So… Y'know how I was wondering how they could change the state constitution to take away people's rights with just a simple majority vote?

Well, it looks like some of the legislature was wondering that, too.

It looks like a key point of the argument hinges on the difference between amendment and revision; in the state constitution, it's stated that amendments can be made through the initiative process, where all the text in that section about the process in the Legislature for changing the constitution talks about amendments and revisions. The legislators who put forth this resolution are arguing that Prop 8 is a revision rather than an amendment.

(I expect they'll see some grumbling about this point, but it looks like they're legally backed up on this; see http://www.metnews.com/articles/2008/inmyopinion052108.htm . Basically, there's a strong argument that taking away existing rights -- and contradicting existing anti-discrimination clauses -- constitutes revision of the constitution rather than an addition to it.)

But I think the strongest part of the resolution is the following paragraph:

   WHEREAS, Proposition 8 would severely undermine the foundational
principle of equal protection by establishing that any disfavored
minority can be targeted to have its fundamental rights stripped away
by a simple majority vote [...]

There's a lot of other really good points as well; if you're interested the Senate version of the Resolution is here:
http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sr_7&sess=CUR&house=S&site=sen

(Assembly version wasn't up yet when I looked.)

Equality California is urging people to contact their State Legislators to support these resolutions by December 19th (which is the date when those opposing the resolutions will be presenting their briefs); they'd be happy to help you with that if you visit http://www.eqca.org/actioncenter .

Hi everyone,

For the purposes of Live Long And Marry, I can be contacted at:

agatha_b AT speedpost DOT net

Is there no topic that the wisdom of Pooh does not touch upon?

In the grand tradition of the Pooh Perplex, the Postmodern Pooh, and Pooh and the Philosophers (In Which It Is Shown That All of Western Philosophy Is Merely a Preamble to Winnie-the-Pooh), a Top Obama advisor cites Winnie the Pooh as model.

In a speech at the Center for New American Security, Richard Danzig used the following passage from the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh to describe the need for the current security model to change:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

Danzig also went on to use metaphors about Luke Skywalker and soccer fans, using Cultural Studies to illustrate topics in national security. :-)

It's probably not a coincidence that this is my first post in a while.*
I'm feeling optimistic at the moment. And impressed.

Here's why.

Not only did LiveJournal address a number of issues that people have brought up, showing that they actually listened to and considered the input of their users, but they did so in a clearly-presented and well-thought out manner, and did so within the time limit that they stated that they had set out for themselves. Awesome.

Of course, there is also the fact that I agree with many of those decisions, which doesn't hurt. More about that later, I expect.

*No, I've not been striking. (Hah. Who would notice?)
Just a combination of my usual not getting around to posting combined with my mixed feelings about the site since my last post.
But hopefully I'll be posting more now.

I have closed my support request from feedback.

I did, however, comment on and sign blunder_bubble's latest draft of her open letter, though.

Much belated update: Obviously, as this shows, the above optimism was a little optimistic. Also, the policies page still has not been updated. I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but I am *still* so exhausted and disappointed when I think about this whole mess now. (Sept. 03, 2007)

LiveJournal got back to me on the letter that I sent to Feedback.

I'm not yet sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it is nice to get a response. On the other hand...

Now, to be fair, mine was a very long letter, and while calm in comparison to the throngs of angry rants and cat macros, it was still somewhat emotionally charged (and fandom-specific), especially in the beginning.

I would feel a lot better about the letter that I received if it was the first portion of a response. But with this response, my request was closed out.

Since many of the issues that I brought up were not addressed, I will probably rework some of the above into another addendum. But I am a little worried that the response I got was really a polite kiss-off, and that further attempts to get real answers will not be welcomed.

I know that some of the concerns I brought up are not things that can be answered by volunteers on the Abuse team, but I am willing to wait for deliberation and an official response, or even, I think, to accept a reassurance that LJ is thinking about/talking about these issues internally. (Obviously, I would want to see some statement about that process once those decisions have been made, but for the time being, an acknowledgment that they are in fact considering the issues would be nice. Heck, an acknowledgment that they'd read them would be nice.)

