RivkaT

Scully! Rebecca Traister speaks for me (no spoilers).

I suspect astolat’s Queen of Spades is better: “In 1963, [Cyril] Connolly published a parody of Fleming in the London Magazine. ‘M” has conceived an illicit passion for 007, who is told to get himself done up in drag, go to a nightclup, and entice a kinky visiting KGB general, who turns out to be ‘M’ himself in disguise (‘I’m sorry, James,’ he says forlornly at the unmasking. ‘It was the only way I could get you,’ at which Bond’s ‘long rangy body flared out above his black silk panties,’ before he cuts his boss short: ‘I thought fellows like you shot themselves…. Have you got a gun—sir--?’).” Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Bondage.

( Love and the FBI )

giandujakiss wanted hookerfic. This isn't quite what she asked for, but she betaed it anyway. Thanks also to coffeeandink and geekturnedvamp.

Tricking
NC-17, Sam/Dean
Summary: Dean's permanent record has the facts, but not the truth. Sam has some trouble with the difference.
( Read the story. )

I am really excited about the Archive of Our Own. The idea of taking everything we’ve tweaked and adapted, like tagging, for our specific use as fans is just so exciting, and very magical to techno-illiterate me.

And the archive terms of service (ToS), which have been released in draft, are a different kind of experiment, terms of service deliberately written to be as understandable as possible to a motivated but nonexpert reader. Now, in some ways this is a hopeless endeavor. People don’t read ToS. And the few who do rarely have influence on everyone else's choices, though there is a big exception in that I think public backlash probably has influenced the things ToS say about owning the content that you put on someone else’s site. But, in general, people don’t read ToS, and when they do, they are often defeated in their attempts to do so by language that is, if not deliberately, then accidentally-on-purpose too difficult for a nonlawyer to read. It’s hard to tell which terms matter and which don’t, and some of the various ToS-related panics I’ve seen over the years have involved misunderstandings of what’s really necessary (e.g., a really broad license to distribute your content, given the scope of copyright law today) or what certain terms mean.

Moreover, the lesson of hundreds of years of contracts, in multiple legal systems, is that specifying everything in advance is a fool’s game. It simply can’t be done. There will always be gray areas, things that will later on require interpretation. So expecting ToS to be completely clear is going to lead to disappointment, unless the clarity is: “we can kick you off for any reason, any time we want.” And even that—well, you probably shouldn’t take that at face value, either, since it’s highly unlikely that they’ll kick you off for liking kittens, or using too many emoticons. Can isn’t a really useful word: what will they kick you off for doing? You can’t know everything before it happens, though you can often have some good guesses.

So the Archive ToS are, I hope, a lot better than average in understandability. And they have some unusual commitments, like taking the stand that fanworks are fair use.

I am also very excited about Dreamwidth as an alternative to LJ, though cryptoxin has (as usual) perceptive comments. Dreamwidth is in many ways a conventional internet company; its draft ToS are put together well, but they’re still pretty typical, with the usual user indemnity, DMCA takedown, and broad prohibitions on harmful, abusive, etc. content. I find this absolutely understandable, and—precisely because you can’t specify everything in advance—whether they will behave differently is really more about the commitments of the people behind the site than about the ToS; I trust that these people do have a different philosophy than LJ’s current management, and therefore their implementation of similar ToS will differ. Still, the fact that Dreamwidth has found it necessary to put all the typical terms in its draft ToS is a reason, to me, why having a nonprofit group dedicated to fanworks is a good idea, just to provide some diversity at the host level, if you will, and, if we’re lucky, to give other sites reasons to compete for fans.

Resonant has a new Hancock story, Flight—it’s Ray/Hancock but in my head it’s pre-threesome, and it’s got that “orders of magnitude stronger than your partner” thing, which is so sexy, and a killer ending. Read, enjoy, consider adding to the fandom!

Paul Alan Levy has a post up on Public Citizen's defense of CafePress against claims by the GOP that people can't put "GOP" or an elephant on politically-themed items for sale on the site. It's a great post, but Paul describes this image as "a portrayal of a figure labeled 'GOP' peering into a toilet stall labeled 'men' and occupied by a figure." Peering? Is that what they're calling it these days? Paul, I think, has led a sheltered life, despite his relentless defense of free speech.

No, this isn't about YouTube. But it is about why it's a good idea to think about Google's powers, even if they're currently used for good. So I am planning to go to Naomi Novik's reading this evening, and to find the bookstore I googled "naomi" -- and as soon as I'd typed that in, Google suggested, in order, Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, and Naomi Novik. Which says a lot about how well Google knows me: it gets the trifecta of my interests--intellectual property/marketing; feminism; sff fandom. For more, James Grimmelmann has a new piece (pdf) written for nonlawyers that I thought covered the issues pretty well, though like everyone else he's a bit short on solutions.

I could spend hours at this site: the TV tropes wiki. The entry for Plot Tumor includes this gem: “Compare: Adaptation Decay, Flanderization, George Lucas Love Story, Jean Grey Escalation, and Motive Decay.” This is not a wiki about citation, but it does feature deep fanlove, though everyone tends to make fun of the fanworks that they don’t themselves consume. (Perhaps I should add an entry on My Kink Is Fine, Yours Is Bad—but the overall sense I get is that most people who contribute think Everyone’s Kinks Are Funny, so I actually didn’t feel attacked.)

