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.

Fighting the good fight but losing.

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:56 am
danig: (OKRF 2017)
[personal profile] danig

Paddling like crazy to keep my head above water. 

Tonight:
pick up loaner vehicle and drop Matt’s car for oil change.
City band concert
Load tables, chairs, coolers, deco into my vehicle
Could go to cover band concert downtown Bonner…we’ll see 

Tomorrow:
Tiblow Days parade
Return loaner vehicle and pick up Matt’s car
Home to pick up my loaded vehicle and for Matt to load his
I’ll take stuff in my car to brother’s house for Dad’s birthday party
Matt will go to faire site to prep tower and load in
Me – home to change clothes and load face painting kit
Face paint 5-9 (4-9:30 with travel time)
Could go to concert downtown Bonner…

Sunday:
Pick up food and cake
Dad’s birthday party
Family zoom meeting
 

Oh, and somewhere in there—likely Sat morning – mom will be discharged so there’s getting her home and settled. Thankfully she has company going to see her at the hospital today so I don't have to squeeze that in. 

I really need to run over to Mom and Dad’s today and do the dishes that she’s left sitting since July 3rd (Dad’s counting and they cover the counter). It’s his birthday today so I’ll tell him that’s his present, LOL. Will see what other easy picking up I can do in prep for Mom to come home. I already know the house is in horrible shape so next week will be the battle of forcing her to let me move/trash/do things. 

I have another load of stuff to take to faire site – That will be Wed eve next week, I guess. Also need to pick up vendor packet but that has to be done during their office hours. Sigh. Maybe Mom will want a car ride next week and I’ll take her with me to get it. 

Mom
It’s not good. They did an open incision, found out that the CAT scan didn’t show everything, removed what they could and left several areas of concern. One mass is 3 cm and they don’t like to leave anything over 1 cm. The cervical tissue was so diseased that removing it wouldn’t have left enough to close the vagina, so it stayed. There four areas of cancerous tissue they had to leave for various reasons: one was in the mesenteric arteries and blood vessels around the bowel, and another in the pelvic gutter (paracolic gutter). We won’t know the type of cancer or the stage for another 7-10 days and then they’ll talk treatment plan. They already told us it will be radiation and chemo. If it’s internal radiation I’m not sure Mom will do it (or be able to mentally allow it to happen). 

In her crazy-making decisions, Mom told the doctor she couldn’t give us any details after the surgery (that made us angry after sitting there for 11 hours waiting on her), so I didn’t learn anything until yesterday when the doctor said she wanted to meet with me, SIL, and Mom together to talk through everything. Mom didn’t understand why since the doc told her everything, but she let it happen (for reasons unknown Mom made SIL primary contact and declined the option of adding me as secondary. I don’t understand but thankfully SIL and I have been a team for 30 years and have this down to a science.) After the doc talked through everything Mom’s reaction was “Oh, so she only gave me an overview this morning. Now I understand more.” Yes, and also, you don’t.   SIL and I both feel like the doc was being a little too positive. When phrases like “quality of life” are thrown out it gets into scary territory. 

We’ll know more in 2 weeks. It’s going to be a LONG haul. 

Kenz did reach out to Nana the night before the surgery so I updated her on Mom’s status. That was the extent of the texts. Nothing personal between us, just status update. Bizarre.

I’m quickly losing my mind. I desperately need more help for KCRF on two days.  I need to work on updating inventory and pricing in Square and getting a couple of people set up as managers with their own log ins.  I’ve not yet found my excitement for faire. I hope it appears at some point. I’m meeting myself coming and going.  I sleep but dream all night, every night, even with sleep aids.

The road project is getting interesting again. The road itself is gone from in front of the house and the big toys are digging and hauling nonstop. They're dropping the roadbed 6' at the top intersection and raising it 3-5 feet at the bottom of the hill. So far it's all dirt but they will hit rock eventually, so next week will be noisy. I'll be working from Mom's most of it so it won't bother me.

January 2017

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