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Online "Public" Spaces Don't Guarantee Rights
mikesd81 recommends an AP piece covering a lot of examples of the ways free speech and other rights don't exist on the private Web. One case featured was that of Dutch photographer Maarten Dors, who had this picture deleted by flickr. Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. While Dors eventually got the photo restored, after the second time it was deleted, the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. "Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion. Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines. First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child." Reason.com has some more analysis on the issues brought up by the AP story.
But the lines (tubes) that the content is travelling across is privately owned. If ISPs don't want certain kinds of content travelling over their private networks, are they, by the same logic, allowed to block it? I'm a net neutrality supporter, but I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here. Why would a service provider like flickr for instance, be within their rights to remove sites they didn't like, and the ISP not be within their rights by blocking access to the same site over their network?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Here's the chicken-and-the-egg problem I see with this... it's up to Flickr to decide what gets posted on their site, right? They own it, after all. Or, that is... they paid a registrar the $10/yr or whatever that it costs to register a domain name and a hosting company to host it - or they hosted it themselves, but paid an ISP to provide the upstream bandwidth... so, they "own" it right? Or... does the registrar own it? Or does the hosting company own it? Or does the upstream ISP own it? If the Dutch photographer in the story wanted to host his own "children smoking cigarettes" website and registered with "GoDaddy", GoDaddy might very well shut it down (like they did in another case in TFA). Or the upstream ISP might shut it down (like they did in another case in TFA). Who ultimately gets to decide what's inappropriate content, and who ultimately gets to decide what's actually OK?
I actually agree with letting Flickr remove whatever they want to remove (although in this case it was way stupid), but this starts to get a bit more complex than it seems when you start thinking about it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It's not even the always propagated anarchy. It's a collection of tiny little dictatorships.
Basically, every server is owned by someone who can make his rules. I can create a server and dictate that you may discuss anything but pink socks and frilly dresses, because they scare me (and clowns! Nobody discusses clowns on my page!). I needn't publish the info that discussing such things is a nono. I just delete your submission and you can't do jack about it. Why? Because it's my server. My house, my rules, you don't like it, get lost! You wanna talk about those scary clowns that will eat me in the night, do it on your own server!
That's, on the other hand, the benefit of the net over the real world. YOU make the rules on YOUR turf. You don't like my position, you can very easily move away, something you might not so easily be able to do in reality. If your country bans the discussion of certain topics (it does happen, people. And I'm not talking about Iran or North Korea), you have no choice but to accept it. Moving away isn't always so easy. But it's easy on the net.
This is also the reason why servers with tight and outright silly restrictions (like my "no socks, no dress, no clown" example above) don't survive for long: People avoid them. So yes, I do consider such information important, to make people aware of such practices and give them an incentive to move their "business" elsewhere, where the ideals of free speech and expression are held in a higher esteem.
But complaining about it, or even outright demanding that something has to be allowed on a sever, is silly. The server is owned by someone, and he has the right to impose his own rules. You don't like it, move away, choose another server or, if free speech is offered nowhere, create your own.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, but that all was only needed in the first place because of prior government restrictions. In a truly free market, people wouldn't have to pay taxes, there would be no patents, copyright, etc. In those conditions racism, sexism, and etc. don't fly. We would also have virtually 0 monopolies, and some things would progress at a faster rate.
I suggest you read the journal entry in my sig if you think no monopoly would arise in a "truly free market"..assuming such a thing actually ever existed in the first place (hint: the last time it did we didn't have metal tools).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.
Citation needed. When has that ever happened.
I was wondering how soon tfa would hit slashdot.
On the internet, there is ease of exit. As a great man once said, the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
There's been a recurring pattern in the time I've been online.
1. Somebody sets up a site that enables free exchange of information. 2. Once they build it, people come. More people come, discussion flourishes.
3... Profit! , when site builder sells out to Yahoo for lots of money.
4. Yahoo, conscious of its image, decides to impose censorship. When egroups bought onelist (or the other way around?) and then yahoo bought it, yahoo dumbed it down. You could exchange files any more, then people couldn't see images unless they registered, then text was limited by sundry rules...
So people left. I don't know anybody who uses yahoogroups anymore.
Php forums (and blogs) seemed to be the next place to host free speech communities Since they are decentralized, yahoo can't just buy them up.
The cycle repeats; a virtual space offers a good package of civil liberties, people "vote with their feet", then the big guys want to gobble it up, dumb it down, so people move on...
The article makes the basic mainstream journalism mistake that used to happen when some reporter would confuse AOL with the internet. It's easy for a big player to buy a popular site and gut the things that made it popular. It's hard for the big player to keep people from leaving for greener pastures.
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Not the example parent post was looking for, but, many slashdot users use firefox instead of explorer, in part because of concerns about microsoft business practices interfering with online freedoms.