorry for the mess, we have more work yet to do.

[InuYoukaimama]

Yep, as Dawnfire pointed out, they are trying to correct their grevious error in their abrupt handling of the situation.
As a member of the fandom boards on LJ, the last 48 hours have been quite the uproar.
I give the members of fandom a lot of credit, though, they really banded together and come together as a group with no snarking, snarling or snide behavior to work together as a cohesive group to bring attention to the fact that innocent fandom and literary groups were unfairly victimized as a part of this mass deletion.

Things are settling down over there, but, it has caused quite the stir.

I unfortunately worry that when we start to censor fiction and fandoms that we can run into a very serious risk of infringing upon our freedom of speech. Very shakey ground there.

[gin-hayashi85]

I'm very conditional when it comes to fantasy fiction involving shota, loli, or just minors involved in some hentai way.
Children should not be able to see anything like that at all. The accessibility of it on the net is bad enough.... though sometimes sites or programs go a bit overboard on the blocking. Age confirmation is the way to go... IF you want higher rated stuff. I have never before seen much of anything on LJ that prohibits the viewing or use of by minors, so they could see pretty much whatever they chose.
Adults have their fantasies....look on one 'chan site and you'll know. Prolly more than you ever wanted. But part of me wonders if at least having something totally fictional helps keep the actual real life stuff lowered. I dislike pedophilia very much....but I enjoy manga or hentai even with characters that are say...15-17 years old. Even Kagome is only 15 to start. Inuyasha seems or at least acts like he is 17. They would technically be 'minors'.
I suppose there is some give and take to it. There is no question when it comes to characters 18+. Only those under it and mostly those under age 14 get the bad side of things. So its just conditional IMO.

[Cireus]

If you look it up in the lawbooks, the freedom of speech only goes so far. For example, the age old addage, your freedom of speech ends when you walk into a crowded theatre and yell "FIRE".

The bottom line of this, to me, is that in the end, LJ, like just about every other place in the world/on the web is owned by someone (or a group of someones). If they get a burr up their butt and want to delete something, they can and oftentimes do. That's the way of it, and whether they did the right or wrong thing is irrelevant in that sense.

[halkatana]

I have recently heard about the issue. It made a lot of noise on the web.
^^

I'm a bit late on the thread but I do share the same opinion with Cireus and Orosan concerning the comment about ownership of content. People should read EULAs when they register somewhere.

I'm a video gamer and spent 2 years playing to World of Warcraft (a Massive Multiplayer Online game (MMO)) where all the content of the game was basically the property of Blizzard, the game company that developed WoW. It is pretty clear in the EULA that everything in the game (characters and other "data" like items, gold, etc) is blizzard-owned yet some people still think they own things and have rights on those things they do not own.

In the end, if what LiveJournal did did not breach the EULA terms and conditions that users' agreed upon, then they could do it and they did. Technically and legally, there is not much room for arguing.


Consequently, I guess the discussion is more about: should they have done it ? could they have done things more smoothly and with more tact ? Should all the whining about closed journals be considered ok ?

About the first question, I think adult material should stay adult material. Even if access to that kind of content on the internet by minors can be hard to control and monitor (by parents or through technological means), the label "adult content" is important to create a psychological barrier. So in a sense LiveJournal, I think did a good thing in keeping its website "clean" (apparently a very popular one and for all audiences).

To support my opinion (it is only an opinion), I raise again the EULA that might have proscribed adult content (i do not know if it did but I'm pretty sure it must have the mention "LiveJournal reserves the right to change/modify the EULA at anytime without prior agreement of the user"). In addition, people could make their own website if they are not happy with the people hosting their content (which might not be their content anymore depending on the EULA terms). Finally, the internet is a pretty large place and all those persons can do their thing in less travelled areas of the web (which is also less explored by children): if someone (which might be a children) is looking for that type of content, it can be found. It is the responsibility of the individual to be mature and of the parents to help their kids (I do not have any child but I do watch adult content and I do not think I would want my children to be exposed to adult content until they are mature enough to understand it and have the values necessary to know the wrong from the right (which can also vary from person to person though ultimately, laws are there to rein in the weirdos).

Someone mentionned weirdos/child abusers: those guys are hard to defend a child against. Fortunately, child defense groups usually keep their eyes on popular websites (like chatting websites) to protect children. In addition, young children do not usually go to adult websites so logically, what LiveJournal did might help in creating a safer environment since dangerous people could be found (or an attempt at locating them might be done) and children do not play around unknown places over the net. The teens who actually know what they are looking for are able to find it over the net by themselves : adult content does not need to be on a popular website for all audiences since people usually look for it and do not enjoy randomly arriving on a porn website.

