Scans_Daily TOSed off Livejournal: If Only Someone Owned The Goddamned Servers

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

We are saddened by the fact that yet another female fannish community has been disrupted by being TOSed off a commercial social networking site. In its original conception and use, scans_daily was about highlighting and discussing the slashy and other elements in mainstream comics most interesting to female fans, who are often a voice shut out of discussion of comics elsewhere. The community frequently hosted important review and interpretation of mainstream media, even if it did use excerpts of copyrighted work. To destroy this kind of discussion in the name of preventing piracy is exactly the kind of act that ISPs and social networking services like Livejournal protest when, for instance, copyright holders demand that they be shut down because some fraction of their users are using their infrastructure to share pirated content. Regardless of what you think about the ethics and efficacy of scanning, something really valuable has been (hopefully only temporarily) lost.

We also agree with Lisa Fortuner that gender's got something to do with it. In her article, Just Past the Horizon: The male space is just better hidden Fortuner notes, "if Scans_Daily were a male dominated community it would have not been suspended like this. Why? Because I don’t think it would have been on a site like Livejournal." She continues:

"In my experience, that’s where the male-female distinction seems to be. Female fans populate social network sites run by panicky male-dominated corporations who want to make money from selling advertising to women, but don’t really have the brass ovaries to deal with hosting female interaction on the internet. It’s like they expect feathered sugar with a hint of spice and are shocked to discover girls have locker room talk and smoke in the bathroom. Male fan communities seem to be owned and operated by like-minded males, the male-dominated comic company itself, the comic creator who gathers his own fans to his side, or the self-style Pirate King who set up the torrent site specifically for illegal activities and searched around for an ISP that wouldn’t check on him too closely. Livejournal’s jumpy about their fanbase. They know they need them to keep the traffic up, but they are scared to death to be held liable for what goes on on their site. There’ve been a few instances with this in the past with fanart and fanfiction, and it was only a matter of time before they freaked out about scans. I don’t think male fans are completely safe from legal repercussions for the various degrees of piracy, but they seem to hide better from people who find them unacceptable. They find more sympathetic hosts. Actual pirate sites have their own servers so jumpy ISPs won’t slam down on them. Why female fans are so tied to a corporate-run social site that doesn’t share their interests I can’t say for certain, but that dependency is what leaves female communities more vulnerable to being shut down than male communities."

Here's a round-up of links for those who want to read more:



LiveJournal Shuts Down Scans_Daily
The untimely death (and speedy resurrection) of scans_daily
On Scans_Daily
Scans_Daily Shut Down: Another Free Comic Site Gone
Scans_Daily is dead. Fuck ‘em.
If People Must Argue About Scans_Daily
Scans_Daily shut down; Internet reacts…and reacts
A little more on the shutdown of Scans Daily



Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

Comments

[guiltyred.livejournal.com]

If I may toss in my two-cents here, as far as social networking sites go, I have seen nothing but good and civil treatment of fans at InsaneJournal - it's privately owned by a man and his wife, and their philosophy can be summed up in their "About IJ" notes:

- At InsaneJournal we believe in freedom of expression. We will not censor content unless it obviously violates United States law and we receive an offical takedown notice. We do not self-police the site.
- Yes we are fanfic friendly. We believe works of fiction are just that. And unless such work infringes on a copyright that does not fall under "fair use" we believe you have the right to post that content.

IJ reminds me of LJ during the Brad era, only I get the feeling that IJ has a little more pride and a lot less greed.

Just sayin'. ^___^

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you can't beat that personal touch--the sense that people know and understand the community they're working with!

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

It's not at all premature! It's really just about when it was sensible to do it. As your new head of communications, I'll try to get you a more specific timeline and info on this, but I can tell you that it's very much front burner & on the Board's mind. The Systems team have been researching & discussing co-location plans (also our Legal team, because that matters) and putting various plans together. My not particularly technical understanding is that the server's not the problem per se; the sysadmin is, and you also want a backup system, in case things go down. But better technical minds than mine are on this, not just for the damn principle of the thing (!), but because the AOOO will run much better with its own server. (Yes, we're all about the fic. *g*)

(Running this answer past ADT, I was also told: "you can also add that we already own our own servers more than any livejournal community does -- we've built our systems from the OS up and have backups" *g*)

[msilverstar]

Those are all good things to look forward to, this clarification much appreciated. Perhaps you could eta it to the original posts?

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Well, the original post was on poor scans_daily, and not us (Isn't it's terrible what happened to you? Let's talk about me! *g*), but I'll see if I can get a more precise post up about our OWN server timeline soon. :)

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Pointing people at us and saying JOINJOINJOIN is awesome! We're trying to do a lot more of that this year. :)

[lynnenne]

What she said. :)

[delphia2000.livejournal.com]

You know, that male vs female issue involved in all this really strikes a chord with me. It's so true.

