InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Hmm, pimple! Yummy!"

You may file a report to the Abuse team if you are having problems with another user or believe that someone is violating the Terms of Service [http://www.insanejournal.com/legal/tos.bml].

However, it is best that you first review over all the Frequently Asked Questions in this category [http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=abuse]. This will help you to better understand what issues are considered as Abuse and how to possibly resolve them without involving the Abuse team.


You may contact the Abuse team by following http://www.insanejournal.com/support/submit.bml and selecting "Abuse" as the category, or send an e-mail to abuse@insanejournal.com from your validated e-mail address [http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=12]. Note that your report will appear as a Support request. However, it will only be visible to you and to members of the Abuse team.


To allow the Abuse team to better investigate any matters, please include the following:

-- Your username
-- The usernames of all people involved
-- URLs to specific posts or comments where the Terms of Service may have been violated. The Abuse team will not investigate requests without this information. A link to a user's journal does not suffice as enough information to begin researching a situation.
-- Any other proof that you would like to present.

Please be aware that the Abuse team will not consider comment notification e-mails, chat logs, system logs, or third party reports as evidence. In addition, the Abuse team will not accept requests on a third party's behalf. If someone else is being harassed, they will need to open a request under their own username.


Your report will be ignored if you e-mail the Abuse team community's account or any individual member of the Abuse team.

Please allow some time for your response. Most requests are handled within a few days, if not hours.

You will receive an e-mail with a URL containing an authorization code that will allow you to view and provide additional information on your Abuse request. It is very important that you do not share that URL with anyone else. If you do, your request is no longer secure and confidential. The Abuse team will close requests that are no longer secure, and you will have to open another one.

In addition, please do not ask your friends to write in regarding a problem you are having. The Abuse team only needs one report to investigate a matter, and each report after the first simply serves to slow the investigative process. Decisions of the Abuse team are only made in accordance with the Terms of Service.


If you are interested in being considered for the Abuse team, you can see the application requirements in the User Information for the Abuse team community [http://www.insanejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=ij_abuse].

We take pride in trying to provide users with as much freedom of speech as possible. However, there is certain material that InsaneJournal does not permit. Most prohibited content is either banned due to United States or international treaty law, or is not allowed in an effort to keep the service usable for all members.

This is not an exhaustive list. For a full listing of the Terms of Service, see http://www.insanejournal.com/legal/tos.bml (particularly Section XVI: Member Conduct). The content of this FAQ is intended solely to illustrate some common examples of what are considered to be Terms of Service violations.

Comments, entries, journals and posts not permitted on InsaneJournal include but are not limited to:

-- Content created solely to harass another user
-- Material that invades the privacy of another user by posting personal information
-- Material that meets the United States legal definition of "indecent"
-- Instructions on how to break the law
-- Child pornography (explicit, nude, or erotic pictures taken of anyone under the age of 18, whether or not the model is over 18 at the time of posting)
-- Material that infringes on the copyright or patent of an individual or corporation
-- Unsolicited advertising of any service, goods, or forum (including InsaneJournal communities)
-- Content intended to interfere with another user's use of the site
-- Content that is motivated by hatred towards an individual, race, ethnicity, or orientation
-- Any other material that is a violation of applicable state, federal, or international law

If you find certain content objectionable, but it is not a violation of the Terms of Service, the Abuse team will not take action. For instance, a comment posted in the middle of a debate that contains opinions you personally find distasteful, but which is not harassing, indecent, or libelous, would not be a violation of the Terms of Service.

For more information on what to do if someone is harassing you, see http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=133 .

To learn how to contact the Abuse team to report violations of the Terms of Service, see http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=18 .

Limited commercial activity in your journal (such as a link to a donation button, a request for donations in an entry, a link to an off-site "store", or the occasional mention of services available such as an artist making reference to commissions) is acceptable, as long as the accounts's primary purpose is not to solicit donations or profit.

You cannot sell or re-sell access to your InsaneJournal -- for instance, charging a fee to be added to your Friends list, or charging others to advertise on your journal (such as by using banner ads or text ads). You also cannot sell or re-sell InsaneJournal-related services, such as charging for creating a journal layout or user picture icons, through InsaneJournal.

You cannot include "click-through" banner ads in your InsaneJournal or your User Information, or anything that is designed to profit you based on how many people click the link or view the banner.

