LiveJournal’s pedophile revolt

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A site by the name of Warriors for Innocence has done something that I’ve been trying to do for years. They convinced LiveJournal to finally delete all the pedophile journals and communities that they were guilty of hosting. For years LiveJournal tried to defend the pedophiles by claiming free speech. At the time I didn’t realize that LiveJournal is a branch of the government. But it seems they’ve finally come to their senses.

LiveJournal, which is owned by San Francisco-based Six Apart, confirmed Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week in hopes of better “protecting children.” It said the deletion was prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual abuse of minors, and other illegal activities.

500? That’s weaker than MySpace’s 7,000 sex offenders. But it’s a start.

Of course, we have people complaining about it…

Some deleted LiveJournal communities went by names like childlove and little_children (a community permits multiple LiveJournal users to post entries, while an individual account is limited to one user). Others, however, broadly fall into the category of science fiction, fantasy or user-written “fandom” stories–and it is those that have sparked the outcry.

“As a queer, feminist writer who explores the darker aspects of human nature, many of my stories deal with incest, rape and child molestation,” a LiveJournal member named “bitterfig” wrote. “As such, I belonged to and contributed to several of the communities which have been suspended and frankly I’m pretty offended. I don’t like being lumped in with rapists and pedophiles and other ‘monsters on the Web.’”

One now-deleted group called “pornish_pixies” focused on fan-written fiction, frequently sexually explicit, about characters in the Harry Potter novels. “The distinction between fiction and non-fiction could not be made any clearer in a place like the Harry Potter fandom, and this oversteps the boundaries that the LiveJournal abuse team has,” said a pornish_pixies member who identified herself as Maria in an e-mail. (A related group, “erotic_elves,” has survived the purge.)

That just sounds like erotica for pedophiles if you ask me.

The infamous LiveJournal abuse team had this to say about the mass (can you call 500 out of 13M mass?) deletions…

For its part, LiveJournal’s abuse staff has defended pulling the plug on the communities by saying: “Material which can be interpreted as expressing interest in, soliciting or encouraging illegal activity places LiveJournal at considerable legal risk.”

Which is 180 degrees from what they told me two years ago…

Dear LiveJournal User thetrenchcoat,

As explained in our previous response to you, it is neither against the Terms of Service nor illegal to discuss illegal actions, or to admit to having committed them. As long as the content posted does not solicit illegal activity, it is considered allowable under both the Terms of Service and the ideal of free speech. LiveJournal is committed to preserving as much free speech as possible for its users, as long as that speech does not cross the line into invading other users’ privacy.

Users are entitled to post about topics that may be abhorrent to much of the general population, so long as they do not cross the line into solicitation or instruction of illegal acts. We respectfully suggest, if the posts in this community disturb you, that you simply cease reading them.

Regards,
Morgan
LiveJournal Abuse Team

Anyway, LiveJournal users are revolting (insert joke here) over claims of censorship and terminating their LJ accounts. Like LiveJournal is even going to miss you. If there are 13 Million users all those revolting won’t even be a drop in the bucket. Personally, I think this would be a huge marketing gimmick for LJ. They can say “hey look we get rid of our pedophiles unlike MySpace”. You would think that would attract more users, especially parents concerned about their kids’ online safety.

However, I get the feeling that LiveJournal will cave and it will be back to business as usual.

In the meantime, I need to talk with the Warriors for Innocence people to see how they did it.

LiveJournal six-apart

Comments

31 responses to “LiveJournal’s pedophile revolt”

May 31, 2007

BelchSpeak

Absolutely good news. Please keep us updated if you get in touch with Warriors for Innocence.

I especially like the part about “reducing their exposure to legal risk.”

Someone has been threatening them with lawsuits. And that assinine response letter that Morgan sent you back in the day could still be used as evidence that they neglected to protect their users from harm.

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May 31, 2007

Agkelos

Why did you not mentioned the various survivor groups and personal journals that also got deleted? You are just like the WFI people: a bunch of vigilantes and fanatics. In their holy war against crime, they really did more harm than good. They are not connected to any of the national law agencies and they sound more like the hate-crime groups of the past than anything legit.

