LJ Terms Of Shit

[beer_good_foamy]

I just spent 20 minutes trying to add the following reply on the LJ News post (http://news.livejournal.com/151767.html):

Since I won't sign anything where I have no way of knowing what it is I'm signing, I'm commenting through (OpenID/Twitter).

Please note that in accordance with part 3 Article 10.1 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149-ФЗ the Administration shall keep the following information and provide it upon the lawful request of the competent authorities regardless of Users will
I am not a Russian citizen. What is Article 10.2 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149-ФЗ? Please provide me with a full text of it before I agree to it.

Mark Content estimated by Russian legislation as inappropriate for children (0 −18) as “adult material” by using Service functions.
I am not a Russian citizen. Please provide me with a comprehensive list of content that Russian legislation considers inappropriate for children, and which of these LJ intends to inforce.

ATTENTION: this translation of the User Agreement is not a legally binding document. The original User Agreement, which is valid, is located at the following address: http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos-ru.bml.
I am not a Russian citizen. If the English translation is not valid, why do I need to sign it? What's in the Russian version that we're not told in the translation?

Unfortunately, LJ won't let me sign in through OpenID, and when I created a Twitter account and signed on using that, I was told my reply was marked as spam.

(Remember that when LJ was first bought by the Russians, we were told that "Complaints will not be accepted. They'll get used to it. Anything sent in English is spam.")

So, fuck LJ.

Comments

[beer_good_foamy]

LJ changed their Terms Of Service. You cannot view any Livejournal page (while logged in) without first accepting their new TOS. The first point of the TOS is that they're in Russian, and that the English translation which LJ itself provides is, according to LJ, so bad that it doesn't represent what you actually agree to.

What you actually agree to is to conform to a number of Russian laws, the details of which you'll have to look up yourself; to not post things that the Russian government considers "inappropriate to children"; to accept that LJ has the right to give your e-mail address to spammers; and a few other neat things. (At least that's what the English translation seems to say, what the actual TOS says is a mystery.)

Basically: LJ is holding its users hostage until they agree with Terms of Service, and is refusing to tell them WHAT they're agreeing to, and also refusing to answer questions about it or even officially acknowledge that people have questions about it.

Hence the fuckage.

[shapinglight]

:(

Okay, that's scared me off even trying to log in.

I saw you telling Barb you might leave fandom altogether. Please don't. :(

[beer_good_foamy]

Thanks. We'll see. I've felt my muse cool down a lot over the last year or so, and having to leave LJ and settle for DW - at least if it doesn't pick up a lot of the people leaving LJ - feels like a big hump to get over. And there's no way in all seven hells I'm joining Tumblr.

But right now I'm just too angry to make any serious decisions, so we'll see how I feel about it later. :)

[shapinglight]

I've cooled down on the fandom front in many ways myself. I still love BtVS but haven't much desire to talk about it any more, and time is short for other stuff.

There is a good community here on DW for talking about The Americans, if you're interested in that.

I'm just trying to read through this TOS (the English is not great). Have also read this 10.2 of Russian Federal Law no 149 and cannot say I am much the wiser. :(

[beer_good_foamy]

I do want to be able to post some stuff during my BtVS rewatch now. (I'm up to 3.01 already.) But it probably won't be at LJ.

There is a good community here on DW for talking about The Americans, if you're interested in that.

Neat, thanks! Is it theamericans?

the English is not great

I saw someone who said they put the Russian version into Google Translate and the result looked very similar. I wonder if there's anyone working at LJ these days with any experience of communicating with people as opposed to being good at coding.

[shapinglight]

Neat, thanks! Is it theamericans?

Yes, it is. Very good discussions on there, though some of the posters are so knowledgeable they scare me a little bit.

[shadowkat]

I found a way to log in without signing the agreement. Install an anti-script device. Apparently the user agreement is using java scripts. (I installed Ghostery and it worked.) I got in, and I deleted it.

(I don't like the fact that my content is sitting on a Russian owned site...with what is happening at the moment in the US.)

So you can get in there without signing. That is until they figure out a way around that loophole.