Caged Flight

synecdochic's urge to look at this from a viewpoint outside the fannish community.

elke_tanzer's informative advice on how to proceed.

elynross's post.

aura218's List of Official Statements in lj_biz.

Interesting how within the space of a few months 6A has decided to once again start the purging of LJ accounts - only this time hiding their actions so that the names of the purged accounts don't even appear with the strikethrough. This makes it harder for people to see who had gotten axed simply by glancing through their flist - no, instead we'll have to go to our profile and then click on the "more details" link at the bottom of the page to even find out what is going on. And, coincidentally, this all happens immediately after the auction for permanent accounts end.

All this screams of secrecy and idiocy - an idiocy that 6A wishes upon the fandom and hopes that we won't notice. But as the fervor that's rising through the ranks of everyone's flist, and the 43 pages and counting of comments in LJnews, demonstrates, hiding is not so easy. Especially in a community of well-connected, intelligent people.

I don't consider myself in the HP fandom - certainly I read a few fics there now and then, but it's not something I look for. And I don't participate at all in fanart, which artists like ponderosa121 were permanently suspended for (meaning they can never sign-up for another LJ account). But these suspensions have reprecussions, not just for HP fans or even fans in general, but to anyone who has a LJ account.

As anyone who's spoken with me knows, I despise censorship with the passion other people usually reserve for child molesters and people who speak in theaters. That said, I recognize the right 6A has to disallow certain kinds of posts and posters - it is their money, their business, and their decision on how to run it. If they want, it is their prerogative to say to to us: No fandom allowed. They, unlike the government, are not required to guarantee us full freedom of speech.

However, what 6A did was definitely bad business. Mayhap even legal grey area.

Decisions were made by the 6A team without instating clear rules in LJ's Terms of Service, so that we as customers can actually have the luxury of knowing exactly what rules we are breaking before we are punished for them.


The first LJ purge this year and other developments of unscrupulous commercial nature led to talks of a multifandom fiction archive directed by a fandom-based non-profit organization, news at fanarchive. Numerous people also left LJ to go to IJ and GJ, and even more prepared to leave.

This most recent purge has only reinforced that the security and comraderie at LJ fan-communities are numbered.

I'll be keeping an eye on the new in-development Journal Site Scribblit - for fans and by fans.


Useful links:
brown_betty's guide to Backing up your LJ
Snapetoy's Set-up for Posting to Multiple Journals on Semagic.
fandom_flies is coordinating the massive migration of like-minded people.
shaggirl's Pro/Cons on which Journal Site to Migrate to
twocorpses's Update on a fan-oriented Journal Site - beta testing: Scribblit
bubble_blunder's Round-up of Useful Info and Links