On another note, fanfictions are not just “erotica for pedophiles”. Many people write them as a way to deal with their own abusive pasts because by putting a fictional character through what you yourself have experienced and then giving the character a way to deal with the situation in a way that you yourself hadn’t been able to serves as a method of closure. It’s a form of self-therapy. Don’t criticize what you don’t know.

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May 31, 2007

Agkelos

The person I’m talking’s blog is here: http://suesviews2.blogspot.com/ Do check it and along with the WFI website before you start support them.

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May 31, 2007

BelchSpeak

Here come the mutants. “they really did more harm than good.”

So you are saying that it is more harmful to delete the personal journals of rape survivors than how-to guides to penetrating children with inanimate objects?

Wow, I think you are fatally skewed in your viewpoint. I somehow think that rape survivors can survive and put their journals somewhere more private. And maybe some pedophiles will not be able to use livejournal for their personal fantasies.

Don’t criticize what you don’t know? That is the ultimate in stupidity. Only liberal asswipes refuse to judge anything. Everything is morally equal with you isn’t it? I don’t know you and I think you are slime. Dang, I did it again. Thankfully you wont judge my comments harshly since you don’t know me, right?

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May 31, 2007

BelchSpeak

All of the suspended journals? That’s not what I have heard. Communities that have been reviewed will be reinstated. http://news.com.com/LiveJournal+apologizes+for+ma…

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May 31, 2007

Trench

Thanks Belch. You saved me from having to respond to that. 😆

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June 1, 2007

Agkelos

Excuse you? I didn’t realize this is a grade-school pissing contest.

WFI did do more harm than good because they did not just shut down a few journals they warned the real criminals away by publicly announcing what they are going to do. What they have done made it that much harder for the people who actually do police the internet for these monsters to catch them, now that the criminals have gone into hiding by simply changing their listed interests on LJ.

You somehow think rape/molestation/incest survivors can survive? Oh yeah, right, do go up to the next rape/molestation/incest survivors that was a victim of this witch hunt and tell them “I think you can live with it” and see how they react. I’m a victim of rape myself and I am extremely insulted by your words.

As long as the job gets done, who cares if innocent people gets caught in the cross fire, isn’t that what you are saying? Then why do we need laws in the first place? Why do we have freedom of speech than? Maybe we should change innocent until proven guilty to guilty until proven innocent like in Victorian Britain?

The whole point of having a journal for the survivors is so they can talk it out and get in touch with people who have been in the same situation as they did. Most of these journals and communities are friend-locked, some are even age-locked or invitation only. So pedophiles/rapists aren’t even allowed access to them. Again, don’t judge what you don’t know.

When I say don’t judge what you don’t know I don’t mean don’t judge at all, but maybe taking the time to actually get to the know the subject you are expressing opinions on. And I would thank you to stop the insults, for, as you are right, you don’t know me.

I applaud LJ for taking action, but it’s the method and the way they did it that pisses me off. So many innocent people are caught in the cross fire, and even more people are being labeled as criminals when they are clearly not or they might even once been victims like me.

It’s not the intent of LJ’s actions that is upsetting people it’s the fact that they are indiscriminately deleting personal journals and communities only based on the fact that they have rape/incest/etc listed in their interests section. LJ did not take the time to investigate any of the journals they suspended before taking action and that is simply unacceptable. In doing what they did, LJ has violated freedom of speech and freedom of expression without any consolation to the written law.

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June 1, 2007

Agkelos

Before you start applauding WFI for their actions, you might want to find out just what kind of a organization is WFI. They are connected to dominionist groups and visits to their site are being logged and tracked back as well. Their site is also doing “drive by spyware” downloads on PCs. I know, because when I went to check them out on my desktop PC, my virus/adware program went haywire. Their website does not have links to any of the major, legal agencies and their mission statement is unclear and they have no guild lines for how they operate.

The personal blog of the woman who made all the complains to LJ is full of Confederate flags and she is also anti United Nations. She also have a banner of the Redneck mafia declaring her as a supporter of their cause. One banner she has on her blog reads: “America, Saving Europe’s Ass Since 1917” and another banner on her blog proudly bears the words: “United States of America Deportation Squad”.

