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.

Comments

If you want a job done right,

[Mesa MIke]

...you gotta do it yourself, (and host it on your own servers)

Re:If you want a job done right,

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a job done right, ...you gotta do it yourself, (and host it on your own servers)

Until your upstream provider cuts you off... or your registrar cancels your domain name... or you get removed from search engines...

Re:If you want a job done right,

[Doctor Faustus]

and host it on your own servers
And then your registrar will take you down.

Also, no one will see your blog postings if you're not on one of the big sites.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[KillerCow]

If you want a job done right, ...you gotta do it yourself, (and host it on your own servers)

Until your upstream provider cuts you off... or your registrar cancels your domain name... or you get removed from search engines...

you missed one: or ISPs block customers from accessing you.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[TubeSteak]

...you gotta do it yourself, (and host it on your own servers)

And hope that /. or [large website] never links to you.

Could your webhosting handle a /.'ing?

Re:If you want a job done right,

[The Master Control P]

If rotten.com can stay on the wire, so can you.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[drinkypoo]

This is what net neutrality is all about. Anything inconvenient can be made painfully slow to use. This has already been handled by giving users shitty upload speeds and dynamic IPs, which forces users to host their data, which makes it easier to remove from the mainstream cluster of websites.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[IronChef]

Even if you own your own server, you are paying someone for connectivity, and they are probably paying up the line, and so on. All of those companies are going to have policies you have to deal with. Maybe they aren't restrictive now, but in the years to come, who knows?

It isn't possible to "own" a piece of the web in the same way I own my house. Even my domain name... If BigCo decides they want it, I wouldn't be able to afford the court costs to keep it.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[MadnessASAP]

And then your registrar will take you down.

And the police will arrest you if you walk around with billboards say that niggers are proof of gays and donkeys having sex.

Also, no one will see your blog postings if you're not on one of the big sites.

And no one will listen to you if you stand on a street corner and yell.

Actually you have it easier on the internet, We certainly have proof that registrars care very little of the content of the domains they oversee. And online you don't need to be actively exclaiming your version of the word of god for people to see it.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[jc42]

Also, no one will see your blog postings if you're not on one of the big sites.

Huh? If this is true, why would most of the "popular" bloggers have paid good money for a personal domain name? Doing that sorta hides the hosting site from your viewers.

In fact, it's usually a bit difficult to discover where any of the big-name blogs are hosted. The bloggers don't mention this because it isn't important to their readers. A blogger's domain name is passed around among readers with shared interests, and related blogs link to each other ("blogrolling"). Sometimes a blog will switch to a different host, and it's usually just a brief blip as all the readers update their bookmarks.

I don't think I've ever gone to a site like blogspot.com and looked through their index for interesting blogs. All the blogs that I read (including slashdot) I found by following a link that was in some web page or in an email from a friend.

Lessee; where was it that slashdot is hosted?

Re:If you want a job done right,

[jc42]

Of course, most people don't want the hassle of setting up their own hosting, so the market demand for upstream is low.

How much of a hassle this is depends somewhat on what kind of computer you have. I've had several friends with Macs ask about this, and got them going with their own web site in under a minute. With a Mac, if you didn't check the "Web Server" item at startup, you can go to System Preferences, click on the Sharing choice, and you'll see a list of things including Personal Web Sharing. You check that, and your web server is running. I point them to their Sites directory, and tell them that any file there will be visible on the Web.

Of course, their ISP probably gives them a nonsensical URL, unless they're lucky enough to have one of the few ISPs that will let you choose your machine's name and then set up a yourname.yourisp.com site name for you. If they won't do that, you have to go through the hassle of finding a registrar, registering a domain name, etc.

Funny thing is that, if you compare it with the phone system, people casually accept the idea that to phone you they need to look up a long, nonsensical number and type that into their phone. It could work that way with the Internet, with every account having a fixed IP address, and everyone typing that number to contact your site. But for some reason, what is acceptable (and even easy) for everyone to deal with on the phone system somehow becomes too complicated on the Internet.

Eventually, though, ISPs will be pressured to give all their customers a not-too-insane domain name, probably with the cusomers choosing the first field. Then we'll all be able to easily put up our pictures of our kids and pets and vacations, and we won't have to send out a zillion copies of each to all our friends and relatives via email. And everyone in the family will have their own blog file.

Imagine how much this will improve the world ...

Re:If you want a job done right,

[Doctor Faustus]

Huh? If this is true, why would most of the "popular" bloggers have paid good money for a personal domain name?
Because they're popular. If you have a professional-level blog that's someplace you can seriously promote and people will specifically look for, sure, you want your own site. If you're just some guy and you'd like 50-100 of your friends and acquaintances to see your posts among the general list of "what have my friends posted recently?", you really need to be on Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal or maybe one or two others.

Re:If you want a job done right,

[KGIII]

Hell, even Windows users have XAMPP that makes it pretty much point and click with little or no actual knowledge needed. They even get PHP by default (and can add PERL) so that they can do so even easier with a handy install of WP, SMF, phpBB, or just put the plain ol' HTML or raw images into the right fricken folder. 'Snot hard. Then, to make it easier, they can get one of the many tools that work with the DNS resolving (or even directly with the domain registrar I understand but I've yet to try one) so that it doesn't matter if they have a dynamic address. For FREE... For FREE they can find an English translation of the euro-bloc pages that offer image hosting. If people can put kiddy porn and warez online, openly, then you can sure as hell find a spot to post a picture of a child smoking a cigarette with little or no effort.

Blatent plug: I own a hosting company and we, as a general rule, don't actually even LOOK at what our clients host. We let 'em post what they will and deal with it as the ocmplaints roll in. Usually we don't get complaints.

I say that so that I can say this: I know that we're not alone in this policy. In fact, I know that the vast majority of hosting companies (even the free ones) don't actually have the time, resources, or priorities of checking content until a complaint is made. Instead, when you put your controversial content on a site that has an image to protect you shouldn't have an expectation of it remaining there. You should have an expectation of conflict.

When you do controversial things with other people's property (which is still the way the web is - we can argue the merits of that another time if we want but I suspect we agree) you are subject to their rules. If they allow an appeal and opt to change the policy or make an excpetion than great, if not then there is no recource and I honestly don't think their should be in most cases.

I can think of one exception... If you are a PAID customer with a contract and you haven't clearly violated the terms of service than they should refund the portion of unused monies to you. If you are a free customer than you should know that the best policy is to be prepared for failure and to keep a backup of everything just in case something goes wrong.
This is one of those subjects that I made it a point to make a comment in earlier today so that I'd not waste the remaining mod points on it later while I'm drinking. I am all for finding a system that allows full freedoms. This system isn't it. These servers belong to private parties who pay for them with private funding. The tubes may have been backed by government funding through taxation a while back but that doesn't mean anything concerning this topic.

Anyhow, most ISPs that I've encountered (limited exposure probably) didn't have TOO irational a domain name lately. They just don't actually usually support things like databases, PHP, and actually offer much space.

Finally, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just adding my own views to hopefully support (if it isn't supporting I blame beer) your same sentiment.

No Shit?

[clifyt]

Next you know, someone is going to tell me I can't have free speech in someone else's home!

If I can't go into random people's houses, and in privately owned property and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!

Re:No Shit?

[BobMcD]

I know you're just being a smartass, but what you have actually said is literally true.

You absolutely CAN have free speech in someone else's home. They also have the right to ask you to leave, but you absolutely, most certainly are FREE to hold and express whatever opinions you want.

Free speech does not guarantee a receptive audience, it only protects your right to express yourself.

That being said, and back on topic, I personally see websites such as this as being in the middle. This isn't a case of someone sullying flickr's personal space with their own, unwelcome content. This is flickr providing a place to publish, then censoring that publication without informed consent.

Those are two very, very different things.

Re:No Shit?

[bistromath007]

As with any example of this problem, the issue is ubiquity. There are few, if any, open fora today, since almost all space where you have hope of reaching any ears is either private space, or standing close enough to it that they get to complain anyway. It's one of many ways in which the government, finding itself reaching limits too politically dangerous to breach outright, basically outsource the business of limiting individual freedoms to large corporations on the basis that the corporations need freedom, too. This is the very root of fascism.

Re:No Shit?

[TobyRush]

My thoughts exactly. You're calling me a Reaganite because I oppose you coming into my house and putting pictures of Sesame Street characters smoking weed and drinking Everclear all over my toddler's bedroom walls?

Re:No Shit?

[wizardforce]

you could apply the same reasoning to government owned stuff too and that.. that's a mistake. you could invision a scenario where the last mile was nationalized and this very excuse used to censor or otherwise violate free speech rights because after all it's going over their stuff.

Re:No Shit?

[CowboyNealOption]

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Just hop the fence and come right in.

Re:No Shit?

[philspear]

Was someone claiming oppression? I didn't read the article very closely, but it seemed to be more along the lines of "Just FYI, you aren't ensured rights by private webspaces."

But by all means, feel free to put words in the author's mouth and then make fun of them.

If you're going to do that though, you should at least get a better strawman argument. An individual's house is not the same thing as a corporation's web service. Legally they might be the same thing, but since we're not in politics or a courtroom, we can use common sense.

Corporate censorship on hosted services seems (to me, and I haven't done any studies) to be motivated mostly by fear of lawsuits and a fear of offending customers (or, more often it seems, the customers' grandparents).

I understand this and it's not exactly their fault that people are idiots and abuse the legal system when they don't like something. Still, it is crap for individuals who think some things need to be said even if they do offend. The marketplace of ideas should not be limited just because large parts of it happen on privately held web services.

And that's of course different than going into someone's house and saying whatever you want: they didn't make their house as a public forum.

If you were to invite everyone over for a townhall discussion of, say, evolution, and then kick people out if they say anything that might be offensive to anyone, you're an idiot and a coward. That's a more analogous situation.

Re:No Shit?

