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The folks at blogger warehouse LiveJournal have found themselves in a bit of brouhaha after a recent effort to cleanse their pages of illegal activity has snared more than a few innocent members in their clutches, and proved that the Law of Unintended Consequences never fails to bite people on the ass. It all started with some complaints from activist groups seeking to "purge LJ of all references to child molestation, incest, child pornography, and pedophilia," which seems noble on the surface until you consider that victims of these crimes often use LJ communities to share their survival stories. It starts to get really ridiculous, however, when you realize that most of the sites that were eventually targeted are actually fan fiction and slash fiction sites that are sexually explicit, but also still fiction.
In the end, about 500 journals were deleted this week in this "think of the children" push, most of whom had done nothing wrong. OK, so writing graphic stories about Harry Potter and the Weasley boys discovering the new "magic powers" might be toeing the line of "inappropriate topics of discussion," but then again Harry Potter isn't, you know ... real. (And when have we ever done or said anything that was "appropriate.") Maybe LiveJournal, like every other community site on the web that has tried this stuff before, needs to figure out a better way to monitor their pages so that truly illegal stuff can be stamped out ... and the rest of us can be left alone.
· Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt (news.com.com)
· "The Purity Police and Fanfic" (firefox.org)
· More @ Boing Boing + fandrogyny.livejournal.com
Previously: The Day DailyMotion Stood Still, Hot Hexadecimal Dildo Porn: Digg This!, MySpace Vs. The Sluts (On MySpace), Happy Anti-Porn Hysteria Month!, IMDb Gets Childish With "Adult" Movies, Google Spanks The Little Guys (Update), iTunes vs. Porncasters?, MySpace vs. Gay Porn?