In related news, bubble_blunder is still working on her open letter. If you're interested, you might want to check it out.

ETA: femmquixotic has a very well-written open letter as well.

I posted the following over at lj_biz:

Of course, that's much politer and calmer than I feel right now, but I am tired, and didn't really want to blast away without having a chance to be rational about it.

Meh. Started with this mess right after I got back from work. Skipped dinner. Need sleep.

By the way, if you haven't yet, you should still definitely check out bubble_blunder's open letter.

bubble_blunder has written an incredible open letter at http://bubble-blunder.livejournal.com/80818.html and is taking suggestions for editing. She will be collecting signatures on the final copy and sending print copies to people in Corporate. Please consider taking the time to read through and make suggestions or give your support.

I am really impressed with the time she is taking to write this and to go through all of the responses.

Also, I noticed that in the comments for her post a couple of people associated with the company have mentioned that they are drafting another lj_biz post that addresses some of these questions. Would that they would actually mention that they are in the process of doing so on, for example, lj_biz. It makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing.

ETA: Apparently in the time that I spent reading and commenting on bubble_blunder's open letter, lj_biz has updated. I think the new post addresses very few of my concerns (which, I'll admit, would probably require some changes in the way things are done). Right now I feel like the only things that were addressed were simple reiterations of material that I could have guessed or that was already available elsewhere (maybe an obscure elsewhere, in some cases) on the site.

I stand by bubble_blunder's letter, and I'll probably come back to read through more lj_biz comments and rant more later.

This is not the sigh of relief I was hoping for. :-/

LJ, something is obviously wrong here.

When a user (for example, elaboration) is permanently suspended for a drawing because it has "underage characters involved in sexual situations" and her response is "What?... But ... I don't draw chan!", then multiple things are definitely wrong.

This is not an image produced by someone intending to encourage, promote, or glamorize sexual activity with minors, this is an image someone whose art style happens to skew towards a slightly youthful look. We are talking about a borderline area, in which the slender builds of the characters could suggest to some that the characters were teenagers, but which is in fact consistent with the way that the artist draws characters meant to be in their 20s. Elaboration mentions elsewhere that no statement was made as to the intended age of the characters in the post, but that it was certainly not her intention to portray them as underage.

I had not recently seen the post for which elaboration was suspended, but I wonder if it was the content of the drawing itself that caused you to determine that it constituted a violation or the fact that the drawing was of characters who are underage at the time that some of the canon takes place.

I am not intending to speak for elaboration or for ponderosa121, or suggesting that they intended to express these specific things through the pieces of art for which they were suspended. I simply wish to remind you that there is a context, that fannish works have not only the ability, but the predisposition, to build on and comment upon each other and invite analysis and comment in their turn.

Because fannish works become part of that larger fannish discussion, I feel that it is likely that many fannish works have the context necessary to be classified as speech rather than obscenity. They are part of a continuing discussion, and I would be sad to have that discussion hampered by the removal of works that, at least in my opinion, are only questionably against the rules of the LiveJournal community as a whole, and that were produced before those rules were clarified.

However, that said, I am not a lawyer or a judge, and I respect that you do have the right to ban whomever you wish for whatever reason, particularly when it is a case of material of questionable legality.

I would strongly encourage you to, if possible, clarify your policies further so that there are no more (or fewer) situations in which individuals are taken aback because they are suddenly banned for material which they thought was in compliance with the rules.

If exact clarification is not possible, could you please post links to the relevant sections of U.S. law — I believe someone mentioned Title 18, Part One, Chapter 71, Section 1466A earlier — along with a brief overview of how LiveJournal plans to deal with borderline cases or with additional material (please specify) that is objectionable/against your rules? Most of us don't even know where to start looking for this stuff, and some members of the community are less familiar with U.S. law because they do not live in the U.S. It's difficult for us to know what will be problematic because of existing laws when all we have is what people "have heard" to go on.