[abstract daddy]

You absolutely CAN have free speech in someone else's home. They also have the right to ask you to leave, but you absolutely, most certainly are FREE to hold and express whatever opinions you want.

You're also free to have whatever opinion you want in, say, Iran, but the government can "ask" you to stop.

Re:No Shit?

[Mesa MIke]

Quick! Let us nationalize teh intarwebs.
That'll remove the fascism from the system!

Re:No Shit?

[Endo13]

That's why every website that allows you to contribute to it has a terms of service you have to agree to before they allow you access. And in that TOS (if you bother to read it) it also tells you that you have no rights to whatever you contribute to it, and that they reserve the right to remove it at their discretion whenever they choose for any reason. The reason the "private house" analogy breaks down here is you're somewhat limited to what you can do to remove someone from your private physical property without breaking a law (generally, you'd go to jail for shooting someone because they said something that offended you in your house). Online however, there's no such problem. There's no chance whatsoever of killing or even injuring someone when you remove them from your website. Therefore, there's a lot more free reign in exercising your rights over your website you own.

Re:No Shit?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I'm okay with nationalizing the last mile - it was largely paid for by uncle sam, and it really does count as essential infrastructure. Of course, it'd more likely be owned by each state, and the only real change is that everybody would be on an even footing for selling access, while the maintenance would be done by the city.

Re:No Shit?

[mdwh2]

There's more to the concept of "free speech" than the First Amendment of the United States (or do you think that the concept doesn't exist outside the US?)

Just because something isn't covered by the amendment, doesn't mean we can't debate about whether it's a good that significant amounts of land, or in this case, distribution of content, is in private hands.

Re:No Shit?

[jc42]

That's why every website that allows you to contribute to it has a terms of service you have to agree to before they allow you access. And in that TOS (if you bother to read it) it also tells you that you have no rights to whatever you contribute to it, and that they reserve the right to remove it at their discretion whenever they choose for any reason.

Indeed. And this is the point in the discussion where someone should point out that in the US, and in most other countries with free-speech laws, the law only says that the government can't restrict your speech. Private corporations are exempt from such laws, and they can restrict your speech (when you use their equipment) any way they like.

If you want free speech on the Internet, the only way you can get it is if your connection is owned and controlled by the government. If a government agency controls the wire, the laws protect you from interference with your speech (with certain obvious limits such as libel and incitement to commit crimes). But if a private corporation controls the wire, you have no legal rights whatsoever.

Re:No Shit?

[Merusdraconis]

Which rights are we talking about? Free speech isn't a constitutionally protected right in many countries, including first-world countries where there is an assumption of free speech but it's not technically law. (Having lived in one for most of my life, I'm not convinced it's worse. I think I prefer censorship, conducted under public scrutiny, to any idiot with an agenda being able to whip up chaos. Not that the US doesn't have censorship - for all intents and purposes, if Walmart won't carry your work you've been censored.)

Let's turn this question around. There's many laws that apply in other countries that don't apply in the US - laws relating to copyright, for instance, and relating to competition, for instance eBay forcing PayPal in Australia, which was ruled a monopoly action but probably would have happened in the US. Whose rights, whose laws, do we respect on the Internet? Should the rest of the world be forced to respect America's laws when America isn't willing to do the same?

Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Libertarians seem to forget or blithly ignore that the government is not the only means of restricting your rights. For the vast majority of US history, corporations have been bigger threats to individual rights.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[mikelieman]

Consistent with libertarian beliefs would be if they didn't incorporate in the first place. Once a corporation exchanges their rights for the benefits of incorporation, they really shouldn't complain.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[drinkypoo]

For the vast majority of US history, corporations have been bigger threats to individual rights.

What?

Can you explain to me how a corporation like Monsanto is a threat without having a government to buy IP law from? (Or to buy agent orange, but that's kind of a separate issue I guess.)

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

And your problem is with corporations?

I don't find anything you just said to be a violation of individual rights, depending on why people are jailed. Wars happen. Conscription and taxes are considered beneficent acts that can be forced on people, even by JSM.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Can you explain to me how a corporation like Monsanto is a threat without having a government to buy IP law from?

No. All complaints about corporations go away when you start removing property rights, as that is from whence their power is derived. Without a government monopoly on currency, corporations wouldn't be able to force people to get RFID chips, or take drug tests, or not keep private blogs. But communism, while it would solve that issue, has other negative effects. So maybe we start by limiting the harms corporations can do, and work from there?

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[drinkypoo]

So maybe we start by limiting the harms corporations can do, and work from there?

That's what government is supposed to do.

Of course, practically it never seems to work. Which is why I'm starting to believe that a truly free market (no IP law, no official currency, just practical trade) is probably the only kind of system with a chance to be stable. It's awfully cruel as well, though.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Detritus]

How about the Ford Motor Company? They were infamous for their heavy-handed interference in the lives of their workers and their families.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[ceoyoyo]

Why would they have to buy agent orange from the government? They could easily manufacture it themselves. Probably more efficiently than the government could.

If there weren't someone around bigger and more powerful than they are, do you really think Monsanto wouldn't just fly over every field spraying Round Up and then come back the next day and sell you RU-resistant grain to replant?

Shame what happened to your crops. Even worse if it were to happen again. I think I've got a solution for you though....

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The current system is pretty stable, and pretty cruel. I tend to tack to the other side. Since corporations are able to inflict harms because of their concentration of wealth (and the power it brings) I favor redistributing (to some degree) that wealth. Whether that is redistribution as checks to citizens, or via government programs, I'm not sure of yet.

a truly free market (no IP law, no official currency, just practical trade)

Are you advocating bartering? Becuase that seems to impose huge costs on each transaction. Otherwise, you need offical currency. Why IP law would not be part of a free market, but physical property law is, I'll never understand.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[mr_matticus]

Can you explain to me how a corporation like Monsanto is a threat without having a government to buy IP law from?

Sure. They'd do the exact same things, and you'd have no recourse. You might not think you have one now, given the "buying the law" drivel, but without a government to impose a structure, you'd have no power to challenge them. In order to further your view, you'd need the government--to ban enforcement of agreements of this type. Eliminating "IP law" doesn't change the fundamental nature of intellectual labor in a capitalist economic system; it merely eliminates any protections you might have in your favor. A creator would remain free to control release of his work by explicit contract instead and then suing you for breach of contract rather than e.g. copyright infringement.

Your fallacy, and it's an egregious one, is assuming that without IP, you can suddenly get away with anything you want. The opposite, in fact, has been the historical example. Without a statutory grant of access, everything would become prima facie unlawful. Monsanto would say "we don't have an agreement giving you access to our work" and exact appropriate retribution. If you believe that treating research and intellectual labor as an asset is a result of IP law rather than the progenitor of it, you're a poor student of history.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Why would they have to buy agent orange from the government? They could easily manufacture it themselves. Probably more efficiently than the government could.

Monsanto did make Agent Orange more efficently then the government could. It sold it to the US government during the Vietnam War. The GP was just making the point that they unleashed a horror on the world.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[drinkypoo]

Are you advocating bartering?

Not necessarily, although I imagine it constituting a larger portion of trade when it can happen above board without having to worry about calculating value for taxation. I'm thinking more about private and local currencies, which are experiencing some success in various places around the US. It's interesting, because I've always believed the government hates that kind of competition, but I haven't looked into it much.

Why IP law would not be part of a free market, but physical property law is, I'll never understand.

Well, arguably, no law is part of a free market. But you just have to draw the line somewhere.

I would have much less problem with IP law if a) copyright didn't keep getting extended and b) corporations didn't get to pretend to be people.

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[falconwolf]

If there weren't someone around bigger and more powerful than they are, do you really think Monsanto wouldn't just fly over every field spraying Round Up and then come back the next day and sell you RU-resistant grain to replant?

If I were a farmer and Monsanto had my fields sprayed I'd be calling my lawyer as well as bringing out my firearms.

Falcon

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Is it not a violation of rights to tax (force) me to pay for something which I don't agree with

Correct. Societies need to come together to accomplish some goals. Taxes are one way people come together ( conscription is another) to share burdens. Because people lie and to avoid free-rider problems, we cannot allow people to opt out of given programs. The act of shouldering a burden for society is called a beneficent act.

Is it not a violation of rights for corporations to imprison me?

Corporations cannot imprision you. The earlier point was that governments can imprision you while corporations cannot. Why the government imprisions you getermines if is a violation of your rights. Is it because of your race or your speech -- or is it because you killed you wife?

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[Cro Magnon]

If I were a farmer and Monsanto had my fields sprayed I'd be calling my lawyer as well as bringing out my firearms.

But, their's are bigger!

Re:Liberty is not just impinged by the government

[hypergreatthing]

Corporations by themselves are not a threat to liberty, but corporations donating vast ammounts of money to the government to get it's way is. The government should be by the people, for the people, not for whomever gives the most ammount of campain contributions. The option really isn't to limit coporation's abilities but to limit the government once they forget their place.

Um.... duh?

[Reality Master 201]

Flickr isn't a public place. It's a private place they let other people use. You agree to their terms when you use the site. They can remove content they don't find appropriate.

It's private property. Your rights to do what you want have always been limited on private property. If you want to have free speech online, get your own damn website or find a site that's willing to tolerate whatever you have to say.

Re:Um.... duh?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

get your own damn website

And have GoDaddy randomly take down your site (RTFA)? Oh, you don't have to use GoDaddy, but you're still reliant on someone's server. I suppose, if you have access to a high-speed connection that allows you to host a server, and can afford it, you could host it locally, but that is a huge number of people you just removed free speech online from.

Re:Um.... duh?

[CastrTroy]

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?

Re:Um.... duh?

[Conception]

I don't know. It's been recently ruled that shopping centers are considered public spaces as people have an expectation of them being public spaces even though they are privately owned. I could see, both fortunately and unfortunately, something like myspace being ruled as a public space just due from the public perception of it being reasonably public.

