Related to my post earlier today, imaginarycircus has posted an open letter to LJ/SA attempting to explain why their describing fan art as child porn (which it cannot be, legally, as no actual child is involved) is so damned insulting.

Please, if you, like me, understand that there's a difference, consider signing the open letter at the link below.

http://imaginarycircus.livejournal.com/128054.html

This isn't about supporting explicit fan art. If you have issues with explicit artworks, I get it. So do I (though mine run more to photomanips than to drawings).

This is about LJ admins publicly equating two fan artists to people who rape children.

Reposting from a comment I left elsewhere, for the record.

I agree that many in fandom have been behaving very badly over this. The cat macros? How exactly was that supposed to be helpful?

But I don't agree that the recent lj_biz post was clear. They still have not defined what is "questionable" in their eyes and the refusal to address clearly defined hypothetical scenarios indicates that they want huge grey areas in the policy that will allow them to do this again. And again.

Don't forget, after the first strikethrough they promised that no further journals would be deleted without warning. And promptly broke that promise. Now they have posted a policy which appears once again to promise warnings but in fact, if you read between the lines, allows them to delete without warning any time they feel like it.

What makes it worse is they continue to use the term "child pornography" when what they mean is "material that may or may not be obscene under the Miller Test" or, more accurately, "pictures we don't like".

Child porn is illegal in every western country (and many others, too). Child porn means stuff that hurts children. I used to work on the abuse team of an ISP: I know what child porn looks like because it was my job to view it. By continually (mis)using that term they are publicly equating two members of fandom to child rapists and there has been no hint of an official apology for that.

As a member of fandom that is what I want: formal recognition that they've lied about those two women. That is what it will take for me to believe Six Apart actually want fandom here.

Everything they've posted so far is just smoke and mirrors.

LJ want to operate a "two strikes" policy? Fine. So will I. Absent a public apology (and I do mean from the corporation, or its head, not from one of their employees), this was strike two.

They just posted that fandom and fiction LJs that were deleted will be restored. Good news!

On the other hand, innocence_jihad collected a list of deleted journals and comms in this post. A quick glance down the list shows the freaking huge number of unnecessary deletions (they're the ones with no strikethrough).

Oh, boy, did they screw this one up!

A part of any fandom, ever? If so, stand up and be counted by joining fandom_counts. Please. I'm begging you. It's just a body-count: you don't have to do anything but click through and join. Let's show LJ that fandom is a force to be reckoned with.

There's so much information flying around about the great LJ purge. I'm so grateful to everyone who's taking the time to summarise it. I can't possibly read it all.

I started reading the comments on the most recent news post last night - there's a hell of a lot to go through but it's very educational.

[ETA: Like the fact that "Warriors for Innocence" is a right-wing fanatic "organisation" made up of three people. No legitimate links to law enforcement. Like the fact that LJ users have reported a man who openly admitted to being a child molestor in his own LJ, and friended parents who posted about their own children, and LJ refused to ban this obvious predator from their site or even advise users on how to ban him from their own LJs. Like the fact that communites created to spread hatred and incite violence have been reported to LJ abuse and not banned. Way to go, LJ.]

Also there's innocence_jihad where ongoing updates are being collected and sevenfandomdays where folks are attempting to devise a co-ordinated protest against these unfair deletions.

In possibly good news, some deleted journals are apparently back. Though not the fandom ones, so far. If and when LJ reinstate pornish_pixies I'll consider sanity returned. I'm not into HP fandom, but this seems to be the major fandom "trigger point". Also, I note that so far none of the SPN communities I've joined have been purged. This gives me hope.