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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35369 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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It's not libelous if it's not presented as true. If I write a fictional story about you raping an eight year old that is explicitly presented as fictional, then as much as that may disturb you, you can't do shit.

I could probably sue on the basis that it causes me reputational harm, though my understanding of the law is that I'd have a hard time establishing actual damages.

People are coming up with all kinds of other scenarios, about Photoshopping a dick into someone's mouth or creating a deepfake of someone being raped and tortured, and not all of those things are illegal. I don't necessarily agree that none of them should be.

I'm in favor of enabling subjects of deepfakes to issue takedown demands, though enforcement will be very impractical in practice.

This is random pseudo-macho posturing that's irrelevant to the argument. But yeah in any case I will definitely take my chances with your average weak modern Reddit heckin' dad versus the state.

It's not macho posturing - I said you should keep your sexual fantasies about your neighbor's underage daughter to yourself and not share them with her or her father, and your response is "Nuh uh, it's not illegal!" I mean, sure, not everything that is wrong and unethical is illegal, and you certainly can go around telling everyone about your sexual fantasies. Reverting to "It's not illegal" when discussing ethics is a dodge.

I mean, as the link shows you, many actual HP fanfiction authors disagree.

No, they think she was trying to impose conditions they didn't like. Also, that link is four years old and references events going back much further, in the early days of online fan fiction.

The vast amount of HP fan fiction that Rowling has tacitly (and in some cases, explicitly) approved disproves your entire argument.

Many people also disagree that Diane Feinstein is opposed to guns (after all, you can disagree with her wanting to impose conditions on them, but that doesn't make her opposed to them, right?).

I actually doubt that many people disagree with that. But if you said "Diane Feinstein wants all guns to be illegal for everyone, period," that's a claim that may or may not be true (who knows what she really believes?) but it's not supported by any actual words or policies from her. If you said "She wants heavy restrictions on guns," that's obviously true. But "JK Rowling opposes certain kinds of fan fiction in certain contexts" is not the same as "JK Rowling is anti-fan fiction." It's not even a good parallel with your Feinstein analogy.

Again, I'm talking explicitly about the "You can't write a sex story about Hermione, because when people think of Hermione they think of Emma Watson's image, and Emma Watson didn't consent to have her image in your sex fantasies." argument I've seen about erotic HP fanfiction.

That's more an ethical argument than a legal one. Emma Watson would not have legal standing to demand that erotic fiction about Hermione (or about Emma Watson - RPF exists) be removed. But Rowling could demand that the former (though not the latter) be taken down, on the basis that fan fiction is, as I said, at least currently considered an IP violation, though this hasn't really been tested in court.

I could probably sue on the basis that it causes me reputational harm

How would it cause you reputational harm? If anything you'd be the victim of malicious fiction, and victimhood is a reputational benefit nowadays.

I don't necessarily agree that none of them should be.

Well I disagree. Fiction is fiction and thus automatically possesses a rightful presumption of being implicitly harmless (as it is, quite literally, unlike most important harms, not tangibly real) absent a more pressing justification than someone's discomfort over their depiction, whether it's because it's extra realistic looking (but again, still not actually tangibly real) or not.

I mean this is of course speaking in terms of abstract ideal legal policy. Strategically speaking, if you want to make deepfakes illegal in any sense and force those who want to see fake Pokimane or fake Emma Watson getting railed into the depths of the darknet where stuff like child porn also circulates, thus strengthening the entire enterprise of private and anonymous content contribution opposing the unjust power of the modern digital hegemony, then that's probably a win for people like me.

I said you should keep your sexual fantasies about your neighbor's underage daughter to yourself and not share them with her or her father, and your response is "Nuh uh, it's not illegal!"

Uhh no. My response actually was:

Maybe it becomes their business but that doesn't imply any obligation for the state to do anything on their behalf.

"Maybe it becomes their business" doesn't in any sense imply some overall objection to the principle of generally keeping such things to yourself on etiquette/behavioral grounds, and simply advancing the viewpoint that a certain behavior is not a concern of any formal power is not some blanket approval of it as ideal behavior in all contexts (many such cases of people unfortunately believing the opposite nowadays though). "That doesn't imply any obligation for the state to do anything on their behalf" is in fact some of the weakest commentary on a behavior you can give, other than again through the flawed modern lens that so frequently crops up where if you're not advocating calling the SWAT team in on something then you must be its biggest cheerleader or at least trying to excuse it.

Reverting to "It's not illegal" when discussing ethics is a dodge.

But we're not just discussing only ethics, unless the only compulsion you're advocating for being behind those takedown requests is that it'd be the right thing to do.

No, they think she was trying to impose conditions they didn't like.

And the Reddit admins were only trying to impose conditions on your subreddit that you didn't like.

Also, that link is four years old and references events going back much further, in the early days of online fan fiction.

And? My whole original point is that JKR was criticized for opposing fanfiction primarily in the past.

(Anyway I'm just going to ignore the rest of the stuff about whether it's reasonable to say that JKR opposes or ever opposed fanfiction or not since it's completely tangential and I'm not in an autistic enough mood today (which is not to say I never am) to dive into this conversation spiraling into dozens of tendrils of barely relevant side disputes (and I'm not saying you were the only one engaging in this up until this point by any means).)

That's more an ethical argument than a legal one.

Yes. And it's a bad one in my view. And it's similarly a bad one for Emma Watson/Hermione deepfakes too.

But Rowling could demand that the former (though not the latter) be taken down, on the basis that fan fiction is, as I said, at least currently considered an IP violation, though this hasn't really been tested in court.

And I also oppose this, though debating the validity IP law is mostly again a whole other subject.

Again, to me, the central dispute is whether openly, explicitly fictional content (again, if it's lying about being fictional, then that gets into the realm of fraud which is a whole other matter) should be prohibited because it makes its subjects uncomfortable or feel "violated" or however it's formulated (as I'm not seeing any other real justifications being advanced). I say no.

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