telophase | Well, they finally did it.

It's been a good 15ish years, but this new agreement LJ wants me to sign has done it. I'm stopping crossposting to LJ and moving over to Dreamwidth. You can find me there at

telophase, same as LJ, and if you don't want to get a DW you can use OpenID to comment with your LJ, Facebook, or other creds. A warning: if I don't log in to LJ for 6 months, they can now delete my account and free up the user name, so I may vanish if I forget to do that.

The bits of the agreement I'm eyeing sideways under the cut:

User shall be responsible for the security (guessing attacks resistance) of the Authentication Details and its confidentiality.
User shall be responsible for all actions performed using the User’s Authentications Details, All actions performed upon the Authorisation using the User’s Authentication Details shall be deemed performed by the User personally, unless the User has duly notified the Administration in advance of possible Unauthorised Access and/or any breach (alleged breach) of confidentiality of his/her Authentication Details in accordance herewith.

OK, so that's pretty much "We're not responsible for data breaches," but it also means that if someone hacks my LJ and posts anti-Russia stuff, they can hold me responsible.

Please note that, User shall be subject to Article 10.2 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149 if more than three thousand Internet users access the Blog (the Blog’s page) within 24 hours.
User who posted comments in Blog and User keeping such a Blog shall be jointly and severally liable in respect of such comments.

Well, I'm not likely to get more than 3K visitors in 24 hours unless I post something particularly stupid, but I'm not happy with being held liable for comments made by other people. (Article 10.2 does say that if comments with "false information" are posted I need to remove them: "shall verify the reliability of placed generally accessible information before it is placed and shall immediately delete unreliable information that has been placed;")

The User may not:
...
post advertising and/or political solicitation materials unless otherwise directly specified in a separate agreement between User and the Administration;
...
perform any other actions contradictory to the laws of the Russian Federation and/or any other applicable laws, including those applicable in the jurisdiction of User’s residence.

Which looks like I can't post in support of local candidates. (If there were any I actually wanted to support, but that's another matter entirely.) Nor can I break Russian laws, which is a bit difficult since I don't know what they are, and given the anti-gay sentiment in Russia right now, I don't know how they're going to view slash and pro-gay content on LJ in the future.)

Unless otherwise specifically set forth by a separate agreement between User and the Administration, the Administration may without further notice or refund, place advertising on the Service, including on any Blog/Community pages.
The Administration may at any time change the method, type and quantity of the advertising placed on the Service.

Yeah, I know this was probably pretty much SOP previously and applies to ad-supported free blogs, but even with my perma-paid account (see next item below), I'm frowning at this.

Paid Services are not subject of this Agreement. The Administration shall not be liable for Paid Services. All Paid Services’ related questions shall be address to Live Journal Inc.

Okay! So technically none of this agreement applies to me since I have a permanent paid account (thank you to the lovely yet anonymous person or persons who did that lo these many years ago!)! So...why do I have to sign it, if it doesn't apply to me?

So, yeah, probably things will be happen as per usual in the future, because this is mostly aimed at the dissidents who use the LJ platform to agitate against Russia, but it just hit that point for me.

Well, they finally did it.

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