Warning! This is a soliloquy which delves into a controversial topic. It would be more appropriate for a personal weblog entry. Which it did not have for some time.
I've been shot.
Less than a week after I mentioned the DVD Maniacs' Forum on it {Ian Jane, or someone with access to the referrer logs, could let us know how many World-Wide Web surfers came here from there.}, my LiveJournal weblog associated with this personae has been "permanently suspended" by LiveJournal / Six Apart.
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Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 19:37:57 UT
From: "LiveJournal Abuse Team - abuse@livejournal.com" <+lj04+vincez2702+d0f6f6ff72.abuse#livejournal.com@spamgourmet.com>
To: lj04.vincez2702@spamgourmet.com
Subject: Your LiveJournal Account [404-748881] (lj04: message 3 of 18)
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Dear LiveJournal user smooot4,
Your journal and/or its associated profile or interests has been reported to us as containing material which expresses interest in, solicits, or encourages illegal activity. As this is a violation of both LiveJournal's Terms of Service and United States law, we have permanently suspended the journal.
If we become aware of any additional violations of LiveJournal’s policies or United States laws in the future, we reserve the right to permanently suspend any other journals you may have and terminate your account without warning.
Regards,
Cassie
LiveJournal Abuse Team
(The only modification is that which would show the true E-Mail name instead displays the SpamGourmet name shielding it.)
The 'official' E-Mail is generic boilerplate. The specific allegation is never disclosed therein.
I've been swept away and discarded due to a “do-gooder” organization called Warriors for Innocence (unlinked for multiple reasons). This organization considered some of my interests and public statments to be 'pedophiliac'. It contacted LiveJournal / Six Apart and demanded my termination, along with many other webloggers, and the termination of an additional number of communities. [c.v.: the Cartoon Porn rubric in Erotica.]
Incredibly, LiveJournal / Six Apart capitulated to its demands.
It troubles me that I have to issue this proclamation: I have never been, am not currently, and shall never become, a molester of children.
Let me return momentarily to the 'official' notice. On my travels on LJ, I have encountered entries in which all of these “illegal” activities have been recorded. These are for illustrative purposes only.
- Possession and/or consumption of marijuana (including links to NORML & other marijuana law reform advocacy groups).
- Operation of a motor vehicle with simultaneous use of a mobile telephone.
- Identification of road locations with stealthy deployment of speed monitoring units and/or personnel.
- Wagering on amateur sporting contests (e.g.: the National Collegiate Athletic Association's men's Division I basketball tournament).
I can be chalked up as somebody who has been drowned in the riptide of hysteria concerning on-line “predators”. What is particularly enraging is that not only am I not a “predator”, but that I was branded and vilified as one without any semblance of a fair hearing. From what I have ‘heard’ (second-hand quotes from other W-WW sites), this group of on-line vigilantes used LiveJournal's 'Search' function, entered selected words or phrases, and collated the names of journals & communities which had that word or phrase in their 'Interests' list. All those journals & communities were implored for termination.
I used the word there. It is meaningful. These organizations all claim to be performing a needed service on the World-Wide Web. But all they truly are are vigilante gangs. Members here have seen numerous depictions vis-a-vis genuine law enforcement agencies' view of vigilantes, from old Westerns, to episodes of television's "Dragnet". But since law enforcement agencies have earned distrust with many pockets of people throughout the U.S.A., were the agencies to publicly decry the actions of these vigilantes, they would be raked over the coals by both the vigilantes and the mainstream media. (One of these vigilante gangs is cohabiting with a terrestrial television network in the U.S.A. The television network is owned by the same movie studio which was the U.S.A. presenter for "Guyana, Crime Of The Century" [1980]; an "R"-Rated movie with some genuinely shocking depictions of child molestation.)
Vigilantes are unconcerned with logic and pragmatism. They have an objective they seek to accomplish. They have no compunctions to the methods they utilize to reach their goal. Any bystanders who may fall victim to their actions are disparaged as being too close to their fire.
