Oh, for the love of...

[kiaxet]

Since I was so dang involved in the first Strikethrough, I feel like I should post about this one too.

All I have to say is, when somebody on deviantART tries to post art that goes against the TOS (notably underaged porn), is subsequently banned, and complains about it, people find it the funniest thing on the planet and make fun of them, saying they should have seen it coming. When the exact same thing happens on LJ, people go absolutely crazy, get up in arms, and threaten mass action.

This isn't like when they had the mass banning based solely on keywords in the interests section. This was actually deliberated about, and went through the necessary channels (so far as I can tell).

When you sign up for a LiveJournal account, there is a part where you have to signify that yes, you have read the terms of service. So really, if you've read them, there should be absolutely no reason to cross them, and no surprise at repurcussions if you do so anyway.

While I am sorry that two popular artists have been banned, I can't say I blame Six Apart at all. If you're going to use their website, you play by their rules, and that's about all there is to it.

Comments

[corrielle.livejournal.com]

The thing is that, as far as I can tell, neither of the pictures that were cited in the letters the artists got were depicting characters that were underage in the picture that supposedly got them deleted. Also, the TOS seems to be very vague in the area where it discusses the steps that are going to be taken in the case of inappropriate material, and it doesn't make much sense to me to completely delete accounts with absolutely no warning because an artist has violated a policy that was never sufficiently clarified. It would be one thing if they had posted fanart where characters were obviously minors, or in some other way broken a rule than any of us knew about. It's quite another if all of the characters are depicted as consenting adults. Because as far as I can tell, there's nothing in the TOS that prohibits smutty art. The thing that worries me is this: From what I've heard, one of the fanarts was declared "obscene" by the lj abuse team because they decided it had no redeeming artistic or literary merit. I'm very uncomfortable with any group making decisions about the nature and acceptability of artistic expression.

Please feel free to correct me on any of this if I'm wrong.