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]

IIRC this was discussed in the original post in astolat's journal and thought was leaning towards having a theoretical but not actual system of age-restricted material - where everything is hosted on one archive but if you're not logged in you have to click a button saying you're over 18 and if you are logged in you have to be over 18 - or say you're over 18 - to see R18(NC-17) material.

My thoughts on this are pretty mixed since I've been reading "adult" material for many years, since well before I was technically of age to do so, and I don't and never did feel particularly disturbed. (Although I'm aware that the notion disturbs some authors...!) OTOH, I understand the desire by people running things to cover their asses. The only thing I do feel strongly is that under-18s should not be ghetto-ized away. And I wonder what the response is to under-18s writing the porn...!

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".

Yeah, but on an indirect harm principle - that something about the content will lead to children being harmed - as opposed to a direct harm principle where children are actually harmed by the existence of porn/the reading of porn. the latest kerfuckle - as I understand it, and comments on CNet aside - was that the interests function allowed paedophiles to network. Not that anything paedophiles were doing on LJ was harmful to children. the veracity of this is obviously debatable but I do think that was the underlying principle there.

[abbylee]

I thought that this is what the people who have legal experience are being contacted for. (1) To figure out which country to physically host the servers, so that it will not break the local laws of the hosts. (2) To figure out how to make sure that material is best labelled (etc) to make sure that those who have local laws against specific material will not accidentally break them.

[faith-girl222.livejournal.com]

i didn't think there was an actual legal ruling saying it was illegal. no one stops underage kids from buying books from the romance section of a bookstore (and a lot of those books are pretty graphic), nor are they barred from certain sections of libraries. or have things changed since i was a kid?

and then, there are and have been kids under 18 writing "adult" fanfiction - what do we do about them?

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

Also, if there are no underage readers allowed, then there is less likelihood of creating another ff.net.

If this is to be a panfannish archive it makes little sense to exclude fans on the basis of age. Nor would I as a fannish writer/reader want to participate in an archive that did so. The underlying ethos, as I understand it, is one of inclusion, legal necessity notwithstanding.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

In my opinion not allowing fen under 18 into the archive is ridiculous. Isn't the whole point of the archive to be a place for all of us? How, may I ask you, is it supposed to be a place for all of fandom if you plan to completely throw out the younger subset of it? And to say that denying them posting access will somehow vastly improve the quality of the fic at the archive is counterproductive because not only are you generalizing that most badfic come from younger fen, your not actually creating any solution to the fact that any author can and probably has written badfic.

I just think that instead of staying, "You kids get outta my lawn," we should be thinking more along the lines of, "The pool is dangerous for young kids/those with sensitive dispositions, because you can get in over your head, however their is plenty of other things for you to play with, like the swing set. Isn't swinging fun?"

For an example of this, I believe(and correct me if I am wrong because it has been forever since I have been in the hp fandom) that schnoogle only allows up to R and that all of the NC17 fic goes into Dark Arts.

[airawyn.livejournal.com]

I think it's something to take into consideration. This would prevent a large amount of potential legal trouble. I know it seems terribly unfair to people under 18, but fandom will still be around when they come of age.

[kerravonsen]

Personally, I'd rather restrict access to adult material than lock out underage fans! Part of the reason for wanting this archive in the first place is that we don't want poor naieve new-fen to be deceived by the blandishments of FanLib.com.

[xenacryst.livejournal.com]

So, a few bits of info here, but not much in the way of opinions...

One of the things that seems to give people pause is the "child pornography" argument. According to 18 U.S.C. § 2256 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002256----000-.html) (US federal law), child pornography involves visual images. While people have certainly discussed the idea of including fan art or vids in the archive, the first focus, I believe, is text. It's been my experience that erotica story sites don't explicitly require an age statement, but they do tend to have a warning page.

There's also COPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act) (Child Online Protection Act, not to be confused with COPPA - Child Online Privacy Protection Act). Courts seem to think that COPA is unconstitutional, and so enforcement isn't happening. However, various state laws may have similar intents. Still, on a brief read-through, I'm not sure if this covers textual material.

There's also COPPA, but that applies only to the collection of personal information about children under the age of 13, and not about whether they can access "adult" material.

And finally, just a note of observation: some libraries do actually try to keep kids in the kids sections. It really depends on the library and the community. And the librarian, kid, and parents in question, too. YMMV, of course.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Well I changed what I was going to say in the middle of the first sentence, mainly because what I originally planned to write sounded very condescending. You can disregard the sentence if you like, but all I was trying to say was that if I were starting this discussion? It would probably not go so well.

