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LiveJournal Says Users are Responsible for Content of Links
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:54 PM
from the who's-to-blame dept.
from the who's-to-blame dept.
Many of you might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from the group, Warriors for innocence. Since then, they've been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal. Today, LiveJournal management have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding in how the internet works, declaring that users are responsible for the content of the webpages that they link to in their blog entries. A user points out the obvious flaw: "I get ToS'd because the link's been redirected to a page full o' porn, even though context clearly shows that when I originally put up the link that it didn't actually land on a page of porn?"
One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web.
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Mass Deletion Leads To LiveJournal Revolt 436 comments
Green Monkey writes "LiveJournal has been suspending accounts suspected of promoting incest — except that many of them were communities for survivors of abuse and people discussing Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Even after being informed of the problem, LiveJournal apparently refuses to reinstate the banned accounts. LiveJournal's official news blog has filled up with hundreds of complaints protesting the decision, so we could have another Digg-style user rebellion brewing." Update: 05/31 11:50 GMT by KD : strredwolf writes to let us know that in their offical blog LiveJournal admits to botching the suspension, saying "We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it."
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No right to protection from stupidity (Score:4, Informative)
To speak of 'rights' on their web site is sort of speaking about rights at K-Mart. You don't have any. If you don't like what K-Mart does, you leave and go to their competitor.
If LiveJournal does something that you find intolerably stupid, then quit and go post on their competition's web site.
None of which... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:None of which... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:None of which... (Score:4, Funny)
I went on their site, and found that their site alone was not work safe. Hypocritical bastards.
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Re:None of which... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:None of which... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:None of which... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:None of which... (Score:4, Insightful)
*Maybe I was brought up strange, but I was always taught that this was the normal way to behave, and encounter people who also behave likewise all the time.
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Re:None of which... (Score:5, Interesting)
(catfood brands theory - if you have 2 companies making 1 brand of catfood each with about 50% market share, it makes sense to launch another brand rather than trying to promote your existing brand. So now you have 2 companies, one with 2 brands and 1 with 1 brand. The newly launched brand will take away sales from both existing brands but with the company with 2 brands benefiting overall. Until, obviously, the second company launches 2 new brands. And so on.)
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Be that as it may... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, who will learn from their example if no one makes an example of them?
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they are "rights."
You say we "don't have any" rights when at K-Mart? This is false on its face, and anyone can see it. If you walk into K-Mart they have no right to bind and gag you, nor to handcuff you and throw darts at you for entertainment, nor to forcefully take a blood sample.
Sure, they can legally ask you to leave when you enter wearing a t-shirt which they dislike -- but that doesn't make them ethically correct in doing so.
Your redefinition of "rights" to include only major human/civil rights, encoded in law as actions the government may not take against individuals, is mere wordplay -- whose effect is to semantically limit those rights you'll permit people to demand for themselves. When we demand certain rights, it does not matter whether the entity infringing upon those rights is the government or not. They are rights by dint of their infringement being unethical.
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:4, Funny)
Well crap, so much for that business plan...
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
This is unfortunate; online communities could well operate like governments, with a concept of citizenship and taxation, rather than as business enterprises, with a concept of customer accounts and fees, but very few of them seem to any more.
But it's very difficult to say "If you don't like the way things are run here, you can just leave." It's not easy to export a livejournal account to another service with more agreeable ToS. It's not easy to leave the friends and contacts behind when you move your blogging to another service.
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
To speak of 'rights' on their web site is sort of speaking about rights at K-Mart. You don't have any.
That's not true, per se. One does have right at K-Mart. For example, K-Mart may not turn me away even if I'm a minority or if I'm in a wheelchair. There are anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws that grant me certain rights even if I'm inside private property.
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Re:No right to protection from stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
One such right is the right of LiveJournal to avoid any liability for defamatory material posted on their site by members. The law explicitly exempts LiveJournal (and other service providers) from the same liability a newspaper would carry if it printed the same materials. There is zero government involvement.
Another, perhaps more analogous, example is that a landlord cannot put in a lease that they can evict you without cause or without notice. Sure, it's the landlords private property, but the courts have long held that as it becomes your home you have certain rights which trump the private property holder. Again, no government involvement needed.
Which is all a way of saying that the "right" to not be deemed in violation of ToS because a link you pointed to has changed to something different is not a far-fetched right. It's just another layer of rights and regulations that form the web that is our legal framework.
