Two things

[cdybedahl]

First:

So fanfiction.net has changed its policy and will no longer host NC17 stories, or Real-Person Slash. Which has caused some heated arguing here and there. During which the word "censorship" has been occasionally used. Which touches on a pet peeve of mine.

Refusing to assist is not the same as preventing!

fanfiction.net are no longer assisting in spreading NC17 stories. Whatever you think of NC17 stories or fanfiction.net, that isn't censorship. It isn't censorship until someone prevents you from spreading it at all. fanfiction.net doesn't have that power. On the Internet today, nobody has that power.

And all that goes double for the stinking little cretins who keep mailing newsmaster at the ISP I work for and yelling about censorship because they can't get their porn for free any more.

Second:

Apparently, Yahoo has set a limit on the amount of mail their yahoogroups mailing lists can keep archived. This has pissed some people using yahoogroups off. To this I say: Yay! The less people who like Yahoogroups, the better.

So, to the few who read this: If you're about to start a mailing list, and it seems yahoogroups or some other ad-infested hellhole is your only option for it, ask me first. If I find your list more than marginally interesting, I'll host it for you. On my own server (well, technically it's my wife's machine, but...). No promises or anything, but, ask.

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Well, sort of, and up to a point. Except that, on the internet, isn't the power to prevent basically a financial one?

In the offline world, if all the major newspapers decided that, I dunno, they weren't ever going to feature short people, then there'd be very little portrayal of short people. You don't need a law to have an impact like that. Yes, on the net, access to resources is more equitable, but it's still not a done deal. So don't those with access to resources and a reputation built by a community of users (oh, OK, I know I'm talking about ff.net, here, but it has *a* reputation) have some kind of responsibility to act fairly?

Mind you, I also see your point, and ultimately, it's owner's choice, but that's what I see as the balancing side of it

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

To some extent the power to prevent is economical, yes. But on the Internet today the economic threshold for publishing something is exceptionally low. For what it costs to print a paper zine, you can pay for website hosting for several years. And reputations come and go very quickly. Sure, I can see how many people feel that since ff.net in some sense lived (and lives, I guess) on the works of others, they have a moral obligation to treat those others fairly. Unfortunately a moral obligation is worth no more than the sense of honor in the one or ones carrying it. And you don't know how much that is until it's been tested. ff.net's apparently wasn't worth much -- and there isn't much to be done about except to be pissed off and/or start a new archive.