Re:Um.... duh?

[kikkomang]

Try Nearly Free Speech. Supposedly they allow pretty much anything except warez sites.

Re:Um.... duh?

[bryce1012]

if you have access to a high-speed connection that allows you to host a server, and can afford it, you could host it locally, but that is a huge number of people you just removed free speech online from.

That's just one more reason the telecommunications oligopoly in this country is such a terrible system. Our internet connections exist subject to the whims of a few gargantuan corporations.

This is a bad thing.

Re:Um.... duh?

[drinkypoo]

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?

Common carrier status.

I don't know if it ACTUALLY is considered to apply to ISPs, but my understanding is that in exchange for not being legally responsible for facilitating illegal communications, the phone company is not allowed to determine what kind of communications you are allowed to make over their network. It's perfectly legal for them to stop an illegal call, but illegal for them to snoop on you and find out if you're making one.

The same logic should (if it does not already) apply to ISPs. They are just there to shovel your packets. If they want control over some of my packets, they must take responsibility for all of my packets, because if they are messing with them then anything they aren't blocking is by [one possible :)] definition approved.

Re:Um.... duh?

[drinkypoo]

It's been recently ruled that shopping centers are considered public spaces

Cite? I want to use this to wear an offensive tee shirt in a mall. :P

Re:Um.... duh?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Supposedly they allow pretty much anything except warez sites.

You could RTFA and see a couterexample.

Re:Um.... duh?

[kmweber]

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?

Yes, of course.

Re:Um.... duh?

[ceoyoyo]

That's the point of a government in a free-er market economy: to regulate the industries it absolutely has to.

I can say whatever I want in my home, and the phone company has to carry my call without interference, but you can hang up on me if you like. Even if you're the local newspaper, you can still hang up on me. You're not obligated to print what I'm saying.

Re:Um.... duh?

[Kreigaffe]

I'd mod you up had I not already posted, because you're right.

Maybe.

That is, everybody thought you were right for a good... 15 years? How old is the commercial, public internet these days?

Then ISPs began blocking sites from competitors, people they don't like, traffic from programs they don't like, all for some clever reason that doesn't sound like "LOL BECAUSE WE CAN". They're really just testing the waters with all of that, that's why a net neutrality law would be pretty nice and settle the whole thing once and for all -- and tell the ISPs that they are just there to send 1's and 0's back and forth across their lines and to get the hell out of the business of deciding which 1's and which 0's they want to allow.

Re:Um.... duh?

[yuna49]

f you have access to a high-speed connection that allows you to host a server, and can afford it, you could host it locally, but that is a huge number of people you just removed free speech online from.

I keep reading this thread in disbelief at the level of hyperbole involved. I'm pretty absolutist on free speech issues, but the idea that people are somehow guaranteed a platform to speak for free has little historical or constitutional justification.

When printing presses were the standard for press freedom, the people who could afford printing presses had more opportunities to speak, and to reach a broader audience, than those without the presses. Now that the printing press has been replaced by a computer, people here seem to think we need to change the rules of the game? Why? What happened to the meme that things "on the Internet" should be governed in the same manner as things in meatspace?

I'd argue it's a lot cheaper for someone to put their views forward on the Internet than it ever was in, say, 18th-19th century America. There are lots of hosting sites; not all of them are going to censor you. (GoDaddy is well-known for a variety of pernicious activities; I'd never send anyone there to host a site.) Or, as others have sagely remarked, you can set up your own server. Do you really think it's more expensive for you to do either of these than it would have been for you to buy a printing press and open a newspaper or publish a broadsheet in 1830's America?

I also don't hear much about how this supposed regulation of ISPs would come about. If you don't like how private parties censor the Internet, do you really believe you'd be happier with a system where the government gets to determine who can say what? I'm a lot more comfortable with a system where the means of speech reside in private hands since that insures one of those pairs of hands can be my own.

I also agree with the poster earlier who suggests this article again misunderstands the nature of the Internet. In essence the author buys in to the erroneous belief that what matters are the decisions made by a few large players like Flickr or GoDaddy because that happens to be where a lot of people congregate. The Internet has been a "peer-to-peer" system since its inception. That's why it's become the most significant facilitator of free speech in human history. It offers everyone the opportunity to become a publisher.

Re:Um.... duh?

[Conception]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/us/25mall.html?ei=5070&en=755b6ef80639603e&ex=1199250000&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1198684937-Kw0EHIKYqMSkvFdFc8IoWA

Court Ruling on Protests Curbs Malls in California

Re:Um.... duh?

[Khaed]

If the bigots at Stormfront can have a website, I'm pretty certain anyone can find a way to host their stuff legally.

You just have to look for a host that specializes in whatever you want to have on your website, and a registrar as well -- and they do exist.

Re:Um.... duh?

[jc42]

Common carrier status.

It can be instructive to look into the history of that concept. Google for "common carrier" and "history", and buried in the zillions of hits is a lot of history.

An interesting part is the origin of the concept. Centuries ago, before electronics, messages were generally carried by messengers or couriers, typically a man on horseback. There were some serious problems with the system. Imagine a case in which prince A wants to send a message to prince B about an action (financial, legal, military, whatever) that they are planning against prince C.

One problem was that it was common to "blame the messenger for the message". If B doesn't like the message, perhaps because he's secretly cooperating with C, all too often B's response to the message would be to torture, injure, or kill the messenger. This isn't good for the courier service's business.

But the courier services had defenses against this. The obvious one was that couriers would often read their messages. If a message contained bad news for the recipient, it was likely that the courier would "lose" the message in self defense. Also, in the above case, the courier might make a copy and sell it to prince C. This sort of thing isn't good for the senders or recipients of the messages.

The "common carrier" concept arose as a solution to such problems. It was essentially an agreement that a courier wouldn't open and read messages, but would just deliver them unexamined to their recipients. In exchange, the recipients agreed to not harm the couriers (and to pay their bills even if they didn't like the messages ;-). This sort of agreement, especially with the force of law behind it, was what made long-distance business and political communication possible for the first time. Without it, no communication was reliable, and people were at the mercy of the couriers (who lived in fear of their customers).

Anyway, whether or not ISPs are common carriers seems irrelevant. They are behaving as if they are not. They are reading the contents of messages, they are slowing or failing to deliver messages whose contents they don't like, and they are selling information about message contents to the sender's competitors and/or government agencies. The ISPs are making the Internet unreliable and untrustworthy. They block messages to our friends and sell our messages to our enemies, to put it in Medieval terms.

They are seriously risking the possibility that their customers will respond by "shooting the messenger" sometime soon. But it's also possible that the ISPs might wise up, as did many Medieval princes and merchants, and realize that a "common carrier" service that provides reliable, secret communication is a business necessity.

Or maybe they won't. The analogy isn't perfect. The ISPs seem to think they have an opportunity to control all communication, which would put them at the top of the power pyramid. If this is truly what they're thinking, we might be in for some tough times ahead, as they systematically sabotage all our communications, and the business and political worlds fall into chaos as a result.

But it never hurts to understand a bit of the history of why concepts like "common carrier" arose in the past.

Re:Um.... duh?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

What happened to the meme that things "on the Internet" should be governed in the same manner as things in meatspace?

I've never heard that meme; I've commonly heard the opposite.

I'm pretty absolutist on free speech issues, but the idea that people are somehow guaranteed a platform to speak for free has little historical or constitutional justification.

I take a positive view of rights. Not only should society not infringe on your right to free speech, it should help enable you communicate. It should give you tools such as an education so that you can communicate.

For that matter, if people have an individual rights to guns (notice the "if" if you disagree with that right) the government should take reasonable steps to encourage you to be able to purchase them.

There is a line of course, such as cost. The government shouldn't provide everyone a TV station. But there is some effort that is reasonable.

I'd argue it's a lot cheaper for someone to put their views forward on the Internet than it ever was in, say, 18th-19th century America.

I'd agree. I'd argue that is why it wasn't reasonable for the government to provide a positive right back then, but it is reasonable now. It's merely a matter of legally curtailing corporate censorship.

I also don't hear much about how this supposed regulation of ISPs would come about.

Net neutrality seems hard? You legally make it so. Technically, it's just a matter of not doing what they are currently not doing.

If you don't like how private parties censor the Internet, do you really believe you'd be happier with a system where the government gets to determine who can say what?

That's a false dichotomy. No one is advocating the latter. I am advocating the government enforce fairness on he corporations.

'm a lot more comfortable with a system where the means of speech reside in private hands since that insures one of those pairs of hands can be my own.

I'd rather my right to free speech be backed up by the force of law and the US Constitution, then by how big a bat I can swing. Personally, I own 0% of the backbone connetions, or any wire outside my house. I own a couple of domains, and one connection that I cannot host on. I cannot afford more than that, personall. I doubt you can afford much more than that. What happens when your local ISP doesn't like your site. Or your customer's ISP doesn't like it? Or anyone in between doesn't like it.

In essence the author buys in to the erroneous belief that what matters are the decisions made by a few large players like Flickr or GoDaddy because that happens to be where a lot of people congregate.

He knows that the internet has many sites. But he also knows that network effects mean that only a few are important within any community are important. They are important. I have 2 ISPs I can choose from. I have to go over ATamp;T's backbone to get to many sites. I have to find sites on a search engine.

Re:Um.... duh?

[dodobh]

ISPs are not common carriers.

Re:Um.... duh?

[hypergreatthing]

I dunno, places where you make an account and agree to a eula to me are public places. Anyone can sign up, there's no defined user base and there's no boundaries.

Sounds to be you're talking about a gated park that allows anyone to enter as long as they follow established easy to understand rules like, "no dogs, no alcohol, park closes at sundown" type of thing.

You sort of give away your private property status when you invite anyone to join.

If not, i guess i'll start a barbershop, and whenever i see an asian person come in i'll tell them they're not welcome there. I guess that works under private property, right?