When did this occur? When was the U.S. jurisprudence bylaw of "Innocent until proven guilty." abhorrently transformed into "Guilty unless proven innocent."? Cable television corporations in the mid-1980s {"If you are not subscribing to cable television, you must be stealing it."}?
For as powerful as the U.S.A. has become, it could be much more powerful and more respected worldwide if it was not for regularly-recurring episodes of paranoid hysteria. It just has to relapse into an absurd “witch hunt”. "I am not a..
- witch."
- member of the Communist Party."
- member of La Cosa Nostra."
- member of a terrorist organization."
- member of the American Civil Liberties Union."
- pedophile."
A vigilante gang is unconcerned with “gray areas”. To it, everything is black & white. "If you do not support us, you are against us.", "You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem." It is also ignorant of any distinctions someone would make between a legal instance and an “illegal” instance. This vigilante gang would probably consider you a “pedophile” if you expressed anything short of contempt and condemnation for any or all of these motion pictures:
- "Bilitis" [1976]
- "Maladolescenza" [1977]
- "Pretty Baby" [1978]
- "The Tin Drum" [1979]
- "À Nos Amours" [1983]
- "36 Fillette" [1988]
- "Child Bride" [1941]
Notice than none of these could be considered hardcore porn. This exposes the underbelly of the vigilante gang which it does not want you to notice. Just as, 28 years ago, the ‘anti-disco’ movement was captured and subverted/perverted by intolerant types who used the ‘populist’ front to legitimize their core belief of bigotry and discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals; the hysteria against pedophiles is being manipulated by intolerant types who loathe any and all positive viewpoints and presentations of erotica, sensuality, and non-procreative sex.
A vigilante gang sees any opinions contending it as something to be silenced. The only opinion allowed to be expressed on this topic must be its. Because, if more reports like this were allowed to traffic in the on-line universe, it would accomplish at least one aspect which the vigilante gang knows it cannot legitimately defeat: It would present an authentic human viewpoint versus a bastard movement which strives mightily to characterize its “enemy” as cold, cruel, faceless, monstrous miscreants. When confronted with this response, the only move which the vigilante gang can attempt is to strike the words of the respondent by any means whatsoever.
Sadly, LJ / 6 Apart has subjugated itself to this vigilante gang. And GreatestJournal has ordered some users to remove information from their own User Info pages lest they be terminated.
This indicates that what I feared, and wrote about in my LJ, has come to fruition.
My 'hidden' LJ was born after the November 2004 election, when I saw that the pieces were all aligned for anti-erotica zealots in the U.S.A. to finally accomplish their objective of eradicating all displays of erotica from the country, and its citizens. I cleaved all the erotic interests from my above-ground LJ {Can I trust you? That one is still extant.}. I re-assigned all of them to the hidden one (smooot4 - it was reinstated - but it might be re-suspended).
Where did I get that nickname? The night I established the hidden LJ, I had read Steve Puchalski's "Shock Cinema" magazine: The issue with the interview with [R.I.P.] Stephen C. Apostolof. The response where he insisted, "I don't make smoot." was at the front of my memory. When you established a new LJ then, it didn't tell you beforehand if a nickname was available. I decided to add a third 'o', and put a number after it in case somebody else had also thought of this. My original public post was that, as a connoisseur of erotica, and somebody who was a registered Democrat in a state which was one whose results were litigated in the Federal Appellate Courts; the ruling party might be endeavoring to remove me from the voting rolls. I felt that my affection for erotica would be the hook on which it would try to impale me.
My commentary attracted significant interest. I was friended by scores of other LJ users, ranging from practitioners of Wicca, to other devotees of on-line erotica, and to webloggers who were adherents to free speech. In all the time since then, I posted a variety of informative and/or erotic posts, both in my personal LJ, and a handful of other erotic LJ Communities [kaizersoze125, allporn, adult_links, iloveporn, orgasmoids, pee_erotic, sick_fetish, __loli_lovin, rape_porn].