IMHO, 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. , from your original post read like and apology and a disclaimer. Was I reading into something that wasn't there?

I don't think you have anything to apologize for, and was advocating that you don't apologize? I guess, I don't know it is all a bit fuzzy.

[quivo.livejournal.com]

Like you've mentioned in comments, I think that unless we end up hosting the archive in a country with more permissive laws, we'll probably have to go the login or 'click if you're 18' way. It sucks, but if we want to keep the archive up and running and (fairly) legal in nature, we'll need to cop to at least the clicking option. The only way I can think of to soften the blow is saying it could be worse - that underage readers and writers could just not be allowed in, but that doesn't help when you're on the other side of the arbitrary line between adulthood and childhood.

As far as the quality thing, I can't remember exactly who suggested it, but someone talked in the earlier comments about some sort of two-tier judging system that would depend on ratings and so on. I actually quite like the idea, especially if it wasn't literally just six people doing the final vetting of fics. What could make it even fairer could be switching around the vetting group every so often, or mixing up its membership or composition or something. Of course, people would probably try to game the system at the rating end, but one can take actions to stop that kind of thing, e.g. everyone getting only a certain amount of votes, and maybe only getting to vote every so often, and the process having a captcha or other anti-bot mechanism bolted on, etc.

The tiered quality system would probably work even better if it was organised along fandom lines as well. Say, you submit a fic to the normal pool, where everyone starts out. People rate it/vote it up, and it gets enough votes and comments or whatever to be in consideration for reviewing by people in the fandom. The reviewing process can be quick and straightforward - mostly rooted in form and, er, spelling instead of bringing people's opinions of plots and kinks into it - and then the fic goes into the 'fandom vetted' pool or something, and is then eligible for any contests or competitions or 'featured fic of the week' spots or whatever, just like every other fic out there.

What might also help (and god, I know this is long) is if all fics were pretty much treated equally. Except for being eligible for bigger contests and featured fic bylines or whatever, the fandom vetted pool of fics would be displayed and treated the same as everything else. There could even be columns for stories close to becoming fandom vetted or just starting out - like an undiscovered fic of the day, or something? And the authors wouldn't be treated differently (well, in theory) either - all fics could begin as non-fandom-vetted, with each author's work standing on its own merit in the process.

And I think I'll stop there :P.

[korilian.livejournal.com]

I liked the idea someone had (Shallot?), about having to put in your date of birth when you sign up, so that you don't get constant warnings, though that would require a lot more vigilance from the people who really don't like slash/adult (catagories?).

Supposedly you could automatically bounce minors from adult stories as long as they're signed in, though that might be a little extreme (but whether or not teens should be allowed to read about sex and violence is a whole other discussion).

Of course, that raises the point: Do you need to sign in before you can read? LJ can keep you logged in. It wouldn't be to much hassle like that.

As for the quality thing... That's a tough one, especially if you're going with a massive archive. Only allow beta-ed fic? (not that, that necessarily helps *shudder*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I have an idea for the quality issue.

The problem with ff.net is not that they don't have good stories, but that the good stories are lost in the mix. What we need is a place where authors can have rec-lists.

ff.net sort of has this option, in the "favorites." What we need is to:

a) call it "rec-lists"
b) not have it buried in the author's profile, but front and center, one of the first things you find when you come to the site
c) have a field where the reccer explains what they liked about the story

Icarus

[quinara]

Hello! Thought I'd wade in... I agree with icarusancalion that recs need to be a lot more central, but I think it could be a lot more fluid than just having centralised rec lists for fandoms.

The way I would suggest is that people would personally collect fic that they like (similar to the ff.net system of favourites), but you would also have a secondary list where, like the 'friends of friends' thing on LJ (does anyone use that?) you'd have a list of all the things recommended by your recs. It wouldn't represent itself as definitive, so people would still be encouraged to check out newbies, and also there wouldn't be any sense of objective quality, because the whole thing would radiate from you - yet at the same time, it would still grow quite large and introduce you to lots of fic.

I mean, there could be a few options, so you would still be able to rec a story but avoid the author's recs (if you thought they had dubious taste!) - say buttons at the bottom of each fic saying 'rec fic', 'rec author', 'add author's recs to list' or whatever. That would also allow for a more automated central list as well if people wanted one.

I think I'm probably sounding far too eager, but it's the sort of system I've always wanted from a website, because it's the process I always go through trying to find more fic anyway.