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Very strange considering it's roots. (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, isn't it perfectly within LJ's right to protect itself and remove accounts who are linking to porn ? Is it not *your* responsibility to make sure that sites that you link to aren't something that "parent company" wouldn't object to ? Where parent company is a web host, employer or anyone else who *owns* the property (web server, domain etc.) that you are hosting your page on ?
So the owner of the link changed the page. That means Live Journal should just sit back and say "oh well... our domain is linking to porn and our policy clearly states that we do not allow that, however, since the link was obviously changed to redirect to porn *after* the page owner linked to it we'll just leave it there and do nothing" ?
Ok, so they could pull the link and inform / warn the user etc. But then the question is raised, who's responsibility is it to check those links ? IMO the guy who signed up for a Live Journal account and linked to the site that eventually got changed and redirected should be held responsible.
Maybe I'm a little biased because I'm a webmaster. But I make it a point to check the links on my sites periodically because they change. I don't expect my web hosting provider to do it for me. Not that my hosting provider would terminate my account for anything short of something extremely illegal anyway. But for my own reputation and for the sake of giving my surfers a pleasant and consistent surfing experience free of anything that they would not expect or want to come across while browsing my sites I check my links every once in a while.
And it is certainly within LJ's rights to remove pages on their servers that are violating their TOS. I don't see how it has anything to do with understanding the nature of the Internet. I haven't read their TOS but I'm assuming somewhere in there is "Don't Link To Porn Sites" and I'm also pretty sure that there is NOT an "Except unless the page you're linking to was changed afterwards" clause.
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh and.... (Score:5, Informative)
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What problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
You should be responsible for sites you link to, you're the one sending your readers there.
How can a person be responsible for a site they link to? The content of that site could change at any time. If I was held legally responsible for the content of every site I link to, I'd never link to ANYTHING. It could change at any moment -- what if it becomes child porn? To hold people responsible for the content of the sites they link to would fundamentally destroy the web. Nobody would link to anything.
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Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
LJ will let you post most anything you want. I saw someone post a TOS violation because a guy had a user-pic of masturbating with a barbie doll. LJ didn't ban him because it wasn't his default icon.
LJ and SixApart came under fire specifically because of journals that had varying levels of content in regards to sex with children. LJ is owned and operated within the US and has to operate in conjunction with US law. LJ admitted they over-reacted initially and deleted some communities they shouldn't have. They reinstanted said communities.
This new policy really is only regards to illegal content, which LJ very losely regulates. There are many pirate communities on LJ, and LJ doesn't care about that. People discuss gangs, illegal drugs, and all kinds of crazy stuff. But when it comes to pedophilia, they have to cover their bases or get in big trouble with the government. When LJ said you couldn't post fan-fic anymore that featured sex and children, people got upset and started linking to it instead. If I owned Six Apart, I'd have the same policy simply to cover my ass.
If you don't like it, blog somewhere else. Quite frankly, if they go elsewhere, LJ is better off for it. Let someone else deal with the legal problems.
Re:Big deal? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Big deal? (Score:4, Informative)
From the abuse page [nearlyfreespeech.net] of their site:
If you are aware of criminal activity, your first step should always be to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency. Only the police can enforce the law.
If you are a law enforcement official working on a criminal investigation and you need our assistance, please contact abuse@NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. We scrupulously follow all US laws.
So that we can comply with our Privacy Policy, we will need a viable subpoena. You can contact us in advance to discuss the information you will need, which can help minimize delay and tailor the scope of the subpoena. However, the final subpoena will need to be executed before we can turn over any information about our members.
We are not the police, nor are we in any way qualified to investigate or fight crime. Therefore, it is not appropriate to send accusations of illegal activity directly to us, and such accusations will generally have to be discarded. You must contact the appropriate law enforcement office. Then, they can contact us if appropriate.
A NearlyFreeSpeech.NET member site has content that is illegal in my country (not the United States).
As above, your first action if you are aware of criminal activity should be to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency.
If you are a law enforcement official from a country other than the United States, please contact us at abuse@NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. If the crime you are investigating would also be illegal in the United States, we reserve the right to voluntarily cooperate. In such cases, you will need to obtain the equivalent of a subpoena for your jurisdiction, and we may choose to voluntarily comply, but all situations are handled on a case-by-case basis.
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