Also, would additional transparency in the review process be possible? I'm not talking much, just a log of when the review committee met, which standards the material was in allegedly in violation of, and a couple of notes as to why the material was found to be in violation (e.g., character appears to be a minor based on [artist's statement, age of character in book, physical attributes in drawing, whatever], and drawing is sexually explicit, and drawing was found to lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific merit). I think it would help us to understand a little more what is and is not acceptable. (Obviously having the ability to refer to the original post would help with this, but I can see why, for a multitude of reasons, that would not be desirable on your part, and therefore suppose that would not be the best idea.)

LiveJournal has been an incredible resource for fandom in the past, largely because we are an interwoven collection of communities with an ongoing discussion. But if people feel that they can no longer hold that discussion here for fear that a single questionable post will get them permanently banned, they will have to move elsewhere. I would be incredibly sad if this were to happen. Please help us fix this situation.

Thank you for your time,
agatha_b

Edited to remove extra "or not"... thank you, macaroniprotest!

ETA: This has been posted at lj_biz as of 7:21 pm PDT.

ETA: Emailed (with some minor additions and modifications) to feedback at livejournal dot com as of 12:45 am PDT, August 05, 2007. It was automatically made into support request #796673 (private request under my legal name).

ETA: I received a response from an LJ Abuse Team staff member at 06:34 am PDT, August 08, 2007.

For those of you that do not know of the latest round of LJ f--kery, ponderosa121 has been suspended.

According to the message from LJ Abuse that she posted at http://www.greatestjournal.com/community/fandomtossed/45060.html , the suspension was because of a piece of fanart at http://community.livejournal.com/pornish_pixies/470020.html, which supposedly "contain[ed] drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations".

Ponderosa mentioned that she wasn't sure which piece this was; according to other posters, it appears to be "Tightly Held", which was linked from the July 03 issue of Snape News (although obviously the link to the art doesn't work, because she was suspended). Based on the description there, [ETA: And having seen that particular picture from a link from one of Ponderosa121's GreatestJournal entries,]  Harry was not obviously depicted as a minor, so I'm wondering what is going on here.

So, minutes after finishing Book 7, I am writing to say... ( some things that may include very mild spoilers. True spoilers are further down under highlight-text. If the highlight-test area is not working for you below, do not click on this link due to SPOILERS. )

I'm having some mild difficulty believing that it's finally over, but I think that's partly because I've read so much fanfic that deals with the end. This is the canonical ending, and a good ending, but it's not the only ending out there for me, and I hope that the fanfic continues to be present and flourishing and appreciated on the web because I have enjoyed seeing peoples hopes and wishes and theories and ideas.

That was the saddest thing for me, yesterday, as I was waiting for the book to come out: the worry that the fanfic might end, or be abandoned. Truthfully, I'm in this thing as much for the fandom and the friendship as for the canon itself, and I feel sad for not being a more active part of that.

Now, as for the actual content of the book...

Highlight-test area:

(If you can read the line below without highlighting, don't click on the links unless you don't mind spoilers)

End highlight-test area

And now for a mid-book theory, Book 7, page 501...

Of course, I could be wrong, and this could all just be a knot of Nargles...

So, L suggested that we write down predictions for Book 7, and I was less than enthusiastic about the idea.

Firstly, because there are some pretty wild speculations out there, and I sort of have negative associations with some of them, and secondly, because I really want to let the book be just the book for me. I don't want to really speculate on it before hand; I just want to experience it for what it is.

That said, particularly after having re-read Book 6, I do have some modest ideas on how I think it will turn out in certain areas. So, ( cut for predictions, sailor skirts, and spoilers for Book 6 )

So yeah...

No sweeping predictions, no really radical theories, nothing particularly new. But there you go.

Looking forward to tomorrow night!

