So, you guys gonna acknowledge the racist as fuck changes in the terms of service regarding the "embargoed countries" shit, or you gonna brush that under the rug? You know, fandom is for everyone! Except from those dirty places the US doesn't like, of course.
It's a legal requirement in the US. Their options are basically do it but not tell you, tell you they're doing it, or risk being shut down. With that said, they did say they would fight actual demands in court if possible.
Yeah I'm sure the US government will be very upset a fanfic site allowed a random Iranian kid to make an account. Very threatening, we must shut the place down!!!!!
Well, that's the point. They'd be at risk if they didn't put the clause in there (they're a nonprofit and have to be more careful about obeying stuff like this), but they've said they don't intend to enforce it unless the government makes specific demands, and might fight such a demand. So it's meaningless really, because you're right, the US federal government demanding AO3 take down someone's fanfiction (for this reason, at least) is pretty much never going to happen.
As the Policy & Abuse committee said in the comments on the TOS announcement post, they understand that many users are concerned about the clause in the TOS that states that users cannot "create an account if you are a resident or national of any country with which the U.S. has prohibited transactions by mandating a comprehensive trade embargo, as detailed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control".
However, this restriction was also present in the previous TOS, which stated that "You agree not to use the Service [...] to create an account if you are a resident or national of any country to which the U.S. has prohibited transactions by mandating a trade embargo, as detailed further by the State Department". The updated TOS actually reduces this restriction considerably by specifying that only a comprehensive trade embargo counts.
It is not uncommon for websites and online services located in the U.S. to include this kind of provision in their terms of service. All U.S. people and companies like the Organization for Transformative Works (“OTW”, which operates the AO3), are required to comply with U.S. government sanctions, including embargoes. The law is unclear on activities that are prohibited when no money is involved. Some comprehensive U.S. embargoes prohibit the export of services to a particular nation; others prohibit only the export of goods to a particular nation; and different people may have different interpretations regarding whether particular nations qualify as being subject to particular embargoes.
The OTW does not itself, of its own initiative, take actions to enforce such sanctions against individual users. If a government authority tried to make the OTW enforce sanctions against a particular user, the OTW would consider challenging that attempt in court. However, if the OTW cannot practically mount a challenge to an enforcement action, or loses such a challenge in court, we need to reserve our ability to terminate accounts from comprehensively embargoed countries – which is why our TOS includes this provision.
That's interesting, I saw someone saying Tumblr/Twitter doesn't do this, except in Tumblr's case, apparently it says sanctioned countries couldn't partake in commercial uses. I thought it would be just like buying stuff from Tumblr Mart.
Do you very carefully read the ToS of every site you make an account on? Because if you did, you would see it, but other websites generally aren't going to draw your attention to that. Social media terms of service aren't going to be covered in the news (even when they actually really should be).
Comment on November 2024 Newsletter, Volume 195
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