If you have goods or services to advertise, you may post entries about them in your journal (again, as long as that is not the primary purpose of your journal). However, you may not post unsolicited or unwanted advertising to community journals. If you wish to post about your goods or services to a community journal, you should contact the maintainer first for permission, and limit your posting to a single community.

Spamming -- advertising your goods or services in communities or journals where it is unwanted -- is prohibited.

Likewise, if you wish to promote a community you have created, the proper way to do so is in the asylum_promo journal (http://www.insanejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=asylum_promo). Promoting your community by posting unwanted or unsolicited advertisements in communities or journals is a form of spam, and is not permitted.

If you have any questions regarding these policies or restrictions, please feel free to open an Abuse request.

How do I contact the Abuse Team?
http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=18

InsaneJournal does not believe in censorship beyond the letter of the law, so all material is allowed on the site. As quoted in a news post made May 31st, 2007, site owner Squeaky said "We will not remove any content from the site unless we receive an official DMCA take down notice or are contacted by an official legal agency notifying us of illegal activity." (source: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/announcements/31922.html).

InsaneJournal has a number of users who are under-aged and cannot legally view explicit material. Due to this, Insanejournal would like to ask that posts to non-age restricted asylums, comments in other user's journals, and default user icons be kept free of explicit content. In order to protect our under-aged users, Insanejournal would like to ask you (NOT require) to help keep explicit material out of the eyesight of under-aged readers by using one of the following two methods:

Use a Cut Tag:
If you use an LJ-cut stating there is explicit material contained within, an under-aged user is less likely to encounter it. LJ-cut tags are used to hide part, or all, of an entry. Information on LJ-specific tags and what they are used for can be found at the following FAQ:
http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=49

Friends-Only Entries:
Another method to prevent under-aged users from finding explicit material is to Friends-lock the entries containing it. More information on privacy settings for journal entries can be found at the following FAQ:
http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=63

Once again, these methods are only suggested. It is not a requirement to Friends-lock or use LJ-cut tags when it comes to explicit material.

If you frequently post content to your journal that is considered of an "adult nature", InsaneJournal asks that you place a warning in your user information (http://www.insanejournal.com/manage/profile) to warn underage users should not view your journal. This isn't mandatory, but can serve to protect both yourself and InsaneJournal.

If you are the maintainer of an asylum in which users regularly post explicit images, you must monitor the membership of your asylum carefully to make sure that all of your members are of legal age to view such material. Again, this is to protect both you and InsaneJournal.

To learn how to contact the Abuse team to report violations of the Terms of Service, see the following FAQ:
http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=18

Harassment generally comes in two forms: harassing comments by another user posted in your own journal, and harassing posts about you in another user's journal. There are different steps to take for each type of harassment.

In either case, in order for the Abuse team to consider taking action, the harassment needs to be one-sided. The Abuse team will not mediate "flame wars" between two parties, and will not take action in cases where both users seem to be equally at fault.

The first thing to do is to review the FAQ "What kind of material is prohibited on InsaneJournal?" [http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=140], which gives some guidelines about what InsaneJournal doesn't allow.


HARASSING COMMENTS:
If someone is harassing you in comments to your own journal, the very first thing that you should do is ban them from commenting in your journal. See http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=112 for information on how to do this. If it's happening in a community, you'll need to contact the community maintainer to ban the user from commenting.

If the user then begins posting anonymously, you can either ban anonymous commenting from your journal (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=113), or set it so that anonymous users can only post "screened" comments, which means that you'll have to approve those comments first (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=109). You should also enable Comment IP Logging for your journal (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=114).

You can also make sensitive entries Friends-Only, which will block everyone from viewing them except the users on your Friends list. See http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=security for more information on the various security features.

Because there are tools to block users from commenting in your journal, the Abuse team generally won't take action in cases such as these. If you do feel the need to report them, however, be sure that you include links to all of the comments in question, and do not delete the comments until after the Abuse team has reviewed your case.

HARASSING JOURNAL ENTRIES:
If a user is posting journal entries that are intended solely to harass you, first ask yourself whether a casual viewer of that journal would have enough information available to identify you. Then, make sure that it's not just an one-time incident.

If the abuse is chronic and you think that the user is violating the Terms of Service, then make a report with the Abuse team. Be sure to include links to all pertinent entries in the user's journal. The Abuse team won't investigate these cases unless reports contain specific links to investigate.

For information on filing a report to the InsaneJournal Abuse Team, visit [http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=18].

