Yesterday, someone pointed me to this Boing Boing post about LiveJournal purging some fanfiction and related accounts, causing quite a stir. The matter was brought to Boing Boing’s attention by Madeline Ashby, a writer, cyborg theorist, blogger, soon-to-be-grad student, and (recent) LJer. Knowing she reads this blog, I asked her to explain what’s been happening. The result is long, but very interesting.
[Update: A lot of LJ fandom folks have been coming by to read this and I'd love to hear your perspectives in comments (yeah, I know you've been writing about this all over LJ and maybe you're tired of explaining it to outsiders, but in case you aren't, I'm all ears. Or eyes.)]
Q: Can you give us a snapshot of Strikethrough 07, also known as the LJ Purge? What’s the situation?
A: If I had to sum up this entire event within a single metaphor, I would say that what has happened is that certain individuals have treated LiveJournal like Baghdad. In trying to find a few very harmful, dangerous people, those individuals have done a broad sweep of the population, identified a few widely-shared characteristics, and suspended privileges — some might even say rights — with the goal of stopping crime. And like Baghdad, the situation has turned explosive. Residents are unhappy. Some of them were guilty, but most weren’t. Now what remains is the opportunity to find a new, smarter strategy.
To understand the LJ Purge, you have to go back to Friday, May 25. That day, I was preparing for my role as a panelist at Anime North. I didn’t see what LJ user Liz Marcs called “the perfect storm” on the horizon. She describes it excellently at this post. In her post, she attributes the perfect storm to three factors:
1) The controversial statuette of Mary Jane Watson, which ignited outrage on the part of female comics and media fans and earned fandom lots of attention in the process
2) The swirling vortex around FanLib, a for-profit website that a) purports to have invented fanfiction (a piece of misinformation that the women at the Feminist SF blog take great issue with), and b) to syndicate fanfiction from other sites without the author’s permission. For more information, check out Henry Jenkins’ interview with the CEO, and some response to it.
3) A rumour that LJ was being pressured by an outsider group to purge certain journals based on content. Said content might include fanfiction of an illicit nature. Although members of the Abuse team at LJ scoffed at such threats, the rumor persisted. Here’s a link.
As it turns out, the rumor was true. An online group called Warriors For Innocence had contacted advertisers who work with LiveJournal, alerting LJ to content they found offensive, specifically that relating to incest, pedophilia, or child rape. WFI claimed that according to LJ’s Terms of Service, LJ had the mandate to eliminate those journals and communities who listed “incest” and such terms in their interest field. LJ promptly suspended journals and communities without warning, with a total of approximately 500 sites affected — the count is ongoing. However, LJ’s understanding of context proved lacking. Along with actual child pornography sites, several fanfiction communities, legitimate LiveJournals (including those belonging to survivors of incest and child rape), and literary discussion groups were suspended or deleted.
Needless to say, news of the purge spread through LiveJournal like wildfire. Fannish users were warned to change their list of interests, lock down their fanfiction, and close ranks. The “it’s a raid!” meme spread, with a huge amount of backlash. LiveJournal communities were established to fight what many saw as an infringement of civil liberties at worst, or an unforeseen reading of the Terms of Service at best. Reaction was mixed: Many fans felt betrayed by what they saw as LJ’s cave-in to corporate interest, and a subsequent denial of the American First Amendment right to free speech. These fans felt targeted by a bizarre anti-fanfiction Kristallnacht, as though WFI had chosen to throw bricks through the gleaming windows of “Wincest,” (Supernatural) “twin-cest,” (Harry Potter) “Elricest” (Fullmetal Alchemist), “Paire” (Heroes) and other fandoms.
Still others thought that it was unfortunate, but predictable. LiveJournal is owned by the corporation Six Apart. Corporations have no obligations to customers, only to their shareholders. If users have a problem with the way LJ does business, these users argued, there are other services. Moreover, they argued, this is not a First Amendment issue. Rather, it’s part of the complicated relationship between corporations, customers, and special-interest groups. It’s unfortunate that some users suffered, but it’s nothing worth going to war over.
Chairman and CEO of Six Apart, Barak Berkowitz, has since apologized for the snafu, saying “we really screwed this one up.” His apology says that “attempt to clean up a few journals” has “turned into a total mess.” When speaking about WFI, he says: “Even idiots can be right about some things.” His answers have proved remarkably unhelpful for some fans because they do not clearly elucidate what Six Apart or LJ define as “appropriate” and do not outline a plan to protect fans and other users who are not breaking the law:
Further inquiry has occurred at BoingBoing. As a regular BB reader, I suggested the story upon first hearing of it because I thought it might interest co-editor Cory Doctorow, who recently wrote a defense of fanfiction in an editorial for Locus Magazine. Co-editor and NPR contributor Xeni Jardin picked up the lead and ran with it. At the moment, the tech-savvy readers at BB are conducting a homegrown investigation into who exactly is behind Warriors For Innocence. WFI’s spyware-infested site is run on a proxy server through Domainsbyproxy.com, which leads some readers to believe that they have something to hide. Other LJ users allege that WFI is run by Christians of the homophobic variety.
(Continued)
