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.

bethbethbeth: The Earth (Misc Earth (bbb))
[personal profile] bethbethbeth
On May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].

This is the ninth recced book review.

America (1986), by Jean Baudrillard (recced by Hannah on dreamwidth)

(Note: I read this at least a month ago, but I forgot to post the review!)

America is two entirely different books. If I hadn't felt compelled to complete America (I started it four times before I could move beyond the fifth page), I would have given up the ghost by the end of chapter one. There's no denying that it's beautifully written, poetic, philosophic, deeply thoughtful at times. I have no particular problem with his critique of America - even in what he sees as its "banality." But god, did it feel pretentious and oddly incoherent for the longest time.

It's also weirdly racist. when it most tries to be anything but, and so much of it feels just...wrong. Take his observations of New York City, for example. Yes, much is "fast" about NY - both literally and metaphorically - but of all things, cars aren't the things that are faster (those of you who have experienced an Uber taking 20 minutes to drive from 2nd Avenue to 8th Avenue know what I mean). And eating alone in New York? It isn't incredibly "sad" as Baudrillard suggests... far more often it's a way to feel a moment of pleasurable solitude in a city of so many millions of people.

Some of what I perceive as wrongness in the book could be that Baudrillard is writing about the America of the 80s, yet treating it as if that's all there is of the America of past and future instead of it being a snapshot of time. Or it could be as simple as the translation missing the point at times (although, I suspect that's not the case). But one way or the other, this America seems not just subjective, but far too often like a work of fiction.

There are also an incredible number of similes...sometimes a half dozen per page. :)

Anyway, once America hits the "Utopia Achieved" chapter, it morphs into something both readable and insightful. I'm not sure how that happened. It might possibly have been magic.

I'm not entirely sure it made up for the first 3/5 of the book, however.
bethbethbeth: (Bears Bike Outing (obsessed1))
[personal profile] bethbethbeth
Helpful hint if you're becoming more disabled as you age or as a condition progresses (i.e., if you're new to seeking travel assistance): figure out what sorts of thing are challenges for you in your day to day life, and see how the airports you'll be using can help.

In my case: I have relatively bad arthritis (some weeks worse than others), use a cane, have balance issues and intermittent vertigo.

The two airports I used (O'Hare in Chicago and Sea-Tac in Seattle) are usually both on the lists of reasonably accessible airports (guides, braille elevator signs, etc), and both had free wheelchairs. This would have been great given the extremely long terminal hallways without moving sidewalks, but unfortunately, it was too late by the time I found out.

Knowing about the free wheelchairs would have been especially useful when I was heading home. The TSA lines were wildly long at Sea-Tac and even though I explained my difficulty with standing in lines to SeaTac staff, I was told I had to go to the regular line (note: a roving TSA agent ended up - unprompted (although I probably looked bedraggled :D) - moving me to a faster line, but once you invoke a disability, accommodations should be made as a matter of course.

My return trip from Sea-Tac (after 5 days of hobbling around WorldCon) was also problematic given the inclines between each gate in Terminal D. Why do you have to trudge uphill with teenagers sitting on the side ledges, hanging their legs over the banisters? I shall probably never know.

Plus, there was no seating accessible to me at SeaTac. All the chairs would have been perfectly comfortable for me to sit in, but my cartilage-light knees & my vertigo won't usually allow me to get up facing forward without something to touch for balance in front of me once I'm up. I usually need to turn sideways to get up from a chair (unless it's a relatively tall chair) and touch the back for balance (unless I'm sitting next to a wall), which isn't possible with rows of freestanding chairs that all have armrests and all face each other. In my case, I found a lovely guy at the gate next to my departure gate (my gate personnel weren't there yet) who basically stole a wheelchair (the basic airport wheelchairs are just hard chairs on wheels with movable armrests, i.e., my favorites) and brought me to my departure gate, leaving me to sit in the stolen - and oddly comfortable - chair next to something I could use for balance later for the next hour. This was great, but it took me 25 minutes finding somebody to help)

Note: when I was heading to Seattle, O'Hare's departure gate did have chairs without armrests which made it easy for me to stand up without tipping over onto my face. I don't know whether having some chairs without armrests are part of ADA compliance, but even the lobby for O'Hare's car rental and bus pickup facility had a few of those. Thank you, O'Hare.

On the plus side, there were gender free bathrooms at O'Hare (single user) and at SeaTac (including multi user). I only used the one at SeaTac and the stalls all had full-length doors, which - let's be real - all public restrooms should have. I did overhear a youngish girl - maybe 12? - expressing shock to her slightly older sister about that, but then her parents said "Go in and pee. Our flight's going to be boarding soon." Good work, parents,

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