Re:Um.... duh?

[Reality Master 201]

I dunno, places where you make an account and agree to a eula to me are public places. Anyone can sign up, there's no defined user base and there's no boundaries.

Sounds to be you're talking about a gated park that allows anyone to enter as long as they follow established easy to understand rules like, "no dogs, no alcohol, park closes at sundown" type of thing.

You sort of give away your private property status when you invite anyone to join.

They still own the site and provide the service, and the fact that membership is open to all has nothing to do with it.

When you sign up, you agree to abide by the terms of service, are invited to read those terms, and informed that they may change. If you don't agree to abide by the terms of service, you can't use the service. If you do, you can.

If not, i guess i'll start a barbershop, and whenever i see an asian person come in i'll tell them they're not welcome there. I guess that works under private property, right?

Sure, why not? You might run afoul of discrimination laws, though.

But instead, let's pick an analogy that's actually something like the original issue in the article. Say that you start a barbershop and when someone comes in drunk, you tell them they're not welcome there. Or something more familiar in the real world, like those "no shirt, no shoes, no service" signs you see in convenience stores. That works under private property, right? Or are you saying that stores and businesses don't have a right to refuse service to people for reasons of their own?

Re:Um.... duh?

[hypergreatthing]

I don't know. I'd like to say if it's open to the public then they should admit everyone. If there are clear and easy to understand rules posted, then people can abide by them. If they post 2000 line eulas which say you agree to this as you enter and we have every right to do whatever we want once you're inside including change the rules, i'm not too sure if i could agree to that. It's like saying prices subject to change depending if we like you or not. Not exactly the kind of buisness practices that i feel should be legal.

What the...

[edmac3]

These spaces aren't public-they're paid for with private money by private companies (or their shareholders). Why is there a feeling of wrong doing here? They can do whatever they want with their own servers and websites.

Re:What the...

[Bieeanda]

It's the same ignorance that makes people think it's perfectly fine and harmless to steal bandwidth by using img tags to link images from other sites, just a different flavour. I see people scream and whine about DeviantArt being run by 'facists' [sic] because they're too fucking lazy to check the AUPs, as one of many frustrating examples.

Of course, if the site doesn't have an AUP that covers a bit of material that's been uploaded and later removed... then there's a definite problem.

Re:What the...

[The Warlock]

Not really; if a site has no AUP, you can assume that the AUP is "whatever the owners/administrators feel like doing at the moment." This is how it has always been.

Click Elsewhere

[negRo_slim]

It's just like any convenience store, it's a public space but private property. If you say something off color or for whatever reason whomever is in charge deems you an undesirable you can be forced to leave... I don't really see much of a difference here other then a website might have a ToS for you to peruse while in a store you have to rely on *gasp* common sense and social skills.

If this really is such a problem stop devoting so much time and effort onto areas controlled and governed by private entities. Seek out new places where rules are consistent and turning a profit takes a back seat to a good user experience or quality service provided... Just my .02...

Cry me a river

[religious freak]

You are parking your property on private property. You are subject to the reasonable (very broadly interpreted) rules of the private property owner. YOU are CHOOSING to put your content on THEIR site.

No Cartoons on The Weather Channel

[omnichad]

Seriously. I am being censored, because I want the Weather Channel to show my nifty cartoons.

What?

They're not related to weather? So what! Free speech!!!! I'm being violated!

services provided comes with strings attached

[El_Muerte_TDS]

... film at eleven

There really is no such thing as...

[dahitokiri]

free speech. If you host it on your own server, you have to abide by the laws of your municipality/state/country. So, if they don't like what you have to say, you're reprimanded, which can be anything from getting shut down to getting thrown into prison (America) to getting executed (Iran). One can say that you can always "buy" your country... till some other country drops a bomb on you/cuts off all food/electricity/internet because they don't like what you're saying (or showing).

The internet isn't a public place...

[ivanmarsh]

Unless you're using a government service or paying for a specific service under contract the internet is not a public place. It's a collection of private places that allow you to post data publicly. Civil rights do not apply.

All the data you upload to a server belongs to whomever owns that server and will be treated as their usage policy dictates.

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[abstract daddy]

All the data you upload to a server belongs to whomever owns that server and will be treated as their usage policy dictates.

If this were true then you could legally host copyrighted data such as movies on your server. But you can't.

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[drinkypoo]

Unless you're using a government service or paying for a specific service under contract the internet is not a public place.

You seem not to get it, but then you say:

All the data you upload to a server belongs to whomever owns that server and will be treated as their usage policy dictates.

Keep in mind that this is true of government servers, too. They're not owned by you, they're owned by "the people" and if your comment on the president's blog gets removed don't call the supremes, call your congressman (or write a whiny blog entry.)

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[ivanmarsh]

All the data you upload to a server belongs to whomever owns that server and will be treated as their usage policy dictates.

If this were true then you could legally host copyrighted data such as movies on your server. But you can't.

No, you couldn't. Unless you have the legal right to host that copyrighted content it shouldn't be on your server in the first place. If you steal a television and set it up in your house it doesn't make it yours.

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[ivanmarsh]

Unless you're using a government service or paying for a specific service under contract the internet is not a public place.

You seem not to get it, but then you say:

All the data you upload to a server belongs to whomever owns that server and will be treated as their usage policy dictates.

Keep in mind that this is true of government servers, too. They're not owned by you, they're owned by "the people" and if your comment on the president's blog gets removed don't call the supremes, call your congressman (or write a whiny blog entry.)

True, but my point about government servers is that they, at least, have a higher expectation of providing for your civil rights. A private entity has no expectation what so ever.

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[abstract daddy]

You said that if you upload something to a server, it becomes the server owner's property that he can use any way he chooses. Thus, uploading a copy of Wall-E to a server would make it the server owner's property.

Re:The internet isn't a public place...

[ivanmarsh]

It would, in the sense that, being a copyright violation, it would be their responsibility to delete it. Which is exactly why the MPAA can go after YouTube and make them delete copyrighted material without concent of the uploading party.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[religious freak]

Your timing is impeccable, but your logic is flawed. So you think YOU should be able to tell them how to run their business? Or do you think the government should take care of that for you?

This is their property, they have a right to determine what is appropriate for them and what is not. If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.

You're missing the point.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Of course other people should be able to control how others make use of their property. Nobody's denying that. The question is: where can you exercise your right to free speech in the Internet, without being subject to others' right to control how you make use of their property?

In real life, there exist spaces that are clearly public. In the Internet, there aren't any obvious ones. Even if you try to set up your own site, the various providers may censor you if they choose to do so.

Re:You're missing the point.

[Cajun Hell]

where can you exercise your right to free speech in the Internet, without being subject to others' right to control how you make use of their property?

That is indeed tricky. The "solution" seems to publish on your own computer in your own home (because there is no public space, anywhere), instead of hosting on someone else's or even colocating your computer in someone else's datacenter. But then you run into the problem that when you host information, it's generally done in a manner where you're listening on a port and an ISP (whose network you use) can decide to not allow their net to be used by people initiating connections to your computer.

Perhaps things like freenet can solve that, where you are using other people's computers, but even if they desire to enforce their property rights, they can't effectively do so except by withdrawing from freenet.

Another alternative might be to self-host, but have so many pathways that an ISP cutting one link, doesn't significantly impact you. That's the dream(fantasy?) of wireless meshes and stuff like that.

Re:You're missing the point.

[jc42]

The "solution" seems to publish on your own computer in your own home (because there is no public space, anywhere), ... But then you run into the problem that ... an ISP (whose network you use) can decide to not allow their net to be used by people initiating connections to your computer.

Perhaps this is a case where the worn-out automotive analogy is relevant. In the case of travel, I own my own home, but I'm not restricted to that home. I have a car, and I can legally drive it on the roads next to our lot, and on the roads that those two roads intercept, etc. I can legally drive nearly anywhere on the road system. Why? Well, it's because those roads aren't private property. They are almost all owned by government entities (the city or state or national government), and the US Constitution says that government entities can't restrict my travel (with the obvious exception of when I've been convicted of a crime).

The current Internet is unfortunately like the road system that the private-property fanatics advocate. Imagine a road system in which every segment of road was private, and you have to have permission from every owner to drive along a road. There would be a roadblock and a toll booth at every intersection. The person there could decide to not allow you to drive on the next road segment.

This would be clearly unworkable. And it's pretty much how the commercial Internet is now organized. The ISPs are just now waking up to the power they have to "shape" traffic. They see a future in which they can collect unlimited tolls for passage along their segments of the system. They see the power to block traffic by people that they don't like, and to charge extra for access to popular places.

It might be that, in the not-very-long run, the only solution is to "nationalize" the Internet. If its various segments are, like the road system, mostly owned by government bodies, the Constitution will guarantee unrestricted passage by our packets (with the obvious exception of certain types of criminal activity).

I do have the usual suspicions about the competence and good will of our typical government agencies. But they have done a mostly good job of providing a road system that works, without having government inspectors stopping us at every intersection and blocking travel by people that the party currently in power locally doesn't like. Maybe this is the model we should be looking at for the future of the Internet. Maybe private ownership of the comm lines is ultimately just as unworkable as private ownership of the roads.

If you want freedom, at least here in the US, our laws only protect you in "public" places. In private places, you effectively have no rights to even be there, much less do as you like, unless you're the owner.

(BTW, this isn't true everywhere. For example, google for "allmansrätt" to read about the Swedish law on use of private property. Of course, a lot of the hits will be for pages in Swedish ...)

Re:You're missing the point.

[KGIII]

I commented here already (so that I'd not go crazy with the mod points) so I can't mod this up or I would. The current system is not conducive to many of the constitutional freedoms that we have here in America. I'd say that the system needs changing but we should also remember that the current system is not just an American entity. Just so that no one needs to go read my other posts on this topic I'll repeat that I'm very much in favor of a private company's property being restricted in any manner that they see fit so long as it doesn't discriminate as the legally defined prohibited discriminations (gender, sexual preference, race, creed, age, and I think that's about it actually).

