yonmei

05:37 pm: Emma Thompson comes back from the dark side
...thanks to a 19-year-old student who talked to her face-to-face about what her support for letting a rapist get away with it looked like. (I wrote a letter to her agent: On striving to think the best of people, 1st November.)

Caitlin Hayward-Tapp, a student at Exeter University: well done her.

(I tried to post a comment at the Independent website re the shameful meiosis of referring to Polanski's rape of a 13-year-old girl as "unlawful sex", but it turns out they've signed on to Livejournal to process their comments, and as I'm suspended... I'm not allowed to comment there.)

Tags: i am an angry feminist, lj abuse did what???

07:33 pm: Eight years ago today...
I left work at about four o'clock, realising at last that I would get nothing more done.

That was a Tuesday. I took the next eight working days off, dazed, shocked, confused, tired, unable to sleep, thinking, about almost everything "What does it matter now?"

Not because of the attack itself: because I was afraid, mortally, horribly afraid of what Americans would do in response to the attack. When the missiles began to fall on Afghanistan, not even a month later, in an odd and horrible kind of way it was almost a relief: you know how you feel when you realise that, do what you might, you have missed the train, or you have broken the crystal bowl: you must deal now with the world as it is. I knew the US response to this attack could destroy the world. It still might. Uncounted thousands have been killed in Afghanistan because of the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon - people who barely had a notion there was a country called America, who had no idea what the WTC looked like. Over a million people have been killed in Iraq. Hundreds of people have been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured. The US government openly endorses kidnapping, extra-judicial imprisonment, torture, and murder: has openly claimed the right to aggressive war. A distinction without a difference, I might have said, ten years ago, since nothing the US has done in the past eight years was new: but it makes and made a difference that, once, the US tried to present itself as a country with standards. Once upon a time: before Mahar Arar was kidnapped and sent to Syria to be tortured, an act the US then and still defends as legal because a citizen of another country who is in a US airport but has not yet legally entered the country, has no rights in the US. Before the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was built. Before the first prisoners were brought to Bagram Airbase to be tortured. Before the massacre in Dasht-i-Leili. Before the US, in a wave of bloodthirsty anger that seemed all but universal, began to make war on Afghanistan in revenge for an attack that no Afghan took part in and no Afghan could have stopped.

tzikeh just tweeted links to two things she reads every 9/11: I hadn't read For Thou Art With Us before - a first-hand account of downtown New York on the morning of September 11. (Related: Operation Find Don.) I had read the metafilter as-it-happens thread, or part of it, though not all of it.

I can't say there's any one thing I read every September 11. But there is one thing I do read often, from The Onion, September 26, 2001:

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

.....

"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!"

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Whereas in July four years ago, though all day I was checking to make sure everyone I knew and cared about in London was alive and well, I wasn't panicking. Not just because you can't step in the same river once, but because... well, this was Britain: this was my country. Make tea not war. I posted this on Metaquote from jslayeruk's journal (and of course a year later it was vanished because I was banned, but by that time it had gone global)

“When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything. You're a bit cold? Tea. Your boyfriend has just left you? Tea. You've just been told you've got cancer? Tea. Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt? Tea dammit! And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out.”

Not that we're nicer people than the Americans. But we're not an Empire. Not any more.

Tags: evil american politics, evil british politics, guantanamo bay, iraq, lj abuse did what???, september 11, tea

04:02 pm: Having a sense of proportion
I am no longer a Quaker - haven't been for over 20 years. (Discovering I am an atheist, to my mind, pretty much terminates being a Quaker.)

But I retain the Quaker sense that one should try to live one's life with consistent values - this is why I am banned from Livejournal.

But... what this goes along with, is - though I can try to live my life with consistent ethics in all matters - I do not think that every issue has the same value. Certainly not just because it's happening to me.

I could quit Livejournal, and refuse to join Dreamwidth, because I detest the idea promoted that motherhood is obscene - the idea, upheld by LJ Abuse when headed by Denise Paolucci, that a photo of a baby breastfeeding is more obscene that a soft-porn shot of a woman with artfully blurred nipples, and it's more important to ban such images from Livejournal than it is to ban people who post cartoony images of women being tortured.

My quitting Livejournal and refusing to join Dreamwidth is a decision that primarily affects only me. Insofar as it affects anyone else, it encourages the promotion of fandom and friendship across journalsites - for diversity and decentralisation: which I also think are good things.

I think the discrimination against mothers and the sexualisation of women's bodies implicit in the Livejournal ban is an important issue: I do not, compared with many other things I care about, think Livejournal's ban and rewriting of the rules was ever a particularly important issue - it mattered to me (and possibly to others who friended me) on a personal level.

This is a rambly post which may become a more coherent one about broader issues, once I've thought things through a bit more.

