LiveJournal Says Users are Responsible for Content of Links

Many of you might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from the group, Warriors for innocence. Since then, they've been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal. Today, LiveJournal management have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding in how the internet works, declaring that users are responsible for the content of the webpages that they link to in their blog entries. A user points out the obvious flaw: "I get ToS'd because the link's been redirected to a page full o' porn, even though context clearly shows that when I originally put up the link that it didn't actually land on a page of porn?" One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web.

Comments

No right to protection from stupidity

[Harmonious Botch]

This is not about "your rights online". LiveJournal is a private company, not a govenrment agency. Their web site is private property, and it is not a monopoly.
To speak of 'rights' on their web site is sort of speaking about rights at K-Mart. You don't have any. If you don't like what K-Mart does, you leave and go to their competitor.
If LiveJournal does something that you find intolerably stupid, then quit and go post on their competition's web site.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[Rinisari]

Here, here. For those who find it a problem, they are free to seek other services. Those won't have no problem with the new policy will stay. If the former group is larger than the latter and LiveJournal sees mass exodus, perhaps it will regret and renege.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a bizarre, backwards argument.

Of course they are "rights."

You say we "don't have any" rights when at K-Mart? This is false on its face, and anyone can see it. If you walk into K-Mart they have no right to bind and gag you, nor to handcuff you and throw darts at you for entertainment, nor to forcefully take a blood sample.

Sure, they can legally ask you to leave when you enter wearing a t-shirt which they dislike -- but that doesn't make them ethically correct in doing so.

Your redefinition of "rights" to include only major human/civil rights, encoded in law as actions the government may not take against individuals, is mere wordplay -- whose effect is to semantically limit those rights you'll permit people to demand for themselves. When we demand certain rights, it does not matter whether the entity infringing upon those rights is the government or not. They are rights by dint of their infringement being unethical.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[Junior J. Junior III]

LJ is run like a company, but bills itself as a community. People who are members of communities tend to think of themselves as having rights, including a right to say what they think about the community's policies. If you disagree with changes in the Terms of Service, you really don't have much redress as you might with an entity that operated like a democracy.

This is unfortunate; online communities could well operate like governments, with a concept of citizenship and taxation, rather than as business enterprises, with a concept of customer accounts and fees, but very few of them seem to any more.

But it's very difficult to say "If you don't like the way things are run here, you can just leave." It's not easy to export a livejournal account to another service with more agreeable ToS. It's not easy to leave the friends and contacts behind when you move your blogging to another service.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[quanticle]

To speak of 'rights' on their web site is sort of speaking about rights at K-Mart. You don't have any.

That's not true, per se. One does have right at K-Mart. For example, K-Mart may not turn me away even if I'm a minority or if I'm in a wheelchair. There are anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws that grant me certain rights even if I'm inside private property.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[EconomyGuy]

Parent is mistaken if they believe that we only have rights in relation to government agencies. That's simply not how the world functions. I have the right to not be struck by moving cars, which is enforced by my right to bring a suit in torts against anyone who does strike me by a moving car. There are all manner of rights which exist between private parties. Some have existed since the first common law courts on England, others are more modern such as civil rights laws passed by Congress in the 50s and 60s. In all cases it is a right a private actor enforces against another.

One such right is the right of LiveJournal to avoid any liability for defamatory material posted on their site by members. The law explicitly exempts LiveJournal (and other service providers) from the same liability a newspaper would carry if it printed the same materials. There is zero government involvement.

Another, perhaps more analogous, example is that a landlord cannot put in a lease that they can evict you without cause or without notice. Sure, it's the landlords private property, but the courts have long held that as it becomes your home you have certain rights which trump the private property holder. Again, no government involvement needed.

Which is all a way of saying that the "right" to not be deemed in violation of ToS because a link you pointed to has changed to something different is not a far-fetched right. It's just another layer of rights and regulations that form the web that is our legal framework.

Re:No right to protection from stupidity

[Atragon]

You say we "don't have any" rights when at K-Mart? This is false on its face, and anyone can see it. If you walk into K-Mart they have no right to bind and gag you, nor to handcuff you and throw darts at you for entertainment, nor to forcefully take a blood sample.

Well crap, so much for that business plan...

None of which...

[msauve]

changes the fact that they're acting like clueless noobs.

Re:None of which...

[martinX]

You misspelled a word. It's spelled "knobs".

Re:None of which...

[Anonymous Coward]

These Warriors for Innocence are a bunch of bible-thumping altar-violated nazi feminist who have no idea how the internet works, and for them to have put that much pressure on LiveJournal for them to turn into them, is a freaking joke. LiveJournal will soon collapse, and they will most likely look back at how they listened to a bunch of nobodies who think they know how to protect little children.

I went on their site, and found that their site alone was not work safe. Hypocritical bastards.

