denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

justmarriedmod: (Default)
[personal profile] justmarriedmod posting in [community profile] yuletide
[community profile] justmarriedexchange is a marriage-themed multifandom exchange for marriage tropes of all kinds: convenient, accidental, undercover, arranged, forced, and so on. The requirements are 1500 words for fic, clean lineart on unlined paper for art, and a complete recording of 1500 words or 10 minutes for podfic.

We have some post-deadline pinch hits, currently due August 29th 11:59PM UTC (countdown), or negotiable.

PH 32 - ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon, Critical Role (Web Series), Bridgerton (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

PH 46 - 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney, Dishonored (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Girl Genius (Webcomic), Lackadaisy (Webcomic), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Psychonauts (Video Games)

PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)

PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game)

PH 52 - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Noctilucent: Before Dawn (Video Game), 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game), 너의 스탯이 보여! | Show Me Your Stats! (Webcomic), Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey

If you might be interested in one of these pinch hits, you can find more details or claim the pinch hit at the post here. Thank you very much!
longficmod: Photo of a woman tying a running shoe (Default)
[personal profile] longficmod posting in [community profile] fandom5k
Creators are revealed, but the collection is still open for new works, of which we've had several already! And, of course, you can continue to read and comment to your heart's content.

Find more to read here!

Thank you to everyone who participated this year, and especially to all the pinch hitters who got us across the finish line--I appreciate you very much.

I also have an announcement to make:

Next year will be the tenth round of Fandom5K, if you can believe that! I've also decided it will be the last.

I've had a great time running this exchange, I've met some amazing people, and I've been delighted to see millions and millions of words posted to make other fans happy. However, ten years is a long time to do anything, and I'm ready to focus on personal projects. The exchange scene is much busier now than it was when CBMod and I kicked this off--hopefully participants can find plenty of other options throughout the year.

My plan is to retire the exchange rather than handing it over to a new mod, but of course anyone is welcome to start up an exchange on a similar theme. If you are interested in doing so and have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

To make the tenth and final year something we can all look forward to, two sub-announcements:

First, I plan to announce the 2026 schedule by 1 February, 2026.

Hopefully that way everyone who wants to join can plan ahead more easily, and hopefully I can keep myself from letting the schedule creep later and later every year, as it has a habit of doing.

Second, I am issuing an amnesty to anyone who defaulted late in 2025 or previous years, as long as that default occurred before the works due deadline.

That is, if you forgot to contact me during check-in week, or you checked in but then hit the default button before the deadline because something came up, you no longer need to create a make-up assignment to participate in the final round.

If you didn't default before the works due deadline--maybe you simply didn't show up on that date and never turned a work in, or you defaulted with an extension--I will still ask you to turn in a makeup assignment before signing up next year. This also may apply if you turned in a placeholder or your gift otherwise didn't fulfill our rules.

If you have any questions about how this amnesty applies to you, please let me know! I may take a little time to get back to you during the offseason, so I'd suggest asking early if you need to plan ahead.

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