So, well, someone mod the parent up. Someone who doesn't care about the topic a great deal. (That's how I use my mod points - speaking of which, why'd I get ten of 'em today?)

As a half black Irish male I'd have to also go so far as to make the marginally on-topic comment and it seems to fit best here. I fully support the idea that someone who doesn't like a specific race, creed, gender, etc. should not be forced to allow them into their private home. That too is a right. So, well, when it comes to a web site - where do we draw the line? If the site is a brick and mortar business it is pretty clear. However, what if it is a personal site that offers some "public" feature such as commenting on their blog or joining their forum? How about if they have ads - does that make it a "business?" These lines are too difficult to deal with in the current system, I'm not sure I want to alter too much about the current system, though I think ensuring net neutrality would be the first step to take and would probably be the only step I'd want to take in that direction.

Re:You're missing the point.

[Arccot]

In real life, there exist spaces that are clearly public. In the Internet, there aren't any obvious ones. Even if you try to set up your own site, the various providers may censor you if they choose to do so.

What's interesting is that the public places supporting and protecting free speech in real life are owned by the government. Can you imagine your government setting up a truly anonymous free speech zone on the 'Net? It's enough to make your head spin. :-)

The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Reality Master 101]

Seriously -- is there anyone other than this AP reporter who really believes their constitutional right to free speech applies to other people's private web sites? Are there people really this ignorant that don't understand the whole point of the Constitution is to limit *government* power to oppress speech?

Given this AP's reporter's surprise, I would assume that the AP's web site will allow me to post anything I want there, otherwise they're suppressing my "free speech rights".

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[computational super]

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.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Are there people really this ignorant that don't understand the whole point of the Constitution is to limit *government* power to oppress speech?

The whole point of the first amendment is to limit the federal government's power to censor speech. The whole point of the fourteen amendment is to limit the individual state's powers to that of the federal government's. I fail to understand why there shouldn't be rights that protect free speech in companies. Whistleblower laws due this to some degree. We recognize that companies cannot have racist or sexist employment standards.

If I wanted to say unpopular things, it would be easier to survive antipathy from my state than Google. After all, I can leave my state, but I cannot convince people not to use google.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Reality Master 101]

I fail to understand why there shouldn't be rights that protect free speech in companies.

You have a company. You hire a salesman to go out and demonstrate your product. The salesman offends your customers by constantly telling crude sex jokes to them, while he shows your product. Is it his right to say whatever he wants? After all, it's free speech and legal.

You own a preschool. The teacher tells the kids all about her sexual exploits the night before. Is it her right to do that? It's free speech, after all.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You have a company. You hire a salesman to go out and demonstrate your product. The salesman offends your customers by constantly telling crude sex jokes to them, while he shows your product. Is it his right to say whatever he wants? After all, it's free speech and legal.

Nope, just as there are times when sex/creed discrimination is legal. The employer has a right to be concerned with job performance.

You own a preschool. The teacher tells the kids all about her sexual exploits the night before. Is it her right to do that? It's free speech, after all.

Actually, the Supreme Court would probably rule it was obscene and not subject ot free speech protection.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Qzukk]

will allow me to post anything I want there, otherwise they're suppressing my "free speech rights".

Does the AP tell you you can post stuff there? No? Don't go off the deep end. Flickr put up a list of rules to abide by. None of those rules had anything to do with a smoking kid. Some person at flickr made the decision to remove the content.

Whether you like it or not, that decision to remove content is the very definition of censorhip. It has nothing to do with government power, it has nothing to do with whether the artist could have gone somewhere else to publish his work.

Is non-government censorship illegal? No, and amazingly enough, the AP didn't claim it was, despite your ridiculous rant.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[kmweber]

It's not that complex at all.

If Flickr doesn't like what you send to it, they're entitled to refuse it.

If Flickr's bandwidth providers, domain registrars, etc. don't like what Flickr does, they're entitled to refuse service in the future (and perhaps even cancel current service, depending on the terms of their agreements).

Etc., etc.

Really, it's pretty simple.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[cstdenis]

They own the site.
The hosting company own the server (unless their own their own server as I strongly suspect they do)
The registrar (or perhaps more accurately ICANN) owns the domain.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to understand why there shouldn't be rights that protect free speech in companies.

You have a company. You hire a salesman to go out and demonstrate your product. The salesman offends your customers by constantly telling crude sex jokes to them, while he shows your product. Is it his right to say whatever he wants? After all, it's free speech and legal.

You own a preschool. The teacher tells the kids all about her sexual exploits the night before. Is it her right to do that? It's free speech, after all.

Why wouldn't it be right for them to say those things? The companies will probably lose clients and the person who said that would probably be fired... But they still have the right to say it.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[computational super]

Exactly... creating a whole branch of unelected, unaccountable censors.

Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking

[kmweber]

Not at all. You're always free to refuse to deal with them for whatever reason you choose, after all.

Let's correct this flawed analogy.

[plasmacutter]

Next you know, someone is going to tell me I can't have free speech in someone else's home!

If I can't go into random people's houses, and in privately owned property and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!

"Next you know, someone is going to tell me I can't have free speech in the home I rented from someone else!"

"If I can't go into my rented house, and in privately owned property i'm renting and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!"

Fixed.

Re:Let's correct this flawed analogy.

[eam]

> "Next you know, someone is going to tell me I can't have free speech
> in the home I rented from someone else!"
> "If I can't go into my rented house, and in privately owned property
> i'm renting and say what I want, you are
> oppressing me!!!"

It would depend on the lease agreement. If you signed an agreement that gave the landlord permission to remove any posters from your walls, it wouldn't be oppression. Just a really weird lease.

Re:Let's correct this flawed analogy.

[Stanislav_J]

"If I can't go into my rented house, and in privately owned property i'm renting and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!"

As long as what you say goes no further than the walls of your house. Start yelling obscenities out the window at the neighbors, and I think the landlord (and the police) might have a wee problem with that.

Re:Let's correct this flawed analogy.

[veganboyjosh]

Just a really weird lease.

I once was going over a potential lease to see what I would be signing up for, and in the part where it talks about what the landlord is not responsible for (telephone bills, cable, garbage pickup, etc) there was a sentence on its own. "Tenant is solely responsible for any and all pizza delivery charges." I like to think about the misunderstanding that must have occurred to get that phrase into subsequent versions of that landlord's lease.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[The End Of Days]

Cue the Slashdot jokers claiming that Flickr's servers somehow belong to the public in... oh, I'm late on this I guess.

Artificial Legal Entities

[mikelieman]

A corporation, by definition is an Artificial Legal Entity ( ALE ). Which means, that is is CREATED not by Natural Persons, but by another Artificial Entity. ( The State )

Given our State Constitutions, it's CREATED by The People of the Great State of whatever, by way of the Secretary of State's office.

Now, turning to examine the Declaration of Independence, we see that RIGHTS COME FROM OUR CREATOR.

So, we have a situation where the "rights" of an Artificial Legal Entity are *EXACTLY* what the Secretary of State's office ( their Creator in the context of "rights" w.r.t the Declaration of Independence ) gives them.

Now, with all this in mind, answer the following question:

Since the Secretary of State's office is limited by constitutional prohibitions, can that office confer on its own creation *more* authority than it, itself has?

I offer that , SoS > ALE , and therefore ALE's are automatically bound by the constitutional prohibitions of its creator.

I see NOTHING in the Declaration of Independence OR any Constitution saying otherwise. Anyone have citations to support the counter-argument?

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, the Declaration is not legally relevent. That "rights from the creator" may be morally or technically true, but has no legal truth.

I find your point of view interesting, but you should rephrase it would referencing the Declaration. More like "The government has no legal right to do X, can they create an independent organization to do X?". I don't recall the answer, but I believe there is caselaw about that.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[Aetuneo]

The only real response I can find to this is to quote Foucault's Pendulum at you:
"Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, and therefor cats bark. Or that all Athenians are mortal, and all the citizens of Piraeus are mortal, so all the citizens of Piraeus are Athenians."
"Which they are."
"Yes, but only accidentally. Morons will occasionally say something that's right, but they say it for the wrong reason."
...
"In such statements you suspect that something is wrong, but it takes work to show what and why. Morons are tricky. You can spot the fool right away (not to mention the cretin), but the moron reasons almost the way you do; the gap is infinitesimal. A moron is a master of paralogism."

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[drinkypoo]

Seems to me like the constitution says that anything not in the constitution is supposed to belong to the states, but the constitution a) can be amended and b) says that the government can create necessary institutions. Basically the whole problem then becomes a bunch of lawyering (lawyer coming from a root meaning to twist or screw) over what is "necessary". You could argue about that all day, so I don't see any particular need to bother here now, but basically the government has the only right which matters - they can get away with things, because the people let 'em.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Seems to me like the constitution says that anything not in the constitution is supposed to belong to the states

Please reread it. It says a) Certain things belong to the people as individual rights; b) The federal government has some enumerated powers, which cannot be used to infringe on people's rights; c) Everything else belongs to the states.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[mr_matticus]

A corporation, by definition is an Artificial Legal Entity ( ALE ). Which means, that is is CREATED not by Natural Persons, but by another Artificial Entity. ( The State )

Error in the first step.

A corporation is not created by the state. It is created by private citizens, who then register it with the state, where they pay taxes in order for the unmolested privilege of selling to residents of the state and providing a form of accreditation for third parties to verify against.

At no point does the corporation become an arm of the state or an agent of the government.

So, we have a situation where the "rights" of an Artificial Legal Entity are *EXACTLY* what the Secretary of State's office

No. The "rights" of a corporation are those granted to them by the state's business and professions code, its labor laws, and relevant legislation, granted, interestingly enough, by the legislature, which is composed of citizens. The Secretary of State is not legally endowed with the power to grant or deny rights.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[servognome]

I offer that , SoS > ALE , and therefore ALE's are automatically bound by the constitutional prohibitions of its creator.