She is a total right wing fanatic. She is also a hypocrite. Her user icon is an art piece by Luis Royo, a renown fantasy/horror artist that specializes in portraying consent-ambiguous scenes between women in slaving positions and monsters who dominate them.

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May 31, 2007

BelchSpeak

Agkelos, the only hypocrite here is you. On one hand, you whine that your freedom of speech was limited by LJ. You want to talk about rape dammit, and you don’t care if children are listening.

On the other hand, you falsely accuse WFI of illegally hosting spyware, accuse them of racism and zionism and want them to not exercise their free speech to complain about objectionable content on LJ.

Haha, typical liberal. You think you are the elite of our society and should have different rules than everyone else. You can publish smut and call it first amendment rights. If anyone complains about it, instead of calling that first amendment right, you call it censorship.

LiveJournal weighed the risks of hosting objectionable content versus being sued for enabling child predators. The made a good decision and nixed all of the creepy journals. It was business.

You wanna complain about your first amendment rights being trampled on? Keep whining and see who listens. Businesses and web hosting companies don’t have to respect 1st amendment issues idiot. You want to publish smut online? Get your own server and a dedicated line. Otherwise you have to play by the rules of the hosting company.

You cant see it right now, but I’m giving you both fingers and laughing at you.

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May 31, 2007

Agkelos

Actually, just in case you haven’t been updated on the news, LJ has posted a formal apology and reinstated all the wrongfully suspended journals and communities. And wow, you have just totally ignored all the negative facts that I have presented only to focus on the ones you want. Calling me a hypocrite just based on that one word? I applaud you on your incredible power of self-delusion.

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May 31, 2007

Agkelos

Again, you are grasping at words here and if you have noticed, I said WRONGFULLY suspended. There are many that deserve to be deleted since they do gear towards encouraging illegal activities.

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

Great, I’m so happy for you Aggie. You can go back to reading about how Harry Potter gets it in the pooper by Dumbledore. And you are absolutely delusional if you think publishing rape and child sex stories on the internet serves some type of theraputic purpose.

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June 1, 2007

Agkelos

Aggie, I like that. Harry Potter and Dumbledoke? I’m sorry, that might be to your taste, but it is not for mine. I’m more a Harry and Draco fan, thank you very much. And since I have seen hard evidence (not including myself) and have positive encouragement from more than one shrink that writing about one’s abusive experience in either fictional or non-fictional form is therapeutic, you are the only one being self-delusional here a trait I do believe I have already applauded you for since you seem to excess so very well in. I think WFI will be the perfect organization for you as you are already sounding like a homophob and a self-righteous fanatic.

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June 1, 2007

Ryn

I believe that WFI has done far more harm than good and before bashing me for saying this read what I have to say.

1st if they were really concerned about the safety of children they would not have made this public simply because by doing so they have helped those who are, wish to, or have done harm to a child. By making this public instead of contacting the FBI task force the people at WFI have helped to protect the identities of these predators.

Do you know how internet predators stay under the radar? They use software to hid themselves and clean there internet trails making it extremely difficult to track them and even more difficult to find them. You are probably not aware but it takes at least 8 months to track down an internet predator unless they make a move on a child and even then if they are not caught as the make a move it is difficult to track them after.

A person on the internet has an IP address ( a set of 12 numbers in groups of 3 separated by a ‘.’ attached to a host server which is the attached to a global server). Internet predators, hackers and such use programs to switch the IP address that is seen on the web as there address. One minute it might be to a location in Georgia, US, the next in Campania, Italy, and then in Hokaidou, Japan. It can keep jumping at an undetermined interval around the globe and show its actual address rarely which make tracking internet movement and tracing to a set location impossible without the assistance of a tracing program installed on the perpetrators computer.

In short WFI just made it impossible for the people who were actually committing a crime or crimes to be found.

I would also like to say that what LJ did was unreasonable. To suspend a persons account without notice to the group or individual nor investigation is improper business and unfair to those who have done nothing wrong.

