Journalfen is run by the two fans, ZorroRojo and Robin Serano who run Slashcity, which they opened six years ago (iirc), back when slash sites had a hard time finding webhosts and were getting TOSsed regularly.

ZR recently posted in the jftech comm at journalfen that they will be upgrading JF to the latest LJ clone version (meaning it'll like the current Livejournal site) as well doing some backend things to the hardware, upgrading and load balancing which will greatly improve the reliability and availability of the site.

IMHO, because it's fen that run it and they've dealt with C&D letters in the past (by laughing at them :)), they're better able to understand fandom's issues, they have no problem with the type of thing that LJ is squawking about - they understand that fan art isn't child porn. And ZR and Robin are pretty tough old geezer fans who've been around a fair length of time, seen the various hassles that fandom has gone thru and are pretty well equipped to defend fandom.

There's a couple drawbacks to JF, all users must be 18 or older and free accounts have to be sponsored by a paid member. They have opened up free accounts for a short period at times in the past and maybe they'll do that again after they upgrade but right now, gotta have a paid member request a free account for you to get in without paying.