( superheroes and a cyborg woman )

( Nick Sagan )

( Doll, The Cain Saga, Demon Diary )

( Maps and Legends )

A Washington Post article uses Strikethrough, among other incidents, to discuss the difficulties of defining and protecting free speech online. It's interesting that the article, while clearly free speech-friendly, turns the suspended LJs into "fiction," eliding the fan element. That makes sense--it's yet another thing that would have to be explained, detracting from the larger story--and yet I can't help wonder what other flattening has gone on in the other stories of suppression recounted.

( Sedaris, superheroine poetry, Buckley )

( Butcher, King, Crusie, Gibson )

My fiction offering already sold, and I can't promise two to-order stories in that timeframe, but kate_nepveu had a great idea that I copied: I'm offering a fiction critique from a legal perspective.

And while I'm in a good mood, here are some recent books I enjoyed:

( hard-boiled colonial sci-fi, fantasy for Jim Butcher fans, and mindbending coming-of-age sf )

Hancock: Maybe I’m reading the wrong reviews, but am I the only one who thinks that much of the force of the film’s alleged revision of superhero tropes is that Will Smith is black? I’m fascinated by how casting a black man in itself changes how various other story elements work--Supreme Power did something much darker with the Batman character, and now even more I want to see the Supreme Power-style take on Superman, because the film pulled a lot of punches.

Nonetheless, there was enough there to intrigue me. The idea that superpowered Hancock doesn’t fit in among normal humans and this makes him lonely is standard, but he doesn’t ever try to pass as a normal human. That’s pretty unusual for a superhero narrative. And in superhero movies, the public usually loves the superheroes unless and until they’re manipulated to judge them unfairly. How much of the fact that most people apparently refused to give Hancock the benefit of the doubt until he secured himself a PR rep has to do with racial discomfort? Yes, he’s a jerk—but why is he a jerk? ( Spoilers start here: )

( Darkover, Robin Hobb, Anita Blake )

I am participating in the Live Long & Marry auction, offering a fanfic story to order. Bidding starts July 1, and I’m here.

Casey Greenfield and Rebecca Traister have written two moderately-mainstream-media takes on Hillary Clinton that I liked. Greenfield takes on her father’s participation in the sexism deployed against Hillary and points out that her father's racism comparisons are diversions; Traister celebrates Hillary’s status as a pain in the ass.

( nonfiction: Lincoln's cabinet and brains )

OH JUDGE KOZINSKI NO.

This story leaves way too much unclear--like, how was this unlinked subdirectory discovered? And it makes me sad that the Judge didn't know enough to password-protect his files. Safe computing--it's not just for kids anymore. I could say more about the relative credibility of his explanation that he kept the files as curiosities, but I'm just going to sit back and be glad that I have no judicial ambitions but still possess life tenure. ETA: in comments, judith_s points out that the judge has now suggested that it was a family directory and he didn't upload most of the pictures. Uh, the family that plays together stays together?

( Doctorow and Westerfeld )

( performance studies and internet futures, with free downloads for both )

I’m slowly catching up with SPN; this weekend I saw Jus in Bellum and Ghostfacers. I have nothing substantive to say, but: ( am I the only one who noticed that )

( thriller, mystery, romance: Kellerman, Andrews, Brockmann )

Your internet law PSA of the day:

The latest iteration of this recurrent question centers around seizure- and migraine-triggering user icons. Many people have suggested that LJ, by not taking action against such icons, risks legal liability for the harm caused by them. This is modified from a comment I made to mecurtin’s post (which has, by the way, a fair amount of the usual trolling).

I'd agree that LJ should at least ban such icons, and probably users who admit to deliberately using them. However, under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, LJ is not responsible for user-provided content, except in circumstances not relevant here. The closest litigated analogy is probably lawsuits against MySpace for exposing underage users to sexual predators; MySpace wins those cases, and should. The rules for internet service providers are very protective compared to the rules for offline publishers, and there are pretty good reasons for that, though I think that section 230 is probably too broad and should be modified.

In response, one commenter agreed with me and expressed the opinion that the dividing line between liability and immunity is whether users can post content without prior approval, and that LJ risks its safe harbor by censoring content. (I set aside, as not helpful here, discussion of what it means to “censor.”)

The commenter’s opinion is intuitive, but law is not always intuitive. In the US, the protections are much broader than that. LJ could screen and select content and still be entitled to the protections of 230. The key distinction is whether LJ itself created the unlawful content, or merely allowed it to be posted. Moreover, LJ would not lose any 230 safe harbor by censoring. In fact, 230 was passed in large part with the promise that it would encourage internet service providers to monitor and suppress objectionable content, by promising them that they wouldn't ever be held liable for what was left over. (This was thought to remove the bad incentives created by previous court decisions holding one ISP not liable for defamation by a user, because that ISP didn't ever screen, whereas CompuServe had been held liable for the same thing based on its monitoring of its messageboards for things like profanity.) Take a look at the title of the section: "Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material." It didn't do what Congress hoped, but that was the intent.

( Scalzi, sf )