But also under this name, I responded to posts in which the poster indicated some reticence to posting the associated content.
A bad sign was when LiveJournal was purchased by Six Apart. Six Apart made some modifications which were obviously designed and intended to make Livejournal.com more appealing to advertisers. The default sign-up mode for LJ was changed to the Sponsored Plus+ Account. (Later, the 'Sponsored' was dropped. I believe the “bean counters” at Six Apart felt a newbie would be more likely to accept the Plus+ account if he/she did not realize it meant advertisements.) LJ had originally aquired many sign-ups by pledging to "never have ads appear on LiveJournal pages". After Six Apart took over, this 'promise' was trashed. If you go to the LJ main page right now, you'll see an ad in the right center of your screen. {Do not click on it!} It dangled the hook of 'more avatar pictures' for the Free users who would convert. What a pathetic spectacle. Not many bit for that. Its next step was to force the display of ads on the User Info pages of communities whose creators has not specifically prohibited the display thereof (in many instances, because those users no longer had LJ accounts). All these moves were ‘seducing’ advertisers to want to place their ads on LJ pages.
I succinctly discerned what this meant to an LJ weblogger. If an LJ weblogger professed an interest in a 'controversial' topic, he/she could be subject to censorship by LJ, especially if he/she allowed ads to appear on his/her pages.
I must believe that this is a part of the reason why LJ / Six Apart was willing to terminate my weblog. {A paid LJ member could glimpse my replies to other still-extant LJs (I suspect a lot of those where I made a reply like this were also terminated.) in which I responded with a cautionary message to beware about an advertisement appearing on his/her LJ, lest an advertiser object to what was being expressed thereupon.}
What is my personal opinion about actual depictions or actions of pedophilia? It was in two sentences on my User Info page. Which, of course, the vigilante gang did not bother to read.
Genuine “child pornography” is despicable, especially if its makers believe they can profit from its production.
Genuine child molestation is reprehensible.
My confidence in LJ / Six Apart is irrevocably shattered. It is so much in the grip of “bean counters” who desperately covet investors' and advertisers' dollars. Such that it will do everything to placate them, including terminating accounts in which a user admits to a controversial interest, lest an advertisement which can be maligned by a vigilante gang appears on a page which that user maintains. This is a far more grave "chilling effect" than nearly anything else the United States' Department of Justice has promulgated in the past twelve years. LJ / Six Apart is inured to vigilantes. It will do everything the vigilantes ask of it.
Shame on LJ / Six Apart. If you have an extant weblog on LJ, back it up to the .pdf file now. More accounts will likely be terminated in the upcoming month; especially if they voice opinions supporting webloggers like me.
How was I able to produce this report for you here? Were the authorities given the personal data of all those in the U.S.A. (or Canada) who maintained one of the terminated LJs? Have those persons been arrested?
I never underestimated the depths to which an anti-erotica zealot would stoop. Whenever I surf on the World-Wide Web, I typically have an anonymous proxy configured in my web browser (and my web browser is not Microsoft©® Internet Explorer). I never envisioned LJ as a destination where it was necessary (e.g.: a number of free porn Thumbnail Group Page [TGP] websites), but it was part of my surfing habits. LJ never received my real name and location. Don't expect me to tell you where I reside now. Maybe "Guelph, Ontario, Canada" is fudging a little (or a lot).
My 'safer surfing' habits have literally and figuratively saved my hide. I don't know about you, but I doubt this generation's Alfred Hitchcock is going to make a motion picture with me as the protagonist under unwarranted suspicion. For the mere allegation of 'pedophilia' is in many instances today sufficient in the mainstream media's eyes to ruin an innocent person's life. If anybody else here decides to ensue surfing in a similar matter (whether you want to view lolicon hentai anime or not), you have my approval, and if you need any help, you can certainly ask me.
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