I myself used LJ as a writing outlet for dark poetry written in several different languages that I speak as well as Fanfictions for manga (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles), anime(Trinity Blood, Darker then Black), and some US based shows (Angel). To be deleted without doing wrong and without even being seen would make anyone angry and they would be rightfully angry.

How would you feel and respond to having this site removed simply because a spider (an internet search program that logs the words on a page/site) found rape or sex to be mentioned several times here? That is exactly what was done at LJ.

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June 1, 2007

Agkelos

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Ryn. Bravo.

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeek

hurr durr lieberals

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June 1, 2007

Ashley

Hey Belch I happen yo like Harry Potter. LOL Sorry i couldn’t resist it

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June 1, 2007

David

I have to say I agree that driving pedophiles into hiding isn’t a great idea. I’m sure law enforcement liked it a whole lot better when they were constently posting incriminating material to be used against them in court cases. Now they’ll ALL be a LOT more careful about such posts. While it may not be pretty for the rest of us to look at and acknowledge its presence, that doesn’t mean it is in our best interests to ban it. Sometimes, having sickos so prominently in the online community reminds us of their prevalence in the real world. Driving them off LJ doens’t make them not be pedophiles anymore, it doesn’t make ANYONE any safer from them. It just makes them harder to track down.

Oh yeah, almost forgot the obligatory “blah blah, liberals suck…”

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

Ryn, don’t brag about your techniques to stay hidden from the cyber cops. And no, its not that difficult to track who uses LJ. You don’t need special software to do it, and onion routing like TOR or other open proxies are not difficult to track either- despite what their advocates say.

I am a cyber security expert and you are not. Don’t try to say that law enforcement has been impeded in any investigation- they havent. People try to say the same stupid thing when guys like me take down jihadist propaganda websites for spouting islamic hatred and chanting death to america.

And as far as writing rape journals being theraputic? Whatever did rape victims do before the Internet? Your arguments are shallow and your excuses for your behavior or the behavior you advocate is without end.

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June 1, 2007

Agkelos

I really should add tendency for senseless character slander to your list of personal traits, Belchy.

For you information since you are so ignorant, there is such things as personal, written diaries and survivor support groups that gear towards people talking things out or exchanging their survivor diaries. Some of these survivors went on to write and publish books (either fictional or non-fictional) about their experiences. And all this has precluded the advance of tech that brought about the internet. By your line of reasoning, maybe we should shut down all the community support groups in our society since, oh my god, real criminals could join on the pretense of being a victim of abuse just so they can derive sick amusement from the surviving victim’s stories! We could even go a step further and just ban every medical book on the subject since the case studies they publish for scientific reasons could be used by predators for sick enjoyment.

Guess the word hiding means nothing to you since you are such a cyber security expert. You must be a master at it since you are implying that you can even find sex offenders even when they deletes their account and just disappears from the internet. The easy for which you speak of in the matter of catching criminals through the net makes me wonder why all the criminals are not caught by the law already since you seem to claim that it’s not hard at all to track them even if they uses programs to hide.

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

What character slander? Don’t like what I say so you label it as slander? Right… You need to study the legal definition, and while you are at it you may discover that people are immune to charges of slander for things they post on messageboards and blogs.

Rape journals don’t have to be published to the WWW for them to be theraputic. Unless its someone so completely self-absorbed that rape issues are tangential to other psychological problems such as ego-mania. If writing stuff down helps people out, great. Publishing it to the WWW is wrong if it encourages rapists to fantasize about rape. I hope you can see the difference.

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

And regarding Cyber-security, keep telling people that deleting accounts right after you create them hides activity. Like that data can’t be recovered from a hard drive forensically. And like that network activity can’t be recorded at every hop between you and the server. And like the server doesn’t record the transaction on its hard drive which can be recovered forensically.

Keep telling yourselves that.

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June 1, 2007

Ryn

I have to ask Belch if you are really in cyber security and if you truly understand how difficult it is to track a computer using an IP-hopper along with a “street sweeper”. A criminal could post 3000 times to a group/site and whatnot and only have its actual true IP address used once.