I'm just thinking: these issues that we bump into all the time in fandom space (the neuroscientists who thought fans were lab rats, the sexist guys who have problems with Scans Daily being slash fan space, the anti-slash fans who want to make sure we know they're sure their heroes can't be gay, whether Spike is a hero or a villain or just another blond with a tortured gaze, if Doctor 10 was a Doctor Gone Wrong for mindwiping instead of saving Donna... they all relate to larger issues (except maybe Spike) but they're not, in and of themselves, important. Except maybe the anti-slash fans when they were noisy, but they seem to have quieted down a lot of recent years.) But sometimes (like recently - not someone on my flist or likely to be reading this) you run into someone who seems to have lost track of that, who's got the impression that if it matters to them it's of Global Importance.

Which is disturbing, really.

Tags: fannishness, join us on the outside, lj abuse did what???, slash

05:26 pm: Happy anniversary!
It's three years to the day since I left livejournal.

SUP and Six Apart and Denise Paolucci: Still Evil!

(Distilled evil? The Evil Root of Squirrel is EvilEvil!)

Have *cake*.

Went to Aberdour Castle today with solo: was fun. Soon, we will have curry. Yay.

Tags: lj abuse did what???, seeing friends

09:44 am: Some moral and legal issues involved in copyright violation
Dear telesilla,

Every time I see a member of the fanfic community attempting to apply the laws of copyright to themselves, it makes me boggle. Apparently it's okay to dismiss/ignore copyright law when it's, oh say, Acme Shark's copyright on everything connected with the SG universe, but if it's comments on an LJ being moved without your permission? OMG UR IN MAH COPYRIGHT VIOLATIN ME!

There are a bunch of issues here:

I'm a fanfic writer (and a fanfic fan). I break copyright all the time, and I read fanfic that breaks copyright all the time. But, I do see a moral - if not a legal - distinction, between:
- Violating copyright of a film or TV series, where the creators and the owner are not the same people (and where there are a multiplicity of creators: the scriptwriter, the director, the actor, etc).
- Violating copyright of a novel or story where the creator/owner is either dead and therefore past caring, or is alive and is cool with fanfic (however expressed - "cool with fanfic" can include "Why would you want to do that? Make sure I never officially find out about it, OK?")
- Violating copyright of a novel or story where the creator/owner is alive and has made clear they do not want anyone writing fanfic about it.

The first one I feel fine about; the second, I don't see any real issues with; the third I don't feel fine about and would in general try to avoid.

Fanfic itself has a wide range of copyright - it's far from being as clearcut as the "None of this is legal!" people would have you believe. Satire is explicitly legally protected; there is a strong argument to be made that written fanfic of a visual creation is not a violation of copyright (may be a trademark violation); and a whole stack of other stuff.

Then there is the copyright inherent not in fiction, but in personal letters. The legal owner of a letter is the person to whom it was sent (or who has bought it from that person). The copyright-holder is the person who wrote the words, and that person has a right to say who will and will not publish the words. Again: I'm talking moral, not legal distinctions. A person who sees no problem violating the copyright in Gladiator by writing fanfic about the characters, may see moral issues in republishing Russell Crowe's personal letters.

The distinction is:

In writing this comment to your IJ, I make you the legal owner of this copy of the comment. (I also repost it to my journal, reaffirming my ownership of the copyright.) Saving it to your hard drive might be considered a form of re-publication, but I'm not the music industry. Republishing it elsewhere - for example, were you to port your IJ over to DW - is a clear violation of copyright.

Now, you are right, of course, in asserting that it's a violation of copyright that the copyright holders can't do an effin' thing about, realistically: I'm sure Denise bloody Paolucci was counting on this when she made this option available. But it is not nonsense for people to point out that you are, in fact, violating their copyright to their personal comments, even if they are fanfic fans who routinely write fanfic that violates the copyright of half a dozen Hollywood corporations

And finally, of course:

What I might be good with if I'm asked first, politely, for my permission, I may be less happy with if my permission is taken for granted, and am likely to get even less happy with if the person doing it is shouting "I'm going to do this and you can't stop me, so there!"

Best,

Yonmei

(posted as a comment here)

Tags: ;l, fanfic, fannish snark, lj abuse did what???

11:59 am: Message for Peter David


(Not that it will do him a lot of good, at this moment in time. A classic XKCD time machine which looks rather like a giant hamster ball, and which enables him to go back in time to the day he thought it would be a good idea to shut down scans_daily for being rude about one of his comics, make out with himself, and between warm passionate kisses on his own mouth*, whisper "No: it is not a good idea to become known as the comics writer who got scans_daily suspended from livejournal"? A much better idea.)