ETA: As of Thursday, May 31, Barak Berkovitz has admitted "We really screwed this one up" and the fandom journals in question have been restored.

You know, one of the things that I have been waffling about with my journal is how much I want to identify this journal with my fannish interests, particularly since I also post about my mundane life. And I know I don't post much, but—

Recent events have disturbed me such that I am really concerned about the future of some of the journals that I watch. Most of these journals are not on my friends list; I am a lurker, and I have my own set of issues about that.

But the reason for my concern is LiveJournal's recent decision to "delete[] around 500 journals this week[.]" The impetus for this deletion is apparently the actions of several groups who have searched for journals based on their interests and reported these journals to LiveJournal.

These groups are primarily concerned with protecting children, and reported journals that they felt, based on their interests, "promote pedophilia, child sex, child abuse, and other illegal activities" 1. LiveJournal then reviewed the requests and deleted journals from that group as they felt appropriate. Theoretically, there should be nothing wrong with this, but there are several fannish journals within that group that do not appear to me to promote any of those things, including the community pornish_pixies.

I have been confused ( by LiveJournal/Six Apart's responses to the deletions )

1. From the Warriors for Innocence blogspot journal, which I found interesting, but which I do not want to trackback— see the above CNET article for a link to their page.

2. ETA:
In retrospect, I feel that this statement was probably intended to reflect Berkowitz' decision that sites actually promoting pedophilia were not in keeping with the community that LiveJournal wanted. In the context of the article, however, I think a lot of people read it as Berkowitz saying that he was aware of the different contexts of the deleted journals and that LiveJournal/Six Apart had decided that all of them were not welcome as part of the LiveJournal community. His later apology seems to show that this was not in fact the case.

3. ETA:
In today's apology, Barak Berkowitz cited LiveJournal's view on interests: Obviously, the former approach failed to note that people use websites in ways that may be different than originally intended, and that people may have seen that as a suggestion for those who didn't know what to put, rather than a demand that affected the way they would be perceived to be following (or not following) the TOS.

4. I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily the case with any of the issues singled out in this particular case, but trying to take this policy to its logical conclusion. How does this apply to cases of other illegal activities, or cases where the interests in question consititute illegal activities in one user's country/state/province/local government, but not another?

Man, I need to make some new icons.

So, I was looking back on my journal, and I realized I hadn't updated since November. Of 2005.
And since one of my last year's New Year resolutions was to post more often... um. We'll see about doing that one as a rollover resolution, then.

Yay for the new year as an excuse for new beginnings!

By the way, I friends-locked some of my old posts. Mostly out of paranoia. (It's a recurring problem for me.) So now, if you aren't logged in, there's 30% less neuroticism!
It was kind of interesting reading through my old posts, though. Heh.

So, both of my parents have essentially commented on my lack of ambition. (Oh, Dad not in so many words, and Mom only after I kinda brought it up, but...) I can tell that it bugs them. Heck, it bugs me a little.

The car broke down yesterday. ("Mom, the car is steaming. And it smells like burnt French toast...") So we took it in this morning, and the estimate came in just before lunch... (It's bad. Two words: head gasket.)

I need a job so I can afford a car (among other things). I need a car so I can make it to the job. I need class so I can get a better job, but if I don't have a car, it's going to take me approx. two hours to get to class...

I wonder if this is Murphy's way of kicking me in the ass...
::goes to look up bus schedule::

Well, I mentioned a while back that I was going to make an effort to write more and censor less, and not worry about including subjects that didn't fit my original plan for this journal, like ::gasp:: politics.

But even though I have a couple of things that I've been *wanting* to write about, I haven't lately. Partly its the time, partly its because I seem to be in the mood to write only when my head is about to hit the pillow, and partly its because I'll realize that I want to write about something three days after I've read it, which is five days after everyone's discussed it to death, and when I'm finally ready to talk about it, I can't find the link anymore. Which is a lot like now.

Get to the chase already, Ag.