Just Bloody Wrong!

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

I have been a writer on fanfiction for about two years now, and i work on my stories with everything i have. My stories to me are like a extension of my soul. I love my stories and I take pride in my work. Whether they have Lemon or are based/inspired by a song, I enjoy writing them and put my everything into them. Having fanfiction delete my stories just breaks my heart. How are we to 'Unleash our imagination and free our souls' If we are not allowed to use things that are PART of the stories. And they are OUR stories so who has the right to limit what we put in them. And on top of that every Lemon story I have ever read (Or Written) warns a person when there is a Lemon in there. Half the time people (Including myself) put a barrier right before the Lemon begins and ends.
If they are afraid of under-aged people reading the Lemons they why dont they put up a age restriction or put the MA rating back up that way they are not responsible for under-aged people reading Adult content. People have a right to write there stories with whatever they want regardless of the content.
Our stories are a way for us to express our love for a work and free the creativity in our souls, and to see that restricted... is wrong.

Comments

[lordhellebore]

I agree that simply deleting the stories is not the way to go. The authors need to be contacted and talked to first. However:

People have a right to write there stories with whatever they want regardless of the content.

While this is absolutely true, it is just as true that any website has the right to refuse certain kinds of stories.

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

I do realize this but it seems like they take that right a little to far. The amount of restrictions they have put on us now is ridicules.

[klutzy-girl.livejournal.com]

Except those restrictions have been there for years. They're right in the rules. And yes, while they went too far in some cases, so many people broke those rules.

[annealysse.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly.

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

I know there in the rules I have read them. But my point is wouldnt it be easier to come to some sort of agreement with the writers instead of deleting out stories. All they succeed in doing is pissing us off, losing fans, losing writers, and losing a lot of great stories. Like I said up there, Some of what they restrict is is very important part in some stories.

[dragonbat2006.livejournal.com]

Sadly, from their perspective, they said "you can come into our house and amuse yourselves as long as you don't play loud music. We really want to keep it quiet." Many people listened. Some did not. The kids couldn't sleep. The neighbors complained.

They tried to hint by reminding their guests of the rules periodically. The guests nodded and kept right on playing the music. Finally, they took action. In some cases, they temporarily confiscated the sound equipment. In others they kicked the guests out.

The guests got upset because hey, they'd been playing the music for years and management hadn't done anything. But management owned the house. Management set the rules. And they had an absolute right to do so. Just because they let things slide for a time doesn't mean that they can't say 'enough is enough.' If they don't want lemons on their site, they have an absolute right to prohibit it.

I'm guessing that they ran the numbers, anticipated that they'd lose a certain amount of traffic, and decided that it was worth it. Were they right? Were they wrong? I can't answer that. But it's their site and if they want to police the content, they can. Warned for. Not warned for. It doesn't matter. They don't want it.

They're basically saying that folks who don't like it can leave. That's their right. But those who want to stay need to stick to the house rules.

Please note that although it sounds like I support their decision, I don't. But to answer your questions about who has the right to limit your content? The site on which you choose to post the content. Period. Hate it all you want, but they do have that right.

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

loud music is a different thing entirely because people interfering with other people's rights to have peace and quiet. Nobody is forcing anyone to read erotic content. Readers can always just click on something else.

[kaspurr.livejournal.com]

this. and lets face it, some homophobia or trolling revenges could very well be at play by tattle-tailing.

btw, how did u find out ur stories had been deleted?

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

They send you a message telling you.

[dragonbat2006.livejournal.com]

Right to peace and quiet. Right to a website free of MA material. No analogy is a 100% correlation. However the principle remains: their house, their rules.

[germankitty]

The thing is, fanfiction in and of itself is on very shaky legal ground. We as writers can put up as many disclaimers as we want, if an author/producer/songwriter/whatever decides to sue a fanfic writer for copyright theft or something, the fanfic writer will inevitably lose.

Ten years ago, some parents who caught their underage kiddies reading Teh!Pr0ns on Fanficton.net threatened the site owner(s), "Xing", with legal action. Rather than risking the site's shutdown or a lengthy (and costly) legal battle, "Xing" decided to ban MA/NC-17 material altogether. We were given a month's warning to rewrite/withdraw the material in question, and everything was fine. Sure, there was grumbling -- the site had already become THE go-to place for fanfiction in general, until/unless you were aware of fandom-specific archives. But none of us wanted anyone to receive a cease-and-desist letter, so we adjusted.

I agree that the way things are handled now sucks big time. People are leaving because of these ham-fisted procedures, and if the trend continues, the site WILL get hurt through loss of popularity, goodwill and advertising revenue.

But as has already been said, it's their site, their rules.