Marriages are also ALE's, should married people be bound by Constitutional restrictions.

I offer that , SoS > ALE , and therefore ALE's are automatically bound by the constitutional prohibitions of its creator.

Corporations, unions, etc. are protected by the Constitution under the first amendment (freedom of association).

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[mikelieman]

The assumption there being that The People have control over their States, and that they can exert due influence on the Federal Level..

Damn 17th Amendment.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[mikelieman]

You can associate all you want. You don't get limited liability, tax benefits, existence in perpetuity, etc. unless you agree to The People's Regulation. Part-and-Parcel with that, I'd suggest, is the requirement to act in Good Faith, and generally to benefit The People.

You don't HAVE TO ENJOY those benefits.

You don't have to incorporate to conduct business. If you're going to take advantage of the supposed benefits, don't bitch about the cost. Caveat Emptor.

Just like those who marry, shouldn't complain about the price of divorce.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[servognome]

You can associate all you want. You don't get limited liability, tax benefits, existence in perpetuity, etc. unless you agree to The People's Regulation. Part-and-Parcel with that, I'd suggest, is the requirement to act in Good Faith, and generally to benefit The People.

Yes the state can place certain permisisons in the public interest, however, it state does not have carte blanche to dictate any terms it wants. For example it cannot dictate that spouses testify against one another, force corporate newspapers to report the party line, or surpress the speech of unions.
If the state has the power to prevent a corporation from deleting speech, it also has the power to force a corporation to delete certain speech, or carry certain messages. Dissolving the right of association for corporations, allows the government to violate the first amendment of individuals by proxy. It's something that already exists partially with the FCC, why give the government that power over the web too?

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[mikelieman]

"It's something that already exists partially with the FCC, why give the government that power over the web too?"

Herein is the essential point.

FCC LICENSEES ARE VOLUNTEERS. As are the people who beg the Secretary of State for permission to Incorporate.

No-one is holding a gun to anyone's head MAKING them join up.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[servognome]

In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo the supreme court ruled the requirement publish violates freedom of the press as it would create an "intrusion into the function of editors in choosing what material goes into a newspaper and in deciding on the size and content of the paper and the treatment of public issues and officials."

FCC LICENSEES ARE VOLUNTEERS. As are the people who beg the Secretary of State for permission to Incorporate.
No-one is holding a gun to anyone's head MAKING them join up.

Just because you volunteer doesn't mean you can be compelled give up all rights.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[mikelieman]

Yes it does.

Otherwise explain how the Government gets to tell you how to use your personal property. Like a car.

It's YOURS, but you don't have absolute property rights in it because you AGREED to give them up for a driver's license and registration.

Re:Artificial Legal Entities

[servognome]

What you are pointing out is a practical restriction, not a complete surrender of rights. For example freedom of speech in the form of bumper stickers is still guaranteed even with a registered vehicle & licensed driver. Your property rights may be restricted because of a clear threat to public safety, but you do not sign away all your property rights to the government as they cannot take your car away without due process.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

Yeah, and for 6 years when I was moved to the southeast with my family in the early 90's, we rented a house.

Maybe they should be allowed to put riders in my rental contract saying I can't campaign for my local green party, or post signs in the yard detailing exactly why supply side economics is flawed?

How long do you think that would fly in court.

There's a reason the federal government stared suing private citizens/businesses for violating people's constitutional rights in the late 60's.

And in other news...

[clang_jangle]

...some businesses have a dress code. Shocking!

Re:And in other news...

[drinkypoo]

In California you can't mandate any dress code not for business reasons. People do, of course, and they usually get away with it. But if you're not in the public eye they can't ask you to dress any way except for "conventionally decent". (On the other hand, California is an "At Will" employment state...)

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.

Citation needed. When has that ever happened.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

They are renting you the photo hosting for the advertising traffic.

It's no different than leasing someone a car (to bring up the famous slashdot car analogy).

They have no right to tell you you can't listen to that "damn negro music" in that leased car, nor do they have a right to control the speed of the vehicle from the corporate office.

You want free speech? DIY.

[Broken Toys]

If someone is hosting your images for free then you're going to find that the web host may have a different set of artistic and/or moral values. And they might not like pictures of children smoking because it's, uh, icky.

It's not that difficult to find a web host that could care less about what you post online so long as you pay your bills on time. Of course this means you have to register your domain and do a few other adminstrative things but now it's your domain and you can post pretty much whatever you like.

Free image hosting does not equal a right to free speech.

Privately owned spaces have never been free

[jschottm]

Free speech (within the United States) applies to government muzzles - it has never and should never apply to private areas that the public uses. Just as I have no guaranteed right to free speech in a mall, movie theatre, or someone's front yard, the same applies to online spaces. I'm a little puzzled why people would have legitimate reason to think that online freedom of speech would be guaranteed. They did read the ToS when they created the accounts, yes? (Yes, I know the answer to that question.)

Don't like the ToS? Then don't use the service. Ask the provider to fix the problems. But don't complain about "rights" being non-existent. The services being used are created and paid for by _someone_ - that someone gets to set the rules.

Part of what is great about an open web is that there is a very low bar to entry for people (at least those in first world countries, which the article primarily deals with) to create their own services and sites (limited only be laws). Most of the cases being cited are either free or very low fee sites. It's unrealistic to expect a lot of handholding and hands-on care if you're paying $10/year for photo hosting. If your artistic statement of kids smoking is so important that you have to make it, pony up for a web site someplace. If it's not important enough to the artist to pay $20-100/year for a cheap account why would a corporation be expected to pay the same amount in support costs on the user's behalf?

To quote TalkLeft...

[g_adams27]

Yahoo is not the government. It has no obligation to respect your right to free speech. In fact, you give Yahoo the right to delete anything you upload if it contravenes Yahoo's difficult-to-discern standards. When Yahoo deletes publicly displayed content (or when TalkLeft does, for that matter) it is not playing a "governmental role," as this writer asserts. Substitute "managerial role," and the writer has a point.

None of the AP writer's observations are shocking. It has long been understood that freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press. The electronic equivalent of the press is a website. If you want to participate in a privately owned website, you play by the owner's rules, whether or not they seem fair to you.

TalkLeft

Or cue the common sense

[Moraelin]

Cue the Reaganites claiming nothing is wrong with this practice in 3... 2.. 1..

Or how about cue some common sense? If I'm on your private property, I have no fucking rights over you or your property. It's your private property. You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it. Otherwise it's not really yours. It's that simple.

If I happened to be over at your house and started spewing stuff that you find offensive, you're well within your rights to ask me to leave or not to let me in in the first place. Or are you saying that I can drop by your house at any time I wish, and start telling obscene jokes to your wife? I mean, if you don't, you're censoring my free speech, right? You wouldn't want to sound like a "reaganite", would you?

I'm not even a "reaganite", I'm a western european socialist, if you must put a label on me, but even I'm... amazed at the idiots who think that screaming "first amendment" gives them essentially rights over someone else or their private property. Get this: freedom of speech doesn't mean that anyone else is forced to listen to you, nor that anyone else must help you spread it. Freedom of press applies to whoever owns the press. That's it. It means that if you have a newspaper (or in modern days a server), the government can't come tell you to remove an anti-Bush column. No more.

It does _not_ mean that you can force anyone to listen. It does _not_ mean you have rights over someone else's newspaper. It does _not_ mean that they must give you a page to spew your speech on.

In short, it doesn't grant you power over anyone. It just says that the government can't have certain powers over you.

In other words, it does _not_ mean I can come over and tell you, "OK, I wrote this rant, you must put it on your blog."

Or if you don't find anything wrong with that, then put your wallet where your mouth is, and provide such an uncensored server for others. That's freedom of the press. You're free to do that. But just demanding that someone _else_ has some duty to provide you with free stuff, is just lame.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[plasmacutter]

Or how about cue some common sense? If I'm on your private property, I have no fucking rights over you or your property. It's your private property.

except theyre renting it out to individuals for the express purpose of their own expression, whether it's for directly paid fees or advertising revenue from traffic.
Their interference/censorship at any point in this process is equivalent to a landlord entering your house in the dead of night and ripping down your kids rap posters because he doesn't like that "negro music".

You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it. Otherwise it's not really yours. It's that simple.

According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.

If I happened to be over at your house and started spewing stuff that you find offensive, you're well within your rights to ask me to leave or not to let me in in the first place.

And If I rented it to you and tried the same thing you'd put me in garnishment until my great grandchildren were too old to reproduce.

Or are you saying that I can drop by your house at any time I wish, and start telling obscene jokes to your wife? I mean, if you don't, you're censoring my free speech, right? You wouldn't want to sound like a "reaganite", would you?

false dichotomy. I am not opening my house and advertising it as a public forum like these web hosts are.

Get this: freedom of speech doesn't mean that anyone else is forced to listen to you, nor that anyone else must help you spread it.

And nobody is forcing you to visit the websites or view the pictures hosted there, but they have an obligation to treat people equally and not discriminate on them based on political views or aesthetic tastes.

Freedom of press applies to whoever owns the press. That's it. It means that if you have a newspaper (or in modern days a server), the government can't come tell you to remove an anti-Bush column. No more.

Yes more. If your press is for hire, like the server, you are not allowed to turn people who like the conservatives away because you support the liberal party.

In short, it doesn't grant you power over anyone. It just says that the government can't have certain powers over you.

Apparently you missed the memo at the turn of the 19th century. In the times of our forefathers, royalty also controlled the economic markets, as their estates were the megacorps of the day. In industrial and post-industrial global economics, nationals and multinationals hold equivalent or greater power than governments, and need to be held to the same accountability.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[vux984]

except theyre renting it out to individuals for the express purpose of their own expression, whether it's for directly paid fees or advertising revenue from traffic.

