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FA Classifies Naturism as Sexual Content & Suspends Samareck
8 years ago
Further update: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8153496/
This has become a real ugly discussion in the Furry Naturists chat tonight. A lot of you may know
samareck for his cheerful and family-friendly anthro art with a focus on naturism and freedom to express yourself, no matter what you are.
Today, his account was suspended for 3 days because of a supposed violation of the Acceptable Upload Policy (AUP). Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/1ZbLVdM.jpg
"Acceptable Upload Policy: Section 2.12 - Content featuring minors is prohibited when nudity or sexual activity is present. Minors are real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals."
Here is the submission in question: http://samareck.deviantart.com/art/.....mily-654686511
While the violation of policy itself could be classified as technically correct, FA's own AUP is at fault here. What this basically amounts to is: any kind of young furry character, not wearing clothes, is instant grounds for a suspension or ban. It implies the naturism, nudism or or just being naked is equivalent to 'sexual content' which we all know NOT to be true! The difference is clear by the context of the scene. This is clearly not 'cub smut' or anywhere near it. The issue isn't with US law either, since sites like InkBunny allow all kinds of nasty things in that respect.
Oh, and did you notice the part about "any adolescent animals"? That technically means if you draw a picture of a puppy, you would fall foul of this rule too, unless you put a pair of pants on it!
We don't know who reported the image, but they are, to pardon my French, a fucking coward. They'd probably try and take down all the cherub sculptures in Italy too under the same argument!
If you want to find him on other websites for the time being, he's on InkBunny, DeviantArt, Tumblr. As John Gilmore would say, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
In addition, remember that FA has a terrible history for policing users and submissions, as well as security, which is why everyone here should have at least one other account on another website such as DeviantArt, Weasyl and so on. There are tools to help you migrate while keeping in touch with friends, such as the Exodus Helper. Furry Network even has an automated tool to pull all your submissions over.
If you support him, reply here or repost in your own journal. If you know of an effective way to debate the AUP and get staff to listen or explain themselves, please also tell us. If you have questions or points to make about the intent of the AUP or US law regarding pictures of minors, then please feel free to discuss that too, especially if you know how sites like IB manage to skirt around the issue entirely.
This has become a real ugly discussion in the Furry Naturists chat tonight. A lot of you may know
samareck for his cheerful and family-friendly anthro art with a focus on naturism and freedom to express yourself, no matter what you are.Today, his account was suspended for 3 days because of a supposed violation of the Acceptable Upload Policy (AUP). Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/1ZbLVdM.jpg
"Acceptable Upload Policy: Section 2.12 - Content featuring minors is prohibited when nudity or sexual activity is present. Minors are real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals."
Here is the submission in question: http://samareck.deviantart.com/art/.....mily-654686511
While the violation of policy itself could be classified as technically correct, FA's own AUP is at fault here. What this basically amounts to is: any kind of young furry character, not wearing clothes, is instant grounds for a suspension or ban. It implies the naturism, nudism or or just being naked is equivalent to 'sexual content' which we all know NOT to be true! The difference is clear by the context of the scene. This is clearly not 'cub smut' or anywhere near it. The issue isn't with US law either, since sites like InkBunny allow all kinds of nasty things in that respect.
Oh, and did you notice the part about "any adolescent animals"? That technically means if you draw a picture of a puppy, you would fall foul of this rule too, unless you put a pair of pants on it!
We don't know who reported the image, but they are, to pardon my French, a fucking coward. They'd probably try and take down all the cherub sculptures in Italy too under the same argument!
If you want to find him on other websites for the time being, he's on InkBunny, DeviantArt, Tumblr. As John Gilmore would say, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
In addition, remember that FA has a terrible history for policing users and submissions, as well as security, which is why everyone here should have at least one other account on another website such as DeviantArt, Weasyl and so on. There are tools to help you migrate while keeping in touch with friends, such as the Exodus Helper. Furry Network even has an automated tool to pull all your submissions over.
If you support him, reply here or repost in your own journal. If you know of an effective way to debate the AUP and get staff to listen or explain themselves, please also tell us. If you have questions or points to make about the intent of the AUP or US law regarding pictures of minors, then please feel free to discuss that too, especially if you know how sites like IB manage to skirt around the issue entirely.
We're actively watching and listening. I sent you a note regarding the matter, and we do plan on discussing this soon.
I would say that this part of the AUP could really use some attention. I think young anthros are a gray area in DA's policies. I've read it several times myself but I think I'll need to read it again too.
Assuming you didn't want to go in the direction of allowing everything, like Inkbunny (and I agree with that), I would say the only way to solve this is to talk about the *context* of the image or scene. I'm pretty sure that's how cases are decided in law; for example, if someone owns a photo of their baby in a bath.
That said, we are looking into it and are trying to determine exactly where the limits are.
So from a strict AUP point of view, the post should have been removed, though I will agree that a suspension may have been a bit much if this was the first offense.
It's not been tested yet, as far as I'm aware; but that in itself is an indication of its validity, given how much furry porn there's been out there for the past few decades. I imagine very few district attorneys/public prosecutors are going to want to bring the law into disrepute by placing artists (or consumers) on the stand for drawings of cute animal characters.
It's one of those "balance of factors" calls, but a classic neko would be considered "essentially human" for the purpose of Inkbunny's rules. Inuyasha and Shippō (the latter being a particularly good borderline case) are included in this. The Inklings from Splatoon have been, too. A muzzle helps a lot - other structural changes may help too, especially if they're incompatible with just sticking on gloves or socks to a human. Indications of fur over the body, not just the ears or a (stuck on) tail, etc.
Sometimes it's come down to things like whether a harpy is depicted as having feathers underneath an otherwise human arm (essentially human), or feathers all along the arm.
My support goes to Samareck. This country needs to get over this puritan view that nudism is wrong. Believing it's wrong fosters an unbalance in thinking both logically and culturally.
Furthermore nevermind the fact that cub porn still exists on the site anyway yet THIS is what gets action taken? I mean seriously little while back I came across a story involving anal and cock vore between a father intent on killing his hatchlings and did so in a very violent and sexual way. I double checked and that story is still up. Then again I'm also adult enough to not be a narc on things where no one his hurt aside from feelings. Point is though the rules may exist but there are so many submissions on the site they depend largely on reports to police the work and it's just flat out asinine that the sort of work that gets someone in trouble is something not even DA would ban.
I'm a firm believer in context matters and the AUP really does need to be fixed to reflect that to protect folks like Samareck's right to expression which in this case isn't even remotely sexual so shouldn't even be cause for alarm. I mean hell Nirvana's "Nevermind" album is a classic example but by the AUP standards of the site even that would be banned. It's getting ridiculous.
It's hard to say whether 'strategic censorship' of a scene would still fall foul of this rule.
Don't let this happen: make the drawing, find somewhere to post it. It doesn't have to be IB; but there are plenty of people on IB who are also not on FA (or if they are, they are not particularly active in looking for new users), so if you posted it with other works it would be likely to find an audience. There are multi-posting tools; many use PostyBirb, for example.
Btw, should you have mentioned about genitalia?