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Here's the quote that made me insane today:

from: http://www.nerderyblog.com/2009/03/02/livejournal-nukes-scans_daily/

Nearly every entry I ever read on s_d in the past few years was a bunch of spoiler pages completely removed from context while a 300+ post comment thread of people who had never read the actual issue whined and ranted about how whoever wrote that scene was an incredibly horrible homophobic misogynist and this issue was the worst and most disrespectful thing to ever happen to the character in question. Any efforts to provide context for the scene were either shouted down or completely ignored so as not to get in the way of the daily two minute hate.

I’m sure it may have been a fun place for discussion when it started out, but by the end it had devolved into one of the worst, most insular parts of comic discourse on the internet.

INSULAR. Now if that isn't a code word for FEMALE, I don't know what is! Our readings are INSULAR! They refuse CONTEXT! I really nearly spit with anger: how dare we ignore their context!!!

[kelson.livejournal.com]

...so you're saying that male-dominated comics communities AREN'T insular?

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

I'd like to further add that the last contribution PAD made to the s_d thread before the comm was nuked was to get into a massive argument with a female poster, who was politely but firmly calling him both on his statements to another poster about how her problem was seeing everything in terms of feminism, and about the problematic portrayal of teenagers in YJ.

Considering he later mischaracterized that exchange entirely, I wonder how much being talked back to by a woman who was able to defend herself against his derailing and accusations of personal attacks, and continuing to press the question despite his tactics, had to do with what happened in the end.

[malfeasanceses.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very interesting! All I had heard was that the poster was super mean and totally provoked him. Did you see the thread yourself?

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Yep, that poster happens to be a friend of mine, and I was watching their exchange with interest.

If you define "super mean" as "not putting up with PAD's derailing, and continuing to explain to him in small words how he's not a golden god and his work has flaws despite how flustered such criticism makes him", then yeah, she was super mean, totally. :(

[malfeasanceses.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Well, since a woman was talking, it's no wonder men remember it as "omg die in a fire!!!!"

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

In fairness, there was a poster, earlier on, who did say "Die in a fire" - before he showed up, and directed at his work, not him personally. Which was PAD's stated excuse for not engaging with even the people who dealt with him less hyperbolically, as people were making Death Threats!!!!!!!

But no, my buddy NEVER did that, and still got called out by PAD (in his blog, once the evidence was gone) as attacking him and smearing his work on Young Justice...when she engaged from the POV of "I liked this, but it was problematic, and your sexist language in this post is still a problem, even if you were using it because you think the other poster is stupid."

[zephyrprince.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with most of what is written here, and, in fact, I hope someday to be able to participate in communities like Scans_Daily on a livejournal-like site hosted by OTW. I would say that is one of themajor reasons I joined the organization.

Sadly, though, I feel like the coverage of this incident written here once again has supported the strict rhetorical male-female divide that leaves very little room for me as a gay male involved in slash and fandom generally. Of course I have a lot of respect for the female-centered nature of fandom, but I feel like we still need to make room for non-female LGBT/Q people involved when we talk about it particularly because gay identity plays such an important role in fannish cultural production (that is to say, I don't usually feel like female-written slash is cultural colonization of [male] gayness, but it certainly starts to seem more that way when people fail to recognize our place in the Fandom community).

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

You're right & I'm sorry; I kind of want to quote Anna Devere Smith and say that we've inherited lousy language in terms of nuanced conversation about gender. But it's incredibly hard to celebrate a minority culture without to some degree being or seeming exclusionary. There's definitely men, particularly gay and transmen, in slash and contributing crucially to slash culture, but I do--now speaking personally, OTW hat off--think that what's unique about the slash culture is that it wasn't designed for men, though its great that some men have found a home here. I personally think that gay male identity plays a role in slash fannish culture analagous to the role that female identity has played in the history of drag: a crucial & creative culture for the self-expression of an oppressed minority. I don't think female-written slash is anymore the cultural colonization of male gayness than I do think that a Judy, Barbara, or Liza impersonator is a culture colonization of the female diva. *g* They're authentic expressions.

[zephyrprince.livejournal.com]

I apologize if that came across as a little bit of an outburst (oh no, I'm becoming a wank *_*). I'm sure this conversation is taking place in more detail in many more appropriate places (& by "I'm sure," I mean, I know it is and I've read lots of meta on this very subject obvi). Anyway, it's just tough when you constantly feel shut out of men's spaces and women's spaces & I think that from where I sit and the people I've been involved with, the minority of gay boiz in Fandom seems perhaps less small than it does from elsewhere.

So **anyway** sorry! & also I'm coming to see your talk at Georgetown Law & I'm excited! I've read lots of your work.