The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Rachel Blackman:

Yonmei said: I'm sorry if your workplace gives you trouble about a pic of a baby breastfeeding.

I think this is a big part of it, really. Many workplaces have a policy of 'no nudity on work computers.' (Granted, so do many Internet cafés and suchnot, but they're less likely to fire you and all.) And as was already pointed out earlier in the thread, if you get into 'well, nudity is okay as long as no nipple is showing, or if there's a baby attached to the nipple' then you open yourself up to all kinds of rules-lawyering.

LJ is not even saying 'we don't allow these icons.' They're saying, 'we don't allow this as the default userpic.' As I understand it, the reason is that when you're reading journals or comments, you can use style overrides to remove all userpics if you're worried about being offended by some. However, the default userpic shows up to represent the user in directory searches, userinfo pages, and a number of other pages on the site wherein there's no reason to allow custom styles for. So even if you can ignore all the other icons (or at least be told, 'your own damn fault if you're so easily offended'), you cannot ignore or avoid default userpics.

Imagine someone who goes and clicks on the link for their school, to find classmates who have livejournals. They get the directory of fellow students, and there in that directory is a picture of someone's boobs. Maybe they're offended and try to cause trouble for LJ. Maybe they're at work, and get in trouble for loading 'nude' pictures on work computers, and cause trouble for LJ as a result. Who knows? In today's society, though, it certainly could happen. And especially when there's an atmosphere of fear about ISPs being held responsible for the content their users host.

I think LJ's handled this phenomenally poorly in terms of a PR method; it leaves a black mark on their record. But the actual basis for the decision? I may (and do) think the guideline is kind of stupid, but -- regardless of individual feelings on breastfeeding -- I can absolutely understand why they would want to do it, and I can't really criticize that part.

I actually agree with the entitlement thing.

Wanting to tell stories with the characters in your head -- even if, as was said, they're immigrants -- is natural enough. Where entitlement comes into it is when you feel you have a /right/ to spread the resulting work around in public. Or, more specifically, to do so even when the original author says 'please, don't post fanfic of my characters or in my world.'

For my day-job (alas, 'aspiring writer' does not pay the bills too well), I am a software engineer. The software I help write, we sell for $25 a copy. Fairly cheap. Further, there is a free version (which misses a few features) available.

And yet, there are people who don't want to pay... and yet feel they are entitled to the Pro version without paying. There's an entire website for a pirate group who exist solely to pirate each new build of our program and remove the protection from the commercial version, and redistribute it along with all the add-ons from our member site. They and their devotees feel they are entitled to have this software -- when we are slow to release a version, they whine about us 'not giving good service,' they crow about how wonderful new versions are when they come out... yet they never pay for anything.

Before this job, I worked at a video game company. Tons of people would pirate the games, and claim, 'well, if I couldn't have pirated it, I wouldn't have bought it, so you didn't lose any money anyway.' Which is a rationalization... what it boils down to is they don't want to spend money on things, but they feel entitled to have them.

Software piracy, music piracy, and suchnot have an air of entitlement to them -- and I'd say fanfic like this does, too -- because you aren't 'stealing.' Breaking into a house and taking a DVD player, stealing a car from a dealer... those things, the person is left without the original. But an MP3? A game? Characters from a book? Hey, the originals are still right where you left them, so no one loses, right?

And so people who wouldn't dream of stealing a car, or a DVD player, feel entitled to steal these things. Hence the 'attitude of entitlement,' I think. At least, that's my $0.02 + state sales tax.

And gee, it would've been fun to see what happened if she'd submitted to PublishAmerica. Alas, then it wouldn't have ended up on Amazon.

Or, you know, anywhere else you can buy books.

Well, you know, we should be thanking her.

Because now, no matter WHAT blunders any of us might ever make or obstacles we might encounter, they aren't even close -- I don't think they're even on the same continent -- as this woman's little publishing escapade.

Accidentally submit a story two places at once? "At least I didn't try to sell fanfic on Amazon!" Get a rejection letter? "Well, at least my submission was legal!"

Instant silver lining.

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