(If you do not know what I am talking about: Thoughts on Scans_Daily and Peter David, scans_daily suspended, The Death (and resurrection) of Scans_Daily, Editorial: Livejournal Kills Scans_Daily. Oh, and possibly the best, a double-letter addressed to Scans_daily fans and Peter David: And I Shall Call It Dumbassopalooza: scans_daily and Peter David.)

*"Making out with yourself" is an XKCD meme.

Incidentally, I see Peter David is asserting that yes, he sic'd Marvel's lawyers on Scans_Daily, but he's sure that it was just coincidence that LJ Abuse shut down Scans_Daily two days later because Marvel say their legal team hadn't had time to investigate. Having had some direct experience of LJ Abuse's willingness to shut down and suspend anything or anyone who might remotely be suspected of someday causing Livejournal trouble, I'm actually fairly sure that LJ Abuser saw Peter David's notification that he was going to Marvel Comics, passed the word on to the head borg, and the community got suspended before Marvel could take off their visor and blaze Livejournal to the ground. Seems a lot more likely than the "just coincidence": but it's the only defense he's got. "I meant to shut it down, but I didn't actually do it".

All he's accomplished (since Scans_Daily promptly moved to insanejournal) is to ensure that all regular members of that community are plenty damn mad at him, to spread his name far and wide... and to give scans_daily a new home on Insanejournal. Welcome to the asylum.




Tags: lj abuse did what???, online situations, outcasts should stick together, xkcd

08:59 pm: Welcome to the new LJ Abuse, same as the old LJ Abuse
What Livejournal says:

We have also stated within the policy that non-graphic, non-sexualized nudity is not considered explicit adult content. This includes things such as an image of a mother breastfeeding their child, or a non-sexualized work of art such as the Statue of David. We have also extended this to our policy on default userpics; non-graphic, non-sexualized nudity is no longer considered a violation of our default userpic policy. (a quick summary of the new policy)

What Livejournal does:

Thank you for your inquiry. However, the last suspension of your account occurred when you deliberately reset your journal to use a default userpic that you were in full knowledge was in violation of our policies, since both this and several other of your accounts had been suspended and in some cases re-suspended for using the same userpic.

This action showed a blatant and obvious unwillingness to comply with LiveJournal's policies -- because of this, your account will not be unsuspended.

Regards,
Annika
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team

In short: the problem really is not so much that I had a default userpic which broke the rules, it's that I deliberately adopted a userpic that broke the rules. I got myself permanently suspended because I made clear that if their company had rules that I considered immoral and pointless, I would not keep them. Even if, after two years, they've finally changed the particular rule I was protesting - or rather, especially as they've finally changed that particular rule. Someone like that is not someone they want back on Livejournal.

Which is... well, pretty much what I expected, when I thought about it. Seriously, I can genuinely understand their position: they want people producing content for them who will not disobey rules just because they're stupid/immoral. I proved myself a troublemaker: Livejournal is not a public resource, it's a company website which is supposed to bring in advertising revenue. Someone who had happened to have a default icon that broke the rules and who had refused to change the icon and got suspended as a result might well be back this week: but that isn't my situation.

( a poll )

Update: Well, you could ask the LJ Abuse representative* - the one fandom elected to the Advisory Board - but really, (a) there's nothing to ask - they're quite clear: (b) I mention this because the recent "election" just added a rich note of irony to the mix: it's so absurd that after Strikethrough 2006, fandom decided that the right person to be the primary fannish vote recipient was ...someone who already works for the company and enforces the corporate policies. (Yes, as a volunteer, not paid: so she has not even the excuse of "got to keep the mortgage payments coming" for what she does for Livejournal's owners.) Irony is good for the blood. Or is that sarcasm?

*Except you can't, because legomymalfoy has made her journal friends-only. While respecting her obvious reasons for doing so, it does indicate that in her year as the userbase representative, she plans to represent only the LJ Abuse team to the advisory board.

Tags: lj abuse did what???

08:18 pm: LJ policy changes
Thanks to the multiple people who have separately contacted me, and especially to solo, with whom I'm staying till Sunday: yes, I do know that LJ's staff have claimed they're changing policy on default breastfeeding icons, and have sent a request to LJ Abuse that they should unsuspend my journal.

I'm immensely touched by all of you who thought of me and contacted me, and I await developments with LJ Abuse.

Tags: lj abuse did what???

