Aiming for the point - 03 August 2007

Today was a relaxing day - I played games and attended a nice party to send off one of my classmates to her new job. Much fun, shop talk, and politics was had by all. I brought chips, dip, and soda, and all three were consumed by the time the party ended. Oh, and huzzahs for droewyn, who after achieving an ascension this year in Nethack, added another level of experience to her Real Life avatar.

It being rather late when starting this entry, there may be less snark and more linkage. Hold on to your hats, people, here we go.

It appears to have been cemented as a talking point from conservative viewpoints that anything that increases Democratic misery must be good news, especially regarding Iraq and the economy. Oliver North is repeating it and also accusing the media of not wanting to play the good news, because of their own prejudices against Mr. Bush. The Oklahoma DMV certainly supports Mr. Bush, or holds plenty of people who do, with their offering of a GWOT vanity plate. And the part of Mr. Bush may be wanting to snag some extra electoral votes in California, attempting to put on the ballot a proposal to award the electoral college votes of California individually by congressional district. As such, a normally blue state like California might end up giving a significant number of red electoral votes. As an experiment across the country, this might be seen as a real attempt, but just in California, it looks like a way to try and rig up an election.

Chiquita self-reports demands to pay "protection money" to Colombian paramillitary forces, asks Justice Department whether they should, either gets no response or no for a response, pays up, self-reports, gets fined. End of story, right? Except the Colombian government established the intermediaries used for the transfer of the payment. which could indicate a significantly less stable hold on the country or the existence of a lot of people in the government who aren’t fully committed to it. So there may have been quite some debate up at Justice as to whether to look the other way on the payment or to crack down on it. How much does everyone know about it?

New South Wales police have been authorized to take DNA samples from any criminal offender, regardless of the severity of the crime. Much like abuses that have been perpetuated upon the American citizenry, the defence is the need to combat terrorism. So, how much terror is being caused by all this need to combat terror, hrm? Also of interest to the humans is the first deployment of armed radio-controlled robots in combat operations. If successful, we might see more of them, abroad and at home. With worry that significant numbers of United States military personnel/equipment are being used to advance a specific type of Christian belief, having just robots staring you in the face could very well be quite the problem, both to those who are felled by the robots and those who fell the robots, because the Humes behind them continue on.

Running theory about religious conservatives and the 1950’s gets another plank on the bridge - this one from 1954, I believe, as the Texas legislature has added "one state under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, following the already added “under God” that split “one nation, indivisible”. And another possible throwback to the 1950 or well before that, Ohio is considering requiring any woman who wants an abortion to obtain the consent of the father. In the case of rape or incest, a police report would be required. It is noted that the bills are unlikely to come to fruition. I’m sure that without exercising too much imagination, situations where such a law would be problematic come to mind.

In technology, as we’ve been learning all along, user-generated content, and the tools to make it, are hot things even to the point where several languages and sites are being offered to get people to make their own content. The map modders and trigger-placers have understood this for a while, now it seems that tools for “the rest of us” are getting into the game.

Germany just got friendlier to some P2P operations, where the public prosecutors have been instructed not to ask for IP addresses in file-sharing cases, because the supervising authority doubted that the people asking for such investigations of criminality are serious about pressing charges all the way, where civil suits are the more likely outcome. Additionally, they found no reason why such investigations would be in the public’s interest. At least, that’s what it looks like. Anything I missed or misinterpreted?

Bruce Schneier interviews Kip Hawley, director of the Transportation Security Administration about bombs, terrorist plots, and whether or not the TSA is actually doing anything at all to make flights safer.

There’s one more issue, to follow in separate posting as I obtain appropriate information and follow through on a couple things to make sure I get accounts straight. In any case, snooze time.

Part Two - Another Strikethrough?

There has been hubbub over the Intertubes that after the first incident, charmingly referred to as the Strikethrough, where accounts of LiveJournal members were suspended after posting either art or fictional accounts of underage characters. At least, I believe that was the reasoning. Rolling Stone has a feature on a group that believes LiveJournal should engage in more Strikethrough-type activities, as well as the television show, To Catch a Predator.

