A Question....

[libgirl.livejournal.com]

Has there been any consideration about age restrictions at the suggested archive?

As a long-time, multi-fandom participant and talking with another one this week over the issue at LJ and with fanlib, two things came up:

1. As long as we're paying someone else to host our things, they can decide not to host specific things. Also, people will attempt to make a profit off of us in any way possible. The best solution is to host our own site with a dedicated server than can house us all.

2. We were talking and we both agreed that if there was a multi-fandom fanfiction hub, we wouldn't want it to be along the lines of ff.net. Everyone I know cringes when a news source goes to ff.net to talk about the "fandom phenomenon". That said, admitting fic.'s based on quality is tricky and subjective. If we create something, for ourselves, then I hope that we would both cover ourselves legally and present ourselves professionally. There is a legal issue involving minors and NC-17 material than can only really be remedied by not allowing minors. The easiest solution seems to be creating a panfandom archive for underage readers either in association with or as part of the larger archive, requiring a age statement to sign up and logged-in-only access to adult material. Also, if there are no underage readers allowed, then there is less likelihood of creating another ff.net.

I know that this will probably not be a popular opinion. I know that many people in fandom, particularly on LJ are underage and "passing" or "socking" in order to read adult material. I'm not saying that some underage readers cannot handle adult material or aren't already participating in adult activities; however, from a legal standpoint, it seems more responsible to take precautions.

Additionally, in light of the recent LJ events, it's obvious that much of what gets archives, websites, journals and fic.'s shut down is a perceived danger to the "childrenz". If this is a site by adults, for adults it's less likely to come under that sort of negative fire. After all, we're going to have to deal with the legal ramifications of intellectual property and copyright laws already.

I'm truly not trying to rock the boat or ignore the many and important contributions of underage fans to fandom. I'm just trying to ascertain how the issues of liability will be dealt with.

Comments

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know! I'm from NZ and I am really anti the idea of getting a credit card, I have enough debt to deal with already - so I can't have a paid LJ or any of that fun stuff (ironically, there are solutions if you're in the US - things like paypal, I think, can be run through eftpos cards and so forth - just not outside it!) I used the exampke deliberately to point out how ridiculous an idea it would be. :P

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

*blush* You can send your money through RL mail. You can't send checks from outside the US and money orders cost as much as the money you're trying to send, most of the time (meaning you'll have to pay €10,0-or something while you're only trying to send €20,-), which basically means your only option is to put the (changed, dollar) money and the printout of your order in an envelop and hope it reaches them well.

I'm kind of worried about how I'm going to support the Archive, because I doubt they'll let me send the money cash.