(my examples are a bit extreme but I hope you will not be too picky about it)

To the second question, LiveJournal agreed by themselves that they were a bit strong so I guess I do not need to express an opinion.

About the whining, well, it is whining.
^^

Sure, I would be very upset if (hypothetical example) LiveJournal erased my journal's content because it contained the word "lolita" in it. In fact, I get very upset whenever I lose data because it means I have to redo the stuff. It just happens and I just become upset. LiveJournal blocks and deletes things so people get upset. Some of them are upset for good reasons (and likely will get their account restored) and others just have to be upset because they likely did not back up their data and know their content might be questionable for the LiveJournal data and is likely not to be restored. The second category should not be complaining and get their own website but it's true that they could have been given some delay in order to know they should save their data.



Sorry for the long post! I cannot resist sharing opinions in debates...

Also, thank you for taking the time to read my post. Feel free to comment or disagree with the things I say: I enjoy learning how others think.

[Cireus]

Personally, I enjoy reading long and well thought-out responses, especially in a talk thread. That aside ...

I think that everyone agrees that LJ pretty well dropped the proverbial ball on this. In their haste to rid themselves of questionable content, there were quite a few innocent journals that were deleted, but I highly doubt that sitting here and trying to dissect it so that the next time it would be more contolled on their end of it would do any good, so I won't bother.

A lot of people (ironically, the ones that are griping and whining the loudest) refuse to move to another community or website because they don't want to lose their content or friends lists. While this is understandable, if you've got an interesting journal, your friends will follow; just provide a link to your new 'home'.... and moving a journal is fairly simple, depending on what you're moving to. (Word Press blogs are insanely simple to migrate to).

The thing is, that clause you mentioned: "LiveJournal reserves the right to change/modify the EULA at anytime without prior agreement of the user" pretty well exonerates them from any real recourse, any way you look at it. It's ironic to me, really. I mean, would the same users go to, say, Microsoft's website and demand that they be allowed to do what they want, willy-nilly? Seem silly? Same principle. LJ might well be an 'interactive community' but that community is still owned by someone.

I've read arguments that LJ wouldn't have batted an eye if the subject matter had been slightly different, but I don't think that's true. I think that what they were ultimately looking at was the idea that, like all webmasters, LJ can and would be held responsible for the content of every single journal on their site. If it came right down to it in a court of law, saying "I wasn't aware of their content" wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. It'd be paramount to having a trampoline in your back yard where the neighbor kids congregate and play without your knowlege (say you were out of town). If one of those children falls and gets hurt, you'd be held responsible whether via insurance or litigation, for that accident, and saying that you were out of town and didn't know about it wouldn't mean squat then, either.

I don't think that anyone doesn't believe that LJ did jump the gun and thus made quite a mess for itself in the process, but what I think needs to be kept in mind is that in the USA (where LJ is based; you can find references to US laws in the TOS), shota, itself, is considered child pornography. Mind, I'm not condoning or condemning shota as an artform; I'm reiterating US laws, which are quite clear on the matter: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002256----000-.html

In any case, I think that LJ should have taken the time to invesigate journals before indescriminately removing them, but then I suppose they've figured that out, too. Running a search for keywords is fine, but in the end, one word alone really ought to not be the beginning and end for drawing conclusions.

[Shima]

I'm not condoning or condemning anything in this. I can see both sides of it. Not just shota but yaoi, yuri, hentai should not be freely accessible to underage viewers, period. I am not familiar enough with LiveJournal to know whether or not they have any sort of filters available to keep young eyes out of it. It can be argued that it is an artistic expression. Okay, that's fine. Everyone views 'art' in their own way. People should be allowed to share and appreciate the things they view as "art", but there should be limits, too, especially in an area where viewership is not monitored at all. I'm not taking sides here. I just found the article to be interesting.

i understand what you mean, though i must say the first time i saw the post on 'warriors of innocence' i was expressing anger cause the people are actually condemning and deleting people's LJ and accusing them of providing 'obscenity'. however, for LJ's there are filters cause when it's friend's locked, that means you have to join (unless you're an adult you cant enter, and to join, gotta state your date of birth and promise not to do this and that. or unless allowed by the administrators, you might not even be a part of their LJ) though i must say, that means all websites that has adult themes are not always filtered.

lets say we have to state our DOB and apparently, some people can just put down fake DOB for the sake of getting in the adult websites.

in a way, they do have a point because they think the providers dont care about the law and humanity at all, but some people consider them arts and not more than that. viewing doesnt mean you want to do the same to the minors actually.