The most appropriate response to comment spam depends on its source.

If it originates from an anonymous comment, simply delete the comment and mark it as spam. This will forward it to a queue to be analysed, and an administrator will take steps to block the originating IP.

If the spam originates from another logged-in user, please file an Abuse report [ http://www.insanejournal.com/support/submit.bml ] so that the account-holder can be warned that his or her account has been hijacked, or so that the account may be suspended, if necessary.

If someone is harassing you anonymously, there are a few steps that you can take. You can either ban anonymous commenting from your journal completely (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=113), set it so that anonymous users can only post "screened" comments, which means that you'll have to approve those comments in order for them to be visible to other users (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=109), or mark the anonymous comment as spam when deleting it (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=110).

You should also enable Comment IP Logging for your journal (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=114). IP addresses aren't always helpful, but you'll need to have the user's IP address if you want to report the harassment to the user's Internet Service Provider.

Because there is no way to tie anonymous comments to InsaneJournal usernames, the Abuse team will not act in cases of anonymous comment harassment. If you believe that you know who is harassing you, or would like to take action against whomever is harassing you, you will need to follow the steps given in http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=114 to track and report the anonymous user to his or her Internet provider.

When making a report, you will need to let the Internet Service Provider know that comments on InsaneJournal are timestamped in Pacific Standard Time (GMT -8) or Pacific Daylight Savings Time if the journal user is using the S1 style system, and in GMT if the user is using the S2 style system.

If someone on InsaneJournal is infringing upon your copyright, you may make a report through the Abuse team, which is the designated recipient of copyright complaints under the provisions set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. 512(c). Complaints should follow the normal Abuse team contact procedures, which can be found at the end of this document.

Reports of infringement must include, by United States law, the following:

-- An electronic signature (your full legal name) of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder;

-- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, in the form of the original URL of the image or work being infringed upon;

-- Identification of the material that is infringing upon your copyright, with reasonable information for InsaneJournal to locate the material (you must include the username of the person who is infringing upon your copyright, and links to the allegedly infringing material);

-- Information reasonably sufficient for InsaneJournal to contact you (a valid e-mail address);

-- A statement that you in good faith believe that the material is not authorized for use in such a manner;

-- And finally, a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information given is accurate and you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder, in the following format:

I [your full legal name] swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information I have given is accurate and I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder.


Failure to include any of the above information, or failure to provide enough information for InsaneJournal volunteers to identify the violation, will seriously delay if not prevent your request being handled.

If you cannot make the above claims, your complaint is most likely not valid, and the Abuse team will not handle it. In particular, you do not hold the copyright to icons or photographs of celebrities or any icon made out of other copyrighted artwork, unless you are the copyright holder of the source image. Even if you have altered the image, the copyright still belongs to the original copyright holder, and you cannot file a notification.

Once you have filed this notification with InsaneJournal, the person who is allegedly infringing upon your copyright has an opportunity to file a counter-notification disputing your right to claim copyright on the material.

You can turn in all of the required information by visiting http://www.insanejournal.com/support/submit.bml and selecting "Abuse" as the category of your request.

If someone broke into your account and changed your password, you should be able to reclaim control of your journal. However, this requires that you still have access to an e-mail account that you had previously validated for your InsaneJournal account. The steps below describe how to regain control of an secure your InsaneJournal account. It is important that you follow them in order, to ensure that your account is as secure as possible.

Account suspensions are used by the Abuse team as a last resort. In most cases, the Abuse team only suspends journals when we cannot work with the user to resolve a violation of the Terms of Service. (Immediate suspensions are done for certain reasons, including but not limited to Denial of Service attacks, account breakins, and journals created solely to abuse.)

If your journal has been suspended, you should check your e-mail to see if you've received a warning or an explanation. If you haven't, or if you have any questions, visit http://www.insanejournal.com/support/submit.bml to open a request under the "Abuse" category or send an e-mail to abuse@insanejournal.com from the validated e-mail address of your InsaneJournal account. Be sure to include your username. The Abuse team will respond as quickly as possible, though in some cases it may be several days. Please do not open up multiple requests, as this will only serve to delay the process.

In some cases, suspended journals will not be reinstated. These cases include but are not limited to journals created solely for abuse, journals belonging to users with an extensive history of abuse, journals created to circumvent directives of the Abuse team, and journals belonging to users under the age of 13 (see http://www.insanejournal.com/legal/coppa.bml for more details on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act).