Sort of like a newspaper or magazine advertisement or editorial column then?

Their interference/censorship at any point in this process is equivalent to a landlord entering your house in the dead of night and ripping down your kids rap posters because he doesn't like that "negro music".

So when the paper refuses to run something they find offensive in the ad space I've purchased or refuse to run the column I wrote this week that's equivalent to people sneaking into my kids rooms at night to remove their rap star posters?

Get real.

false dichotomy. I am not opening my house and advertising it as a public forum like these web hosts are.

There's your mistake. They aren't opening their web servers and calling it a public forum. Read the terms of service... they actually read much like the submission guidelines for a newspaper or magazine ad.

And nobody is forcing you to visit the websites or view the pictures hosted there, but they have an obligation to treat people equally and not discriminate on them based on political views or aesthetic tastes.

Good luck posting an ad for your S&M party in the local church newsletter, or even a campaign ad for the pro-abortion / gay marriage candidate. Its their forum not yours. They might be offering to let people contribute content to it or even sell space, but its their space, not yours, and they have final say on what goes in it, not you.

If you want to post something on the internet, retain all your rights to the content, AND be protected by the first amendment: just host it yourself. If no one will print your ad you can always print your own handbills, similiarly on the internet you can host your own content.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[ScentCone]

In short, it doesn't grant you power over anyone. It just says that the government can't have certain powers over you

You are a very confused person.

If I own a press, I can pick and choose my own customers as I see fit. I have NO power over you, because you can go and get your OWN press, just like I got mine. The government can't stop you just like they couldn't stop me, and if I do something illegal to stop you from getting and using your OWN press, you have legal recourse.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[buddyglass]

Or how about cue some common sense? If I'm on your private property, I have no fucking rights over you or your property. It's your private property. You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it.

Yes and no. For instance, some types of private property are considered public accommodations by Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Restaurants, hotels, etc. As such, the owners of these properties cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion or national origin. So in the general case it is not true with regard to your personal property that, "You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it."

In this particular case, though, I doubt Flickr qualifies as a public accommodation. Also, from what I can tell, there is no speech issue here since the constitutional protection of speech only prohibits congress (and, by extension, lesser govt. entities such as states) from prohibiting speech, not private entities. It's ridiculous that someone would conflate Flickr's removal of this photo as violating their constitutional rights. Now, it's quite possible that the removal violated Flickr's terms of service...in which case a lawsuit may be in order.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[plasmacutter]

I notice your careful avoidance of this point:

You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it. Otherwise it's not really yours. It's that simple.

According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.

It's plain and simple.. if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[ScentCone]

if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door

Which might be worth talking about, except that the government doesn't play the role of running commercial web sites. These two have nothing to do with each other. In a feudal society, the contracts between you and a third party aren't governed by a constitutional framework. Which your contract with Flickr IS, when you agree to it.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[bigstrat2003]

It's plain and simple.. if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door.

Bull-fucking-shit. The problem with feudalism was that the lords had so much leverage, and were so few, that they could set whatever terms they wanted, and people had to take them. That isn't the case with landlords today. One crazy landlord can decide that he doesn't want rap music played in his house, and that's his right (and loss), because 99 other sane landlords recognize that, whatever their opinions of rap music, the business from that renter is far more important.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[plasmacutter]

if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door

Which might be worth talking about, except that the government doesn't play the role of running commercial web sites. These two have nothing to do with each other. In a feudal society, the contracts between you and a third party aren't governed by a constitutional framework. Which your contract with Flickr IS, when you agree to it.

Yeah, because we all know competitors are offering better terms of service, right?

this brings us back to my point. When a property owner has sufficient market power, they gain equivalent authority to government. They should be held to the same constitutional accountability.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[plasmacutter]

how is that not the case?

If they didn't have the power to force you to take their terms, then there wouldn't be that clause saying 'we can do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want, without prior notice'.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[Jason Earl]

It's plain and simple.. if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door.

That's just crap. You can purchase your own hosting for your images for less than $5 a month. Heck, you can probably find hosting for free if you look around hard enough. The cost of hosting the images is less than the cost of getting online to look at the images.

Seriously, your whole argument is just ridiculous. It's essentially out of Monty Python's "The Holy Grail." Comparing Flickr.com to the government is nonsensical. Flickr can't put you in jail, it can't seize your assets, and it can't send soldiers to your house to seize your Star Wars action figure collection (well, maybe it can do that last bit, but not legally). All Flickr.com can do is remove your pictures from their site.

Help Help, I'm being repressed...

Re:Or cue the common sense

[ScentCone]

Yeah, because we all know competitors are offering better terms of service, right?

Flickr has all sorts of competition, and there is nothing at all stopping you from being one of those competitors. You could then run an image-sharing service that has no limitations on its terms.

this brings us back to my point. When a property owner has sufficient market power, they gain equivalent authority to government

Even if we were to stipulate that (which is nonsense, because you're presuming that the property owner is not subject to the rule of law, which is false), a web site like flickr has no such market share/power.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[vux984]

I notice your careful avoidance of this point:

According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.

No. I didn't avoid that point. I just didn't think it really applied. Given that I view posting content on someone elses website to be akin to submitting content to a newspaper or magazine, 'capricious discrimination' by the publisher has been par for the course, and well accepted by society since the beginning.

It has -always- been the case that you couldn't had no right to coerce someone else to include your content in their documents, even if they were making space available for paid or contributed content.

Prohibitions on discrimination based on the race, gender, etc of the person making the contributions are relatively new, and a profound EXCEPTION to the status quo. And I think, even on the net, if you could demonstrate that your post was deleted or rejected because you were 'black' or 'female' you could probably sucessfully sue.

But if they rejected what you wrote for something in its content they found objectionable, that has ALWAYS been their perogative. The internet isn't special or different or new in this regard.

And your recourse has ALWAYS been to buy or hire a printer to print what you want printed. And the same applies on the internet -- buy a PC, get an ip address, publish your content, or colo with an ISP who won't censor it -- there are countless.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[vux984]

Yeah, because we all know competitors are offering better terms of service, right?

What could be better than the terms of service you could offer yourself? Its not exactly rocket science to setup a web server with some images on it, now is it? And there are plenty of free open source CMS systems to make it even easier.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Or how about cue some common sense? If I'm on your private property, I have no fucking rights over you or your property. It's your private property. You have the right to control who can be on it, or use it.

So if a shopkeep puts up one of those "No Blacks, No Irish" signs on their window, does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to go in?

Re:Or cue the common sense

[CarpetShark]

They aren't opening their web servers and calling it a public forum. Read the terms of service

This comparison doesn't work. What they ARE doing is opening their webservers and calling it a public SERVICE. A closer real-world equivalent would be if you were chatting with a friend in the forecourt of a gas station, and the owner came out and told you you can no longer say what you just said, that you have to take it back, and that anyone who heard it and wants to write it in a history book is not entitled to refer to that gas station's public service as part of the historical event.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[bigstrat2003]

What a ridiculous leap of logic. The fact that that clause is in there doesn't mean they have the power to force you to agree to it. Lots of contracts have ridiculous statements in them. You know what you do if you don't like said statements? Don't sign the contract.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[vux984]

This comparison doesn't work. What they ARE doing is opening their webservers and calling it a public SERVICE.

The public can -view- the sites, but you've got to 'signup' to post, and signing up is registration process with a EULA, etc.

A closer real-world equivalent would be if you were chatting with a friend in the forecourt of a gas station, and the owner came out and told you you can no longer say what you just said,

Yes. He could ask you to leave if he found your conversation offensive, and refuse to ever allow you back in.
If you posted it on a bulletin board he'd made available, Yes he could take it down.

So what exactly makes the internet different?

that you have to take it back,

cite plase. of any service that has ever required -that-?

and that anyone who heard it and wants to write it in a history book is not entitled to refer to that gas station's public service as part of the historical event.

Ah but doing -that- is protected speech. They can rattle their sabres and send out threatening legal mumbo, but if you want to write a book critical of siteX or mentioning an incident on siteX, there really is nothing they can do to stop you, at worst they can ban you from using their service.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[plasmacutter]

Even if we were to stipulate that (which is nonsense, because you're presuming that the property owner is not subject to the rule of law, which is false), a web site like flickr has no such market share/power.

first off. contract law means they can get you to sign away pretty much everything.

Second, the very fact their TOS remains that way shows they have that much market share. If they didn't have that much power, they would not be able to stipulate that kind of catch-all "we own you" clause.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[KGIII]

That is, as you stated, a "shopkeeper." In this case this is a private place where certain rights of the owner are suspended for the sake of the masses. In a shop you can be gay, you can be black, you can be female, and you can be from Somalia. If, in that same building (or the shopkeeper's home) you were to attempt to display nudity, engage in lewd behavior, or generally make an ass out of yourself you could (and probably would) be evicted. The difference is that the shopkeeper's home is off-limits unless the invite you in. Today's laws are such that businesses online presences aren't very heavily regulated, about the only regulation that is enforced at all is accessibility and even that isn't enforced all that often. So, for today, a business can tell you to get off their lawn and insist on disallowing things they don't agree with. Me? I think I like it that way. I've seen the results of under moderated content.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[servognome]

A closer real-world equivalent would be if you were chatting with a friend in the forecourt of a gas station, and the owner came out and told you you can no longer say what you just said, that you have to take it back, and that anyone who heard it and wants to write it in a history book is not entitled to refer to that gas station's public service as part of the historical event.

