Reining in the Controversy.

[Slammr (imported)]

It isn't a lawsuit one would have to be concerned about, it would be legal prosecution for child pornography; and even if such stories are technically protected by the Constitution, defending one's self could be financially devastating. Other people facing such prosecution have chosen to accept a plea and avoid jail time rather than take the real possibility they may be found guilty by a jury and have to place their hopes on winning an appeal. I wouldn't trust a jury in such a case. We live in a world where kids are being prosecuted

for sending naked pictures of themselves to other

kids.

[Cainanite (imported)]

I don't see it coming to that. There really would be no case for what you suggest.

The greater problem is hosting, and whether we would run into difficulty with an internet host, trodding on our right to free speach, by shutting us down for content they do not like. The question of if the Fiction Archive is legal or not has already been established. The question of hosting such a site would likely be decided in a civil suit, not a criminal one.

I turn the question back to the one at hand. What do the members of the archive feel is the best way to continue sharing our stories, without impacting the community of the forums, blogs, and chat?

The Fiction Archive, for me, is the main reason I am participating in the forum community. Losing it or censoring it would be a personal tragedy for me. It would be the loss of a very therapeutic form of expression, one that I have personally benefited from.

[Slammr (imported)]

A web host company can't be forced to accept certain content. If they decide to quit hosting you, there's not much you can do about it. I guarantee they have a clause in the contract that says they can reject whatever content they wish to reject. For instance, I have rules about what I host on my website. If someone doesn't follow my rules, I may ban them. All the arguments they wish to make about Free Speech won't do them any good. It's my website, and I decide what allow on it. Similarly, it's their servers, and they can decide what to allow on them.

As I've said, I've had a website shut down because of the content I had on it (no minor content), and my only choice was to find another server.

[janekane (imported)]

I wrote up a "nifty" thousand-word diatribe about the significance of this thread, only to recognize that it might need to be ten-thousand-words or more before becoming usefully complete.

While I would ask to be associated with such lawsuit, were it to happen, I would ask to be an expert witness, in accord with my professional license and education, and would never be willing to be a defendant. I deem it vastly wiser to prevent such a lawsuit than to be a defendant or just an expert witness for the defense. In my view, prevention, when it is possible, invariably outperforms cure.

To me, being associated with an unpreventable lawsuit is not at all the same as being a defendant in the lawsuit.

A story for another time and place is of how the legal industry has effectively educated me into being in conscientious unbridled contempt of court.

As for

prosecution for child pornography,

the possibility of a pornography misinterpretation of some of the fiction stories is what, for many years, kept me from asking for membership. What changed my mind was, in part, my talking with people who are now adults who were sexually abused as children, and the nearly unspeakable damage such abuse did to them.

I find there to be a valid concern which is clamoring for proper attention, and it is embedded in many of the archive stories. Alas, this concern is now within that which is socially forbidden; and that is a profound human tragedy, one I find merits careful, decently caring resolution.

Questioning basic precepts of society has always been perilous, not questioning basic precepts which are dreadfully harmful is both perilous and necessary. Courage to question what is observably dreadfully harmful may need to be employed with uncommon care, if those who wisely question harmful precepts are to survive asking the necessary questions.

[Dave (imported)]

What SLAMMR says is true.

You have to remember that all of these servers are private businesses. If they don't want to host you, they dump you. It's their world. It's their rules.

Look at what Yahoo Groups and Blogger do to people? They don't want your content, they delete your stuff. All of the words in the world won't change that fact.

Any website that wants to publish what the world (or a few) don't want has to put it behind a strict wall so no casual observer can get to it. That's expensive and runs counter to the help that the EA wants to provide to people.

[kristoff]

Essentially, the constitution says Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech. Doesn't say any thing about private parties. Outside of government, there is no such thing as freedom of speech, notwithstanding the broader misconception.

[Cainanite (imported)]

This is perfectly understood. What the discussion needs to be is, can there be a way to best protect the EA while preserving the fiction archive?

Is the best decision to completely dump the Fiction Archive in favor of the forum?

Is the best decision to censor the Fiction Archive and excise offensive content?

What would it take to best serve the community, and preserve a place for us on the net?

Can we minimize the impact of having an uncensored Fiction Archive, by imposing some stricter filters to access content?

Non members cannot even view this thread. Only people with a username and password, who successfully log in, can see this thread. Can that be done with the Fiction Archive? Should it?

[fhunter]

In theory, you can have your own server to host something and not depend on hosting provider. I do not think that bandwidth for the stories section was that much (text, no pictures).

The problem is, that with tendencies like COICA/Protect IP act, you would not be able to hold a DNS name for long.

It looks like that is what happened to eunuch.org domain.

[Dave (imported)]

In theory, you can have your own server to host something and not depend on hosting provider. I do not think that bandwidth for the stories section was that much (text, no pictures).

The problem is, that with tendencies like COICA/Protect IP act, you would not be able to hold a DNS name for long.

It looks like that is what happened to eunuch.org domain.

I'm more inclined to think that BME is causing trouble for the DNS company. But that's only my opinion. It's not based in any facts.

[kristoff]

The problem was that someone made a complaint to the DNS registrar about child pornography being hosted at Eunuch.org. They were specifically cited two pieces which probably should never have been put up in the first place. As a result, they blocked our DNS access, but that did not block the site access at BME (hence the 184.80.34.18). However, Rachel has been scared of the story archive for a couple of years - she's afraid it will tear down her shaky house at BME. The net result is that she told us that she would no longer host us on BME after this weekend. At the same time, we managed to get the current registrar to release the name, which they did, but only Rachel can redirect the name servers, since, while I own the account, she controls it. Thus we hurriedly securer a paid host (which is why we've been asking for money), and utilized some domain names with a different registrar, that I have been holding. Meanwhile, we are trying to get back the eunuch.org name from Rachel, but so far she is not responding to any of our requests. I have also placed a hold on the name if it expires and is let go.

As far as the fiction archive is concerned, there are no plans to destroy it. We simply have to decide in what manner, and what will be allowed. Yes, we may well have to go in and edit out some stories, but that is a painstaking process, never mind reading 11,000 stories (won't happen that way, be assured). We may simply have to take out those with certain tags, ie, minor themed. NO DECISIONS HAVE BEEN MADE. They will not be for at least another month.