If (general)you don't like Fanfiction.net enforcing their own policies, tough luck. They are NOT obligated to provide you with a place to publish your fics; it's not a service you're entitled to. If you knowingly, deliberately disregard these rules, you have no reason to whinge when you get called up for something you agreed to abide by in the first place -- after all, you agreed to the TOS when setting up your account!

A lot of adult material has been snuck back onto the site since 2002, in clear violation of the TOS. If accounts get blocked or deleted because they get ratted on ... well, shit.

There are other archives out there which accept adult material without fuss. Go find somewhere else to post.

[aiffe.livejournal.com]

Actually, fanfiction is legally defensible as fair use. Hence why AO3 allows fanfic even of stories where the authors have said they do not want fanfiction of their works. They've done their legal homework, and the copyright holders actually don't have a leg to stand on when there's a significant difference (i.e., making your own story and not just pirating the original story) and it's not for profit.

FFN might be on slightly shakier ground because unlike AO3, they make a profit off that website. Likewise, their decision to start deleting all the porn could be motivated by pressure from their advertisers.

[lordhellebore]

This.

[ianiiani.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. If one doesn't follow the rules and is "punished" when caught, why does one whine?

[simon-alexander.livejournal.com]

The thing about FFN that got me was that it felt like the admins just let everything go willy-nilly for years and then, in one fell swoop, decided ALL THE RULES have to be enforced RIGHT NOW. Nothing of mine got deleted. No fic I liked got deleted. But it still irked me, so...I left. No biggie. As someone said, their house, their rules, and their way of enforcing those rules. I don't like it, so I just walked out of the house. I found some other house to play in.

If you don't like how FFN is going, then branch out! There's tons of smaller fanfiction archives out there that need to grow, and I think this is a great time to start that. There've been posts on here that have shared various links to other archives. I've been enjoying my time with these other archives. True, one won't get a ton of hits or reviews simply because traffic is lower on these sites, but as I said, they need to grow. Maybe one of them will become as huge as FFN is and take over. And the world will be a better place.

/rainbows

[vickyblueeyez.livejournal.com]

This. I've moved to Ao3. The only reason why I havent' dropped ff.net completely is because it gets more hits for my fic than lj, dw and Ao3.

I think making icons since ff.net has them now next to stories, saying we've moved to Ao3 could be good. Then again why would anyone listen if they can still access the fic? -brainstorming-

[simon-alexander.livejournal.com]

I just left a note on my profile and pulled almost all of my fics. I haven't pulled one yet because it's my most popular, so I posted a note to that one and am waiting for readers to have a chance to read it. I'll probably pull it sometimes this weekend.

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

I would have to agree with you. People have grown complacent because they didn't enforce those rules for a long time. That is why there is a bunch of people on fanfiction.net think it is okay to have One Direction fanfiction.

I think we wouldn't have a problem if the website had been enforcing the rules for the whole time.

[simon-alexander.livejournal.com]

I agree. Like I said, none of my fics were pulled. I follow the rules, don't have a problem with them. It's FFN's admins that I take issue with.

[pony.livejournal.com]

Lemons are against their Terms of Service, but they can't police each and every story uploaded. It takes them years to clean up, so people get complacent. They could handle it better than simply deleting the stories, but there are way too many for the admins to individually go through each and every one of them, it's easier to just mass delete.

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

It is super easy to delete stories in mass. If they are using MySQL, then it is dang really easily. However, they could easily create a bot to go through the whole website and search for certain phases.

[katecholamine.livejournal.com]

Why was my comment posted as spam?

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

Not sure I didnt do anything.

[katecholamine.livejournal.com]

maybe because I posted a link?

ok here we go without the active link:

fanfiction(dot)net/topic/78623/31298368/2/

Yeah, but "author is hostile"? That's ... a little much. Also removing under the guise of "bad grammar"?

[Also, what is "one direction" fic?]

ETA: SUCCESS!!!

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

"One Direction" fic is a fic featuring members of the band called One Direction from the UK X-Factor.

[katecholamine.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, my reply wasn't to you ... it was to everyone saying "you agreed to TOS" etc etc etc.

That thread shows very clearly that this goes WAY beyond TOS.

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

Dude, some of those stories deleted were not listed under the TOS and i have read the TOS multiple times.

[katecholamine.livejournal.com]

exactly.

and it's also clear, if you look at my link - just put a dot instead of (dot) - you can see that anyone "hostile" is being targeted. which is basically "online bullying"/"organizational bullying." And wrong.

[inuvampirechan.livejournal.com]

Thats exactly what it is. People mad at other people and reporting there story. "Author is two faced" How is that even a reason to delete a story!

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

Would have to agree. I feel you shouldn't be organized to find fanfics that are against the guidelines and ToS.

[lordhellebore]

That's not from the ff.net mods - that's from the ridiculous Critics United crusaders, That hasn't got anything to do with what I said in my comment (to which you replied first with your link).