04:05 pm: Vox
Vox belongs to SixApart. Vox is connections. Vox is asking questions and getting no answers because VoxAbuse is LJAbuse cloned. Vox is getting people who didn't want a blog to start one pointlessly. Vox is bad spelling. Vox is learning something new about your best friends and wishing you hadn't. Vox is seeing comic-book movies and hearing boyband music. Vox is bottle-fed baby pictures. Vox is all your favorite stuff in one place so VoxAbuse can easily delete it. Vox is full of crap. Vox is addictive. Vox is the kid at your new school who pretended to be friendly and then beat you up. Vox is Heathrow in the rain after a terrorist threat means everybody gets to stand in queues for days. Vox is about being afraid to take a chance. Vox is about sharing your life with VoxAbuse, who have everybody's password. Vox is turning on a light when you'd rather it was dark. Vox is making use of people like you. Vox belongs to SixApart.

Tags: lj abuse did what???

05:31 pm: Simultaneously, LJ Abuse were dealing with the issue of trolls on my journal
I have screenshots of all of this, but it's easier to read like this:

( My initial report )

( Comment (#2324151) )

Tags: lj abuse did what???

05:03 pm: Well, that's that - account suspended
Yonmei on livejournal is suspended.

( response from LJ Abuse )

( my response )

( And in response from the LJ Abuse team, I got: )

Simultaneously, LJ Abuse were dealing with the issue of trolls on my journal

Tags: lj abuse did what???

08:30 am: I have no idea how long this will stay up:
On June 1st, I got an e-mail from LJ Abuse:

The LiveJournal Abuse Team has received and verified a complaint that your current default user picture, located (http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/46673008/825727) is in violation of our policy on default user pictures. Because the default pictures are visible in open access areas, we hold them to a stricter standard than other user pictures. As the areola on this picture is visible, it is inappropriate for default use. Please note that the icon itself is not innapropriate, only its use as a default is. You may continue to use the icon as non-default.

We must thus request that you choose a new default icon as soon as possible, but no later than 12:01 AM Eastern (one minute after midnight), Monday, June 5, 2006 in order to prevent further action from being taken against your account.

At 5am in the UK on Tuesday morning, of course, Yonmei on livejournal was deleted, part of the one-day global strike Step Apart From Six Apart to protest SixApart's anti-breastfeeding policy for default icons.

Why this mattered - and why my objections to this new policy of theirs have focussed on breastfeeding icons, rather than on the presumption that women's nipples are indecent and men's nipples are not - is dealt with at more length in this community on GJ.

( But, in summary )

I'm a feminist. Ultimately, I want to destroy the patriarchy. But, to avoid being a choked-up feminist, I accept that I can only try to destroy the patriarchy in small, manageable bites.

Grr'rr.

I set up a new Yonmei journal on greatestjournal. There's an RSS feed on livejournal, YonmeiOnGJ. I backed up everything on Yonmei, twice. When (if) LJ Abuse suspend my journal for using a default icon showing a baby breastfeeding, all my posts, all comments to my posts, and all comments and posts I've made elsewhere on livejournal will become inaccessible until SixApart acts to resolve the situation. (At the moment, SixApart is claiming the whole thing's LJ Abuse's fault, and LJ Abuse is claiming the whole thing is SixApart's responsibility, as near as I can make out.)

( Sample Letter )

Tags: lj abuse did what???

12:00 am: Step apart from Six Apart on 06/06/06
I'm going to delete my journal at noon on Monday 5th June (the beginning of Tuesday 6/6/6) and undelete it noon Wednesday 7th June (the end of Tuesday 6/6/6). I hope as many of you as can will join me in doing this.

Why I'm doing this

I want SixApart to:
1. Change FAQ 111 back to what it was before 20th May;
2. Make clear that SixApart supports breastfeeding;
3. Unsuspend accounts that should never have been suspended (further details, see here)

I think it's ridiculous that we have to plan on doing something like this to make SixApart listen. If you want to convey your feelings about LJ Abuse, there's a petition here.

Further information about the breastfeeding controversy here.

(Update: livejournal stats are updated every 24 hours, at midnight Pacific Time - 8am UTC/GMT. So if you cannot bear to be off livejournal more than 24 hours, delete just before the stats are updated, and undelete just after 24 hours later, for maximum impact on their stats. But I like the idea of a rolling Tuesday strike around the world...)

Tags: lj abuse did what???

08:39 am: Why delete journals for 6/6/6?
Step apart from Six Apart on 06/06/06.

Why? Because we want to send a message to SixApart.

Why delete journals to send a message? What about sending a press release?

Well, we should also do that.

( number crunching )

This post also appeared on breastfeeding IS the default! community on greatestjournal.

Tags: lj abuse did what???

09:02 pm: Saucepan and shoes
( What's the story, Balamory? )

Tags: lj abuse did what???

02:23 pm: Guh...

LiveJournal <accounts@livejournal.com> to me
More options 8:53 pm (0 minutes ago)

(the following is an anonymous gift)

Your LiveJournal account "yonmei" has been upgraded to a permanent account.

LiveJournal Team

Am speechless.

Tags: friendship, lj abuse did what???