Am I the only one?

[rsadelle]

Someone please tell me I'm not the only one who isn't outraged about fanfiction.net banning NC-17 stories.

I got a personally directed e-mail from someone I've never heard of urging me to sign a petition to protest the new policy because "even if the site is horrible, it is a direct censorship of authors and the way they express themselves, which I know slash writers are fighting against constantly."

Censorship? How is this censorship? Censorship is an official restriction of expression. This is a privately run site. Whether or not you agree with their policies, they do have the right to create and change them at will. By all means, write to them to complain about how their change in policy will affect your life for the worse. If you've supported them monetarily, complain about the fact that you don't like what they're doing with your money. But for the love of the First Amendment, please don't try to tell me that a privately run site's decision about what you can post on their site is censorship.

Comments

[arkane156.livejournal.com]

Nope, not just you. I want to smack some of these people.

[rsadelle]

Thank God it's not just me.

[diamona.livejournal.com]

You make a fair point.

It's a shame they've taken this decision, but considering they have a wide (and generally young) readership and can't take adequate precautions to stop underage kids from reading NC-17 material without some huge administrative effort, then it's a logical one. It's certainly easier to remove NC-17 stuff than to police the ages of the readership and possibly get sued by an angry parent, which I expect is what they're worried about.

I think some people are up in arms because they have a feeling that this decision is a value judgement on NC-17 erotica. That's not necessarily the case. And even if it is, fanfiction.net are still within their rights to decide what stories they host, like it or lump it.

[rsadelle]

I don't really care what they do or how they do it; you can always post your NC-17 fic somewhere else.

I do have to admit, though, to being confused. They say, "this has to be done considering the non-filtering scheme of the site." However, last time I ventured over there, by default it showed me only stories rated G to R and I had to change it to show me NC-17 stories. How is that a "non-filtering scheme"?

[sandrine]

You're definitely not the only one. What's more - I cannot understand how some people are so awfully surprised about it. After some recent measures FF.net had taken, it wasn't an unexpected step.

[rsadelle]

I think what I'm somewhat surprised about is the changing of the RPS ban to be consistent. Did they spontaneously get a clue or did someone spill the beans?

[sandrine]

I don't know, but it wasn't a sudden action. They banned actor fics a few months ago, so banning the musician and sports stuff was just the logical next step. I would have been surprised if they had let it be, actually.

The one thing I don't get is why they allow and encourage original stories. I always thought fanfiction.net was about, well, fanfiction.

[rsadelle]

I wouldn't have been surprised if they hadn't made the policy consistent. Many people think that musicianslash, wrestling slash, and actorslash exist at different places on some sort of imaginary RPS continuum.

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

I think ff.net is being stupid and non-user-friendly and this is just the culmination (maybe) of that, but a lot of the outraged people strike me as being morons who are hurting their cause rather than helping it.

But I am an elitist intellectual snob.

[rsadelle]

fanfiction.net has never been user-friendly. It's a pain in the ass to find what you want, there's no sorting by pairing, and there's no consistency of formatting from story to story. True, that's a different sort of user-unfriendly, but the point is that if they're not user-friendly in one area, why would they be user-friendly in another.

I do think people have the right to protest fanfiction.net, but not on the grounds that it's censorship. If you're going to protest, at least figure out what it is you're really protesting against

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If you're going to protest, make sure it's the right thing and endeavor not to sound like an idiot.

Also, I doubt protesting will do any good. As far as I know, ff.net has never responded to anything (except possibly abuse reports) from users.

[meacoustic.livejournal.com]

I wasn't outraged, or even all that surprised. (It figures that right after Laura Hale announced fandomination that something would happen to cause the 'mass exodus' over to there, since it is specifically mentioned to be RPS-friendly.)

However, that leaves the NC-17 HP and LotR authors homeless (if fandomination follows through with that policy). Guess they better learn HTML kinda fast.

In regards to calling it "censorship", well, ff.net retains the right to do whatever they want. It's not some sort of fanfiction commune where the actual running of the site is a fandom-wide effort. An account there is technically a priviledge, not a right. And I, for one, am glad that they're putting up policy that they'll stick to (it at least looks that way), even if it is a policy that's caused a huge wave of discontent.

Not all good fanfiction is NC-17. Not all good fanfiction is RPS. Quality of fic there won't suffer due to the policy shift unless a substantial amount of the more polished authors leave. FF.net is not the end all and be all - probably 95% of the authors I read on a regular basis or have read in the past year don't associate with ff.net anyway because they have their own webpages.

I still stand by what I said in my essay on ff.net (http://acherontia.net/amatia/personal/ffnet.html) - except for the bit about NC-17 a possible c&d cause - and some of it's going to be even more true now. The admins there are 100% correct in saying that most of their users are younger.

'spose now I'll have to check all the ff.net links at the Weasleycest Archive (http://acherontia.net/burrow/) for the NC-17 stories.

I'll be waiting to see how often those new posting guidelines are followed, however. If they were, the quality would improve so much. Spell. Check.

Just my $0.47.

[rsadelle]

They don't have to learn html. They can find someone out there willing to put them up, or they could get a livejournal or deadjournal or other such thing and post fics there.

[meacoustic.livejournal.com]

Also, that e-mail you got? Someone should tell that person that ff.net isn't all slash, and that there's a bunch of NC-17 het writers who are going through the same thing.

[rsadelle]

I think the writer was well aware of that but was appealing to me as a slasher.

censorship by any other name...

[ee970.livejournal.com]

I would say that refusing to post 'adult' content and RPS is censorship, as they are censoring what they accept, though it is certainly within their rights to do so. That's not my issue with ff.net... I just think they're shooting themselves in the foot. Perhaps most of their readers are younger, but I'd posit that most of the -paying- members are older. Most of those 14 year olds crying over the fact they no longer can post their NSync Mary Sues don't have credit cards. Couple that with the lost goodwill of other authors leery of when ff.net gets rid of things rated R, or rape fics, death fics, fics based on TV shows (since they've got 'real' people in them!)... doesn't seem like the smartest of choices when you've got bills to pay and servers to maintain. I think that ff.net is basically taking the lazy man's way out of covering their asses (which is strange when fanfiction itself is on the mushy side of legal anyway), and is trying to cover up all the stuff they're cutting out by saying 'well, at least we've got original stuff!' Hell, if I wanted original fics, I'd go to... I dunno, originalfiction.net. Maybe they should just change it to 'americankneejerkconservativefriendlyfanfiction.net', since that's basically what they're going for.

I am curious as to how fandomination is going to turn out; I haven't been able to load up the site due to bandwidth issues as people flee ff.net; if it is primarily a RPS site, then what of the anime, book, etc. folks looking for a new place to go? It'll be interesting to see what comes of all this.

In the meantime, I think I'll just read my ff.net porn while I can.

Re: censorship by any other name...

[rsadelle]

It's not censorship because it only applies to their privately run site. If they went out and somehow forced people all over the internet to take down their RPS and NC-17, then it would be censorship.