I NEVER said anything about advocating the behaviour of actual criminals. I said that the way WFI and LJ went about it was wrong and that there were/are better ways to stop them and ways to make it so they can not do it again (jail).

Rape survivor communities on the web are important if not essential since the vast majority of victims do not want them selves known to anyone. It’s a way to communicate with others and receive feedback on how to deal with problems as well as an outlet for there emotions from which they can gather support and courage and possibly be able to move forward with there lives.

As for what they did before internet message boards and chat rooms. Drugs, alcohol, self harm and suicide of some form. In the last several years the number of reported rape and/ abuse cases has risen tremendously more then likely because the victims have gotten the courage to come forward and face their attackers from support groups on the web.

Yes deleting accounts after creation doesn’t hide activity and it can typically be found on the users hard drive but first you have to find the users physical location and that takes a lot of work (at least 8 months worth). Then when the computer is found data on the hard drive can be removed forensically if the user as used a government type drive reformatting program (one that removes everything and cleans it at least 6 times) and they have a large hard drive that has not be written over with active use of the computer (on my personal laptop with 260GB HD thats about 6 months with all that I do with graphics, video and audio).

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

PuhLeeze.
If you establish a TCP connection on the internet, it can be traced. No magic or pixie dust is going to obscure that fact, nor the fact that the transaction is recorded on both ends and every hop in between.

And for Rape survivor groups, I think you are spouting more bullshit. If they want a tight knit community they would enforce encrypted signon and strong authentication to keep the information to just that group and authorized users. Anything less is just sharing smut to smut peddlers.

And I laughed out loud at your stupid comment that rape victims committed suicide or drank themselves into oblivion before the internet. You pulled that one so far from up in your ass it still has hair and peanuts on it.

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June 1, 2007

David

Good point Belch, Actually, Ryn, you might be interested to know that Cisco is currently marketting their new SCA 11000-RVE. You haven’t heard of it? Oh, its a Secure Content Accelerator designed entirely for Rape Victims. Yes, because we all know how security savvy the average sexual abuse victim is. So much so that Cisco has designed an entire line of RVE (Rape Victim Edition) products. They can’t seem to get enough of that good ‘ole 128 bit SSL now can they? Afterall, any rape victim knows, “If you secure your posts with anything less, you’re just giving free porn to pedophiles!” (I’m fairly sure Cisco has trade marked that as their slogan…)

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June 1, 2007

BelchSpeak

David, I get jokes. You said, “we all know how security savvy the average sexual abuse victim is.”

Are you saying that if a sex abuse victim took stronger security measures they wouldn’t be a victim? That’s like saying they had it coming.

Look the choice is an easy one. You either want everyone to read the rape journals or you want them restricted.

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June 1, 2007

BND

Wow, Agkelos doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about.

“Before you start applauding WFI for their actions, you might want to find out just what kind of a organization is WFI. They are connected to dominionist groups and visits to their site are being logged and tracked back as well. Their site is also doing &ldquodrive by spyware&rdquo downloads on PCs. I know, because when I went to check them out on my desktop PC, my virus/adware program went haywire.”

I happen to know those that run the WFI site. I am a member of another iste that is works closely with them, and there is no spyware being forced on to the machines of visitors. We didn’t delete anyone’s web sites. LJ did all of that. Our members reported certain sites which were ALL Pedo sites. LJ deleted some of those and many other sites that we did not report.

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June 2, 2007

haha

lolz. i hope they get furries next.

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June 2, 2007

David

All I’m saying is that not everyone is a cyber security expert, and you can’t say that their ignorance about cyber security is the same as intent to distribute smut to sickos.

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June 4, 2007

CB

I think I just fell in non-heterosexual, pure agreement love with BelchSpeak…

“Wow, I think you are fatally skewed in your viewpoint. I somehow think that rape survivors can survive and put their journals somewhere more private. And maybe some pedophiles will not be able to use livejournal for their personal fantasies.”

Exactly, write in a normal journal with a pen and paper like people did before the Internet. Or type it on your computer, who cares, just not everyone needs to see sexually explicit fantasies posted on online journal sites.

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August 18, 2007

Marilyn

hi nice post, i enjoyed it

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