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Objectifying Beauty (Social Order for the Physical Enjoyment of Females)

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LiveJournal v. Modigliani

by Jonathan Quince
Monday, March 14, 2005 08:38:13

Adjudgment in re the case of LiveJournal v. Modigliani has been handed down in a decision by the LiveJournal Abuse Team:  According to DirtyTalkinGirl’s report, the accompanying “Nude Sdraiato” by Amedeo Modigliani has been deemed “objectionable” nudity for a default user icon on LiveJournal.  [Nude Sdraiato by Amedeo Modigliani, 1917] Quote:

We regret to inform you that your default user icon (located at http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=nicebluejournal, keywords: painted nude) is presently in violation of the LiveJournal Terms of Service. While we should make clear that the actual content is not in violation, its use as a default image is. Default images can be viewed in many places around the LiveJournal site, and as such, we require that nothing potentially objectionable be placed in them. Icons containing nudity may be used only in communities where the members will not find them objectionable, or in your personal journal.
[Image: Modigliani CENSORED BY LIVEJOURNAL]

DirtyTalkinGirl, the proprietress of the Journal in question and a paying LiveJournal subscriber, responded quite gracefully.  The “objectionable” painting has been safely removed from circulation as a default user icon.  None of the usual inane red herrings (*cough* First Amendment *cough*) were invoked.  Whoever complained (herein known as the “Twit With No Life And Small Soul”) received a much-needed ego boost.  Since DirtyTalkinGirl seems otherwise comfortable at LiveJournal, at least for now, the case appears to be closed.

I report this here for three reasons:

  1. The Sopef Log is a part of my external memory.  If ever I wish to use or purchase LiveJournal’s services, I want to know the practical ramifications of their policies over content that I might desire to use.
  2. Readers of the Log may have the same interest.  So might the Internet at large.  Even if the linked Pussy Talk post were to disappear tomorrow, this incident would still be documented in public view.
  3. I wish to highlight one point that is peripheral but salient:  Any site hosting my writing or other content is as independent as possible of any single outside party.  As long as I control the sopef.org second-level domain, for example, I am not subject to the vagarious policies of any one host; my current host has been a dream thus far (so to speak), but if ever I need switch, DNS updates nowadays take about five minutes.  My editorial policy is mine own to determine; and in these virtual halls, I may censor as I will and publish as I please.  As a matter of principle, there are many fine services I avoid for this reason (including Haloscan, for those who have asked).

As to the tangential issue of access by children or people who find my site objectionable, I am singularly unconcerned.  This site is labeled with ICRA headers; and since I do not wish to operate Sopef under the burden of keeping my editorial policy attuned to a labeling policy, I have set the labels to the maximum for all provided categories.  I have provided metadata warning that this site may contain nudity, sexual material, violence, profanity, tobacco use, drug use, weapon use, gambling, racism, disturbing material, unmoderated chat, and/or anything else for which ICRA provides a label.  Parents and individuals who find this content objectionable are free to configure automatic blocking; and I have facilitated this as a courtesy, although I do not believe I am under any moral or legal obligation to do so.  (N.b., the capability to read these labels has been included in the very popular Internet Explorer browser since at least version 4, circa 1998, as far as I can recall; thanks to Microsoft, over 90% of new computers distributed over the past seven years can read these labels right out of the box with minimal configuration, and other major platforms probably also have support.)

Naturally, if anybody from LiveJournal or Six Apart wishes to respond, I will post that response verbatim and/or link to it as appropriate. ###