Re:None of which...

[adona1]

I also seem to recall that when LJ did their first lot of journal-cuts and it was posted on /. that many people pointed out (with glee) that the Warriors for Innocence webpage attempts to install spyware and other dirty tricks. Why should anyone, LJ included, pay attention to what they have to say? That's like accepting the help of a rapist to catch drug dealers...the intention may be good, but you get dirty doing it.

Re:None of which...

[Wonko the Sane]

Someone who's overly friendly and goes out of his way to be helpful without asking for anything in return is suspicious.

I don't know where this author is from, but I was raised with the expectation that this is normal behavior.

Re:None of which...

[Skreems]

Just for the sake of irony, I submitted a "terms of service violation" complaint against the Warriors of Innocence blog. I recommend anyone else who's pissed at this behavior do the same. They're hate-mongering enough that there's a chance it'll do something. And damn, would it be funny.

Re:None of which...

[montyzooooma]

Once a social networking website becomes popular it ceases to be cool and people move onto the next one. Buying a social networking site, like Murdoch did, is a losers game. Better to apply the catfood brands principle and set up successive sites so that as each previous website loses favour you have two others ready for people to move to.
(catfood brands theory - if you have 2 companies making 1 brand of catfood each with about 50% market share, it makes sense to launch another brand rather than trying to promote your existing brand. So now you have 2 companies, one with 2 brands and 1 with 1 brand. The newly launched brand will take away sales from both existing brands but with the company with 2 brands benefiting overall. Until, obviously, the second company launches 2 new brands. And so on.)

Umm...

[garett_spencley]

Ok, so I understand quite well how things can change and how domains can switch hands and a link one day might be about my little pony but the next day it could get redirected to porn etc.

However, isn't it perfectly within LJ's right to protect itself and remove accounts who are linking to porn ? Is it not *your* responsibility to make sure that sites that you link to aren't something that "parent company" wouldn't object to ? Where parent company is a web host, employer or anyone else who *owns* the property (web server, domain etc.) that you are hosting your page on ?

So the owner of the link changed the page. That means Live Journal should just sit back and say "oh well... our domain is linking to porn and our policy clearly states that we do not allow that, however, since the link was obviously changed to redirect to porn *after* the page owner linked to it we'll just leave it there and do nothing" ?

Ok, so they could pull the link and inform / warn the user etc. But then the question is raised, who's responsibility is it to check those links ? IMO the guy who signed up for a Live Journal account and linked to the site that eventually got changed and redirected should be held responsible.

Maybe I'm a little biased because I'm a webmaster. But I make it a point to check the links on my sites periodically because they change. I don't expect my web hosting provider to do it for me. Not that my hosting provider would terminate my account for anything short of something extremely illegal anyway. But for my own reputation and for the sake of giving my surfers a pleasant and consistent surfing experience free of anything that they would not expect or want to come across while browsing my sites I check my links every once in a while.

And it is certainly within LJ's rights to remove pages on their servers that are violating their TOS. I don't see how it has anything to do with understanding the nature of the Internet. I haven't read their TOS but I'm assuming somewhere in there is "Don't Link To Porn Sites" and I'm also pretty sure that there is NOT an "Except unless the page you're linking to was changed afterwards" clause.

Be that as it may...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may not be government censorship, I don't see why we can't publicly decry these actions as idiotic.

After all, who will learn from their example if no one makes an example of them?

Oh and....

[porcupine8]

The other issue is that they have been yanking paid (in some cases lifetime) accounts with no warning to the owner at all and no refunds. This is what got people really pissed. At least they're starting to realize that they should give people a chance to take it down before deleting the account.

Devil's Advocate

[Enderandrew]

I'm leaving LJ personally because a bunch of their BS policies lately, but let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

LJ will let you post most anything you want. I saw someone post a TOS violation because a guy had a user-pic of masturbating with a barbie doll. LJ didn't ban him because it wasn't his default icon.

LJ and SixApart came under fire specifically because of journals that had varying levels of content in regards to sex with children. LJ is owned and operated within the US and has to operate in conjunction with US law. LJ admitted they over-reacted initially and deleted some communities they shouldn't have. They reinstanted said communities.

This new policy really is only regards to illegal content, which LJ very losely regulates. There are many pirate communities on LJ, and LJ doesn't care about that. People discuss gangs, illegal drugs, and all kinds of crazy stuff. But when it comes to pedophilia, they have to cover their bases or get in big trouble with the government. When LJ said you couldn't post fan-fic anymore that featured sex and children, people got upset and started linking to it instead. If I owned Six Apart, I'd have the same policy simply to cover my ass.

If you don't like it, blog somewhere else. Quite frankly, if they go elsewhere, LJ is better off for it. Let someone else deal with the legal problems.