As if there was not enough lessons learned by folks from the latest Digg Revolt, Live Journal has decided that it was time to test the waters and see what would happen if they deleted a bunch of sex themed journals, in an effort to “protect the children”.

Thousands of LiveJournal customers are rebelling against the company’s recent decision to censor hundreds of sex-themed discussion groups, a broad swath that has led to the removal of literary critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter. Source: News.com

Ok, so protecting children is a good thing, and groups that openly advocate pedophilia, probably not a good thing either. And Live journal has the ability to shut down blogs that violate their terms of service as they review them to make sure they are legit.

The problem comes in when they deleted the “Fandom” stories, people who write stories that deal with the darker side of human nature, and how we deal with it as a society. Then there are the common issues of people who would love to in reality spend time in the harry potter universe, who write stories about the things they would love to do in the harry potter universe. Which sometimes involves things that are a tad adult.

As the news spreads on this one, these people will go to some other site, and recreate their stuff. That is if they kept backups of the data and can easily recreate it. The mass migration to blogger or some other service should keep people busy over the weekend.

The problem comes into censorship, and Fandom stories have been around since day one. Usenet was full of Fandom stories about a great many things.

LiveJournal now has a riot on its hands, and is being picked up by all the major rags, and the blogosphere, which will be interesting to see how the LiveJournal PR hacks deal with this one. Although I doubt they will do what Digg did and say “Mea Culpa”.