Anyway, according to accounts being spread across the Internet, it appears that a second round of suspensions are underway, these permanent, non-appealable, and supposedly spread to other accounts that may be using the same e-mail address for verification. All such bans are also apparently non-reversible. User ponderosa121 and user elaboration are two of the more cited suspensions, but there may be more involved. The community named "pornish_pixies" has been warned about the appearance of art in violation of LiveJournal policy, likely the two pieces that resulted in the bans mentioned above. As a result of said warning, they have decided to lock the community and enforce age verification standards.

While one post about the first Strikethrough incident seemed clear and said “This was the actions of overzealous persons. Policies are under review, and we will communicate to you what we have made decisions on. Your fictional content, however, should be protected under United States Constitutional guarantees of free speech”, another seemed to say “This is the beginning of the new era of LiveJournal - all those posting material of underage persons will be banned without warning.” I may be putting words and intentions in the mouths of those two posters. Take all I say with at least one grain of salt. User "stormcloude" inquired as to which of these we should believe, and received a response that said, in essence, "The Second". (While stormcloude made the request, the response has been copied over to bubble_blunder’s journal, for purposes of maintaining and updating a list of current events.) The LiveJournal Abuse Team appears to have declared themselves the sole arbiters of what meets the standard of “artistic merit”, which, according to the Terms of Service, is within their right to do. Several users have asked whether LiveJournal would be smarter in deferring to established case law regarding what falls under obscenity versus what falls under child pornography, and synecdochic offers an excellent summary of what sort of legal environment has developed that makes this an issue. Matters of text have precedent behind them. Images, which appear to be the targets of the suspensions, regardless of the fictionality of the characters, or even perhaps their actual ages, are not as well-protected.

The facet of the current exercise noted most prominently is that rather than having their journal name struck through, indicating a journal that no longer exists, the user name appears, without the LiveJournal icon, in bold, and the name itself is hidden from several views, in such a way that casual glances may overlook the fact that someone has gone missing. This suggests the malice end of the spectrum. If LiveJournal is deliberately engaging in subterfuge or deception and hiding those affected by things determined to be Terms Of Service violations, it does not reflect well on how high the parent company, SixApart, holds their customer base. As with the last incident, there has been rumbling about packing up and moving to a different service, one with better Terms of Service. The difficulty in this scenario being that unless a significant amount of users decide to move elsewhere, there will be very little effect and business will continue as usual. In a twisted sort of way, one might see it as the start of a pastor’s famous poem.

It is unknown as to whether or not there have been more abuse reports made and whether there will be more suspensions and warnings issued. It does not go un-noticed by this particular writer that this difficulty began after the acquisition of LiveJournal by SixApart. New boss, new rules, new environment. There is, of course, the free choice to move elsewhere, the choice of staying along for the ride and either spinning the Russian Roulette of not being noticed, or the choice of simply not posting or being around material that could result in abuse notifications and a prompt ejection from LiveJournal. As noted in the comments, this last option is much like trying to avoid spoilers for the last Harry Potter book until one reads it - it’s not impossible, but it does require significant effort to achieve. And that’s before any arguments about shifting definitions or standards as to what’s a bannable offense. Until otherwise noted, it appears that Zero Tolerance is the standard from now on. Which does not bode well for anyone.

liz_marcs has begun a cataloging of events, as well as offering options for those wishing to move to a new service. bubble_blunder is also maintaining a listing of events and related materials as they develop. (Two sources, one location. Huzzah for aggregation, or something.)

If there has been anything reported incorrectly, inaccurately, or the situation has changed and I haven’t noticed, feel free to comment, or, if you’re on my reading list, to post it to your own journal. I should pick it up. I’m not sure whether to maintain a single posting unit with a complete-as-far-as-I-know chronology, or to simply add updates as new information arrives. In either case, stay tuned. And if you haven’t invested in a journal back-up program, now may be an excellent time to do so. Just in case.