| Head? Meet Desk |
[Jul. 19th, 2007|05:18 pm] |
Okay. Normally I stay out of this mess. Really. I usually just go *RANTRANTRANT* at flipbeter , jesslared , ohbutwait_ily , and occasionally threthiel9 , as well as anyone else who dares instant message me at the time/be conveniently online (this would make you a target, don't deny it), but this time... *breathes deeply*
What is this? Strikethrough '07 the Sequel?? It's widely known that sequels are NOT as good as the originals and this is just jlfkjdsfasdf. *gnashes teeth* I'd say Tamara Has To Choke A Bitch, but IDUNNO, LJ might come to consider "a bitch" to mean "the president" and "choke" to mean "literally murder" which would make me a clear threat.
(Which, um, wow, kudos to you, president-hating-person [this is not sarcasm], the one person out of 7 pages of comments within almost less than 4 hours that doesn't concern teh pr0n. Respect.)
I cannot fully articulate horribly pissed off I am about this.
I looked through all of the comment-threads. Most of the comments. Mainly paid attention to the threads in which burr86 decided to go out of his way and actually do some clarifying. Which, uh, he didn't. There was mainly a whole lot of skirting around the issues and avoiding doing actual clarifications. Like how someone else said in that thread (dammit, I can't find it now) that he seems to be doing a lot of ignoring, particularly those people who are asking for specifics - where are you drawing the line? What constitutes literary/artistic value? Are friends-locked entries in danger, too? - in a very LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU way.
They keep mentioning the Miller Test. So I looked it up. The first problem with this is the fact that even in their definition do they admit that this is a very iffy, subjective issue:
Another important issue is that Miller asks for an interpretation of what the "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the Hicklin test, stemming from the English precedent. Because it allows for community standards and demands "serious" value, some worried that this test would make it easier to suppress speech and expression. They pointed out that it replaced a stricter test asking whether the speech or expression was "utterly without redeeming social value"--a much tougher standard than "serious" value. As used, however, the test generally makes it difficult to outlaw any form of expression. Much pornography has been successfully argued to have some artistic or literary value ... The advent of the Internet has made this definition more difficult to maintain: as material published on a web server in one place can be read by a person residing anywhere else, there is a question as to which jurisdiction should apply.
It's also said to be made up of three parts:
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions [2] specifically defined by applicable state law,
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.
Helloooooo America. Founded by puritans, people so uptight even the British threw them out of their country. Funny. I was just talking to my mom the other day about how much I want to live in Germany again. Soon.
The third condition is also known as the (S)LAPS test ((Serious) Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific). The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.
Okay, so, aside from the fact that, altogether, that has to be the must subjective thing ever to be argued over - again, where are we drawing the line between artistic/literary value and ZOMG U R DEH BANNINATED!! - but let me draw your attention to the fact that the Miller Test has to rely on yet again another test for clarification, the Hicklin test. So I went to look that one up, too.
Funny, look what we find!
...focus on the entire work when judging obscenity rather than isolated passages. In 1957, the Roth v. United States case answered the question about First Amendment protection of obscenity. Justice William Brennan claimed that sexual materials that are considered prurient and are not socially important are not protected under the First Amendment and are, therefore, open to censorship. However, the vague wording about social importance led to confusion in future obscenity court cases. Seriously, LJ? You're going to rely on this to back up your already vague statements and then defend yourself by repeatedly claiming "I'm not a lawyer?"
Not to mention - dear god, this is not a coincidence - that you do this right during Potterdaemmerung? When most of HP fandom is in hiding/hiatus/supahfilters? Way to be. WAY. TO. BE.
 We will return to your normally scheduled porn after this short message. ETA: Okay, public now. Sorry about that. I meant this to be public all along. *more headdeskery* Have calmed down a bit. After reading through their clarifications, have come to the following (assumed) conclusions. I asked about them - haven't gotten an answer yet. But I'm pretty sure that this is what stands as fact now for some pretty good guidelines to follow: - Writing smut about a minor, because she just incidentally happens to be that age, with the porn not being just *because* she's that age - because you just like the character - is fine. Don't exult the age in a sexual context. People may be underage, but, you shouldn't flaunt that. Write for the sake of the character, not their age.
- Given that it would actually take someone to report you for you to get banninated, I'm guessing an f-lock should do the trick if you're paranoid *raises hand* and trust your f-list.
- Just because X thinks your story isn't of literary merit and is really just all about the porn with that minor over yonder because he/she is a minor... lj is not going to just put a giant *DELETE* stamp over you. They're probably going to be more careful after what happened with Strikeout and give fair warnings and all of that.
I have that up for clarification over at that post at the moment, so we'll see if I have to go in and edit this again to confirm/deny that my assumptions are true. XD ETA 2: If you don't know what Strikethrough '07 was, look here. I have covered it all in a footnote comment HERE for those who were too afraid of eljay in the good old days to sit and wait to see what happens! |
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