There’s a nifty little set-to brewing both at my home blog and in a “Greatest Journal Community” here about LiveJournal’s decision to terminate Paid Accounts.

The backstory:
A bunch of fans post some pictures and stories to LiveJournal. I’ll let one of the fans tell you about some of those pictures and stories in his/her own words:

c) with respect to the harry potter fanfic or fanart that does involve sex between an adult and a minor, i don’t think we should be in the business of limiting the expression of consenting adults. make that expression inaccessible to kids? sure. but humans are complicated creatures and there is a vast space between what appears in someone’s fantasy and what they have any interest in in real life.

LiveJournal then bans some of these users and shuts down their accounts.

I’ll be honest. I’m really troubled by this line of thinking. Aunt B. touched on what I’m thinking the other day.

while I do believe we should tolerate everyone and try to really hear what they’re saying and treat it with some respect, there are just ways of being in the world that I think are clearly wrong and stupid.

If you think it’s okay for a dude in a bar to put a girl in the hospital just because you can’t tell if she’s a boy or a girl, then you are an idiot and I’m not sure I actually have any obligation to put up with that nonsense or to act as if it’s just one more valid opinion among many others. For instance.

I guess maybe I’m prudish and maybe I’m old. But I hope we haven’t reached a place where we are perfectly okay with someone sitting around fantasizing out loud about raping children–as long as they don’t act on it. This is where libertarianism is important. I don’t think we need to make laws or let the Government have a say in What You Think. But I do think it’s important that libertarians stand up and say that certain behaviour is abhorrent to them. Because, frankly, the raping of children–whether in reality or in someone’s LiveJournal story–is abhorrent.

And if you run a business, like, say, a Web Self-Publishing business, you have every right to say “find somewhere else to publish your crude drawings and perverted stories. But you’re not doing it here, in my company. I don’t care if you spent a whopping $19.95 for your account.”

LiveJournal has officially responded as of 8:00 this morning.

In an effort to comply with federal and California child pornography laws, the staffers said they have opted to treat any “graphic visual depiction of a minor…engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” apparently fictional or not, as a policy violation. “Any stated age of the individuals present, the apparent age of the people or characters present in an image, and outside knowledge of the person or character’s age are all taken into consideration,” the staffers wrote.