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Media Preservation - Blog Posts
Reposting this because it’s gone tomorrow.
Hey. I’m sad. Voltron leaves Netflix tomorrow. I think in honor of this, I should tell all Voltron fans to avoid wcostream.tv. It is a dangerous pirating website that has all of Voltron in HD. Please. Under no circumstances should you go there. You should NOT PIRATE shows that creators don’t care about anymore. Definitely not guys.
A New History of Fandom Purges
On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”
On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.
Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…
HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!
1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed
1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites
1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere
1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites
1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites
2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites
2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again
2001 - Tripod Massacre
2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN
2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks
2002 - FFN bans porn
2002 - FFN bans RPF
2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes
2004 - FFN bans script format
2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic
2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded
2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again
2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes
2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal
2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids
2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it
2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites
2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted
2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted
2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly
2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity
2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic
2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN
2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence
2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org
2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn
2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic
2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content
2014 - Quizilla shuts down
2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors
2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids
2014 - Viddler deletes vids
2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank
2016 - y!Gallery deleted
2016 - Elfwood goes offline
2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic
2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama
2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad
2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs
2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban
2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning
2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed
This is only a small taste of the many times that:
Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.
Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.
Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.
Fans grudge reported each other.
Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.
It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.
Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.
This is why we need AO3.
And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.
One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:
It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and
Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.
Small reminder that you should really download your favorite fics off of AO3. We are seeing mass censorships well as the chance that anything, such as another severe DDoS attack can shut down the site making works unaccessible and possibly lost for good.
If you do not know how to download fics, it is a simple 2-button click. I've written a tutorial here.
You think your stuff is safe until it's suddenly not, and then often times it's too late.
This post starts with AO3, (because it seems to be the common denominator across all users on this website /joking) but I recommend extending preservation efforts to anything online if you can manage to download it.
I'm not saying panic and start buying tons of storage devices to hold immense amounts of stuff. A cheap usb can hold plenty of things. You don't have to stop using services still available if it's more convenient to read books on your phone than to fill your backpack with 7 of them.
But you should still get (either buying or creating) physical versions because nothing is guarantee that it will remain forever. From shows being pulled from streaming services, to banned books, to losing access to digital copies of media because the service doesn't support it anymore, the account is lost, or the company goes under. This goes for messaging platforms as well. Your role-plays with your friends on discord can be lost forever, your photos can too.
This doesn't even include media most vulnerable to censorship and how quickly it can be removed, and quietly.
You think it will not happen to you, it will. Do not wait for unforeseen circumstances. Go back up and preserve what you can, your future self will be happy that you did.
Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.
Happy pride.
If the Internet Archive goes down or stops allowing the uploading of books, the other GG archivists and I have everything backed up and are working on disseminating the archive amongst ourselves to make it more infallible. We'll reupload it if we must. I hope it doesn't come down to that, but I'm grateful we were all here to save everything while we're still were able to
As I've said before, will say again, and will say some more in the far future: The internet is ephemeral. If you love it, save it. Your copy may one day be the only copy.
GET KOSA TRENDING.
STOP SCROLLING NOW!
AS OF FEBRUARY 21ST, 2024, WE GOT FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE DAY OF DECISION OF THE KOSA BILL, WHICH WILL CAUSE MASS CENSORSHIP ROUND THE INTERNET IF PASSED. OR DOOMSDAY. WE NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT THIS AND CONTRIBUTE. I'M NOT GIVING UP ON YOU ALL.
WE'RE DOWN TO THE WIRE BUT WE CAN'T GIVE UP YET. IF WE GIVE UP, EVERYTHING IS OVER. IF WE DON'T, AT LEAST WE HAVE A CHANCE.
I'M THE ONE WHO SOUNDED THE ALARM, AND I'M NOT GOING TO CURL UP AND DIE YET.
Reblog this post in every LEGAL way you can under the Tumblr guidelines with the appropriate tags. TELL AND TAG EVERYONE YOU KNOW, then add the tags to see below... and more if you can think of any complying.
Visit badinternetbills.com if you want to find a way to defeat KOSA. It WILL NOT take much of your time. Reblog with any other information or sources, too-- but make sure to reblog if you can.
Reblog if you support lgbtq+ content.
Reblog if you support questioning queer youth and/or abused youth getting the information they need.
Reblog if you support Ao3 and/or other sites that wholeheartedly preserve talentedly made media.
Reblog if you're going to repost this on other sites than Tumblr and spread the word across Twitter, Tik Tok, Pinterest, or elsewhere, alongside the link to badinternetbills.com.
Reblog if you think KOSA is unfair and shouldn't be anyone's problem -- including the adults ALL OVER THE DAMN EARTH forced to face the mass censorship it causes because "think of the American Children!".
Reblog if you support internet activism and Palestine.
Reblog if you hate fascism or censorship, and don't want actually serious and helpful conversations censored on the internet.
Reblog if you value the internet in any way at all whatsoever.
CHECK THIS PETITION, TOO! https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-kosa?recruiter=1331807538&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf&recruited_by_id=57368c40-d0fd-11ee-98f7-2175430f819f&share_bandit_exp=initial-36809664-en-US
(Also, please reblog with at least "stop kosa" as a tag and not "kosa". I made the mistake of not adding just "kosa" as a tag...)