No a closer equivalent is to write something on a whiteboard and the owner erases it.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[ScentCone]

contract law means they can get you to sign away pretty much everything

How? How, specifically, is Yahoo forcing you to use their free service? How are they forcing you to turn away from all of their competitors, forcing you to not just run your own web site with pictures of little kids doing things that Yahoo doesn't wish to have associated with their company name? How are they "getting you" to sign anything? Is it that you are so mesmerized by their use of multi-syllable words that you can't stop yourself from clicking the "I agree" button?

the very fact their TOS remains that way shows they have that much market share

The fact that they have users who want to use a service that doesn't, for example (as cited in the original post), want to exhibit pictures of children smoking, means they have the same power as the government?

that kind of catch-all "we own you" clause

You realize, right, that you're actually deluded, here? If you don't like the fact that they might actually do what they say they will (moderate the content on their own web site), just walk away! How do they "own" you if you don't even use their system? If you can't actually answer that question (which, of course, you can't), then you need to admit that you're utterly BS-ing about everything else you're saying. But you won't, because that's how disconnected you are from reality, or that's how tightly you're clinging to your socialist agenda... all so that you can have two Grande No Fat Half-Caff Lattes each month instead of putting your money where your whining mouth is and making your own web site. Pathetic.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[sumdumass]

According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.

Your a little confused. Those conditions are written in law and the suit was over provisions of the law not a constitutional right. The government cannot sue over a constitutional right on behalf of anyone other then itself either. And the constitution doesn't give the rights, it protects the citizen from the government taking those right by limiting the power of the government.

And If I rented it to you and tried the same thing you'd put me in garnishment until my great grandchildren were too old to reproduce.

I think you might be confused a little. You haven't rented anything from a website in the context of the story nor have you payed for any services. You would therefor be a guest regardless of any advantage the website would have because of your presence.

And nobody is forcing you to visit the websites or view the pictures hosted there, but they have an obligation to treat people equally and not discriminate on them based on political views or aesthetic tastes.

No, not really. Any company, person, or whatever, has a right to maintain a public appearance and even the public impression in ways that they see beneficial. It could even be counter productive but if it isn't already restricted by a law, then they have that ability. The courts have long rulled that requiring certain hair cuts, limiting jewelry even when it is based on sex, and enforcing dress codes even if they don't provide uniforms does not violate any freedom of expression or equal rights. Something you would do well to understand if that the constitution that you like to fall back on specifically says that you can't use rights in parts of the constitution to deny rights to others. Those actions while on a certain site or at work or on someone's property other then your own, don't take your rights away, they limit them when they conflict with others. You are free to move along to another site that doesn't restrict what you post.

Yes more. If your press is for hire, like the server, you are not allowed to turn people who like the conservatives away because you support the liberal party.

But when you consider their message offensive, you can. This has happened often and there was even political ads removed from TV spots in the last election because of it. So regardless of your political views, if the message isn't acceptable, then it doesn't get heard/views/whatever in that venue even if it is your political message.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[dryeo]

Where do you live where there are a 100 landlords? Around here you're lucky to find one landlord and if you need a place to rent then you put up with whatever he/she demands.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[religious freak]

Your logic is so flawed and your opinion so uninformed, I'm beginning to wonder if you believe what you're saying or are just trying to get attention.

Your analogy to rentals is incorrect, for a number of reasons. I'm a landlord and have been for years, so I know a couple things about ownership and real estate. Real estate (real property) is governed by **completely separate** laws than personal property (chattel). It is governed by specific laws SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE you live and work in real property and your life can sometimes depend on it.

IIRC there are six rights associated with ownership of real property; as a condition of leasing a property a certain number of these ownership rights are actually transferred to the tenant and are specifically _taken away_ from the landlord - provided the tenant holds up their end of the contract (e.g. paying rent, not destroying the place). This is why a landlord cannot simply walk into a good tenant's property and tell them how to run their lives.

Personal property has no such set of rights and therefore is not subject (nor should it be) to the same laws as real property. If I rent you a motorcycle, I CAN tell you not to take it to a political rally because I disagree with the message, I CAN tell you not to take the bike certain places. Motorcycle riders attending rallies are not a protected class. Our constitutional rights are not absolute, by any means and have always been subject to restrictions - particularly with respect to the intersection of constitutional rights and private property. These are the legal facts.

You are certainly 100% wrong legally, and IMHO wrong entirely.

Re:Or cue the common sense

[rohan972]

According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.

It's plain and simple.. if you don't hold large property owners to the same constitutional standards as the governments whose power they equal, you have ushered feudalism in through the back door.

I'm curious how you would have this dealt with if it was a case of second amendment rights rather than first.

Bunch of morons...

[PortHaven]

Any private company or citizen can censor all they want. The protections of free speech are toward the government NOT against free citizens or the companies they own.

If Yahoo decides it does not want child nudity on flicker, they can decide such. It is their site, their business. To declare otherwise is "forced speech" which is just as bad as "censorship".

The government should not be able to censor your freedom of speech. But a private entity is not required to allow you the same leeway. If your employer says you cannot discuss the current project if you wish to retain employment - they are within their right to do so.

Some where along the way, we let politics !@#$% everything up. So people get offended if Blockbuster (a private company) decides to censor the property they own. Or if Yahoo decides to limit what content can be posted and hosted on their site. Thinking some constitutional right has been violated - it hasn't. But instead they want to tread the dangerous ground of forcing open speech and acceptance on private companies and citizens. Blind of the dangers such actions lead too.

Re:Bunch of morons...

[iter8]

Any private company or citizen can censor all they want. The protections of free speech are toward the government NOT against free citizens or the companies they own.

Not quite. Suppose Flickr decided to remove any pictures of black people or catholics, do you think they would be exercising legitimate property rights? Do you think that they could get away with it? Property rights are not absolute. They can be trumped by other rights - free speech can be one of those rights. This case isn't so clear cut as many on /. claim. In the US, in 1980, the California Supreme Court became the first state high court to rule that under its own Constitution shopping malls were public forums. link Private property, but free speech.

Re:Bunch of morons...

[yuna49]

Suppose Flickr decided to remove any pictures of black people or catholics, do you think they would be exercising legitimate property rights? Do you think that they could get away with it?

Yes, and maybe. There might be issues about blacks because they have a special protected status under a variety of civil rights laws; Catholics have no such protected status. How many pictures of black people would you expect to find on this site? Do you think the Klan is somehow not allowed to have a website because of their beliefs?

The bigger "maybe" concerns what would happen once people discovered that Flickr was doing this. Don't you think it would become a matter of public controversy?

Re:Bunch of morons...

[PortHaven]

"Suppose Flickr decided to remove any pictures of black people or catholics, do you think they would be exercising legitimate property rights?"

Yes, though I think such would be wrong. But they are allowed to do such. However, I and many others would boycott such a company.

And yes, now days, such might possibly run aground of discriminatory practices. And I will point to the fact that we still have the KKK, Nation of Islam as examples of such practices btw.

***

All that aside. You have in your argument left the case of censorship and entered a case of discriminatory practices. So I stand by my point. People decrying private businesses and citizens of censorship are standing on baseless ground, especially when referencing the Constitution. The Constitution provides protections against censorship by the government.

As for shopping malls. I believe it still stands that they can ask any patron to leave. If you do not, you can be arrested for tresspassing.

Re:Bunch of morons...

[greengearbox]

As for shopping malls. I believe it still stands that they can ask any patron to leave. If you do not, you can be arrested for tresspassing.

Did you check the link in the parent site? The one about a shopping mall not being able to give the boot to leafleters? The point was that it's not always as clear as the Slashdot crowd appears to think it is. Private property can take on the character of a public space, and constitutional restrictions can be applied against the owners.

Having said that, Flickr wouldn't appear to be even close to meeting this standard.

Parent needs a mod-up.

[plasmacutter]

This guy needs a mod-up.

The establishment of "free speech zones" marked the end of the US as a free constitutional republic.

We entered fascist territory then, and have been plunging into the abyss ever since.

Re:Parent needs a mod-up.

[LandDolphin]

"free speech zones" reminds me of free trade zones in China

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Dude, the kid in the pic was smoking a cigarette, not a pole.

Two sides to this, I guess

[cashman73]

On the one side, yes, we do lose our First Amendment right to freedom of speech by posting in online forums, since it's not really "public" (even if it may have the illusion of being public). On the other side of the coin, I'm actually glad somebody is able to step in and moderate this stuff, or else all of our forums would be overrun with viagra/peni$ enlargement spam, pirated material, child porn, and god only knows whatever else. Just look what happened to Usenet,... they tried to keep that as open and free as possible, and today it's practically useless as a discussion forum.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:You want free speech? DIY.

[Mesa MIke]

> Free image hosting does not equal a right to free speech.

What?
You're telling me that "free image hosting" is free as in free beer, not free as in free speech?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[profplump]

I'd actually be surprised if your lease didn't say you weren't allowed to post signs without approval, as that's a pretty standard clause is leases. Moreover I suspect that your landlord is allowed to post signs (or at least certain kinds of signs) on the property without your consent.

As for your right to campaign, your landlord can and probably does place reasonable restrictions on that. For example, you wouldn't be allowed to run a campaign headquarters that admitted the general public, employees, or large numbers of volunteers. And you probably can't post signs. But your landlord's rights only extend with respect to the property and its use, and clauses to forbid you from running a calling campaign from your home, or from posting signs on other property would be unenforceable.

The government has only worked to counteract (or enforce, depending on your point of view) discrimination on a very specific set of conditions defined by recent statues, and specifically not the constitution or its amendments. And even in that respect the reach of the government is limited to places that claim to be open to the general public -- requiring registration and refusing to take government money is enough to make you a "private club" and circumvent most government interference.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Endo13]

The difference is, everything on the internet is a whole different ballgame. There is no "public property" online. Any website you browse/log in to/whatever is owned by an individual, company, or government. Therefore, you must follow the rules they set forth for their site. Their site, their rules. If you don't like them, you're free to not use them.

Re:Use your own web space.

[compro01]

Unless your domain registrar/hoster/etc. doesn't like your stuff.

Usenet useless for discussion?

[ActusReus]

Not until Slashdot gives me a killfile!

Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one

[JSBiff]

The problem with your analysis, the way I see it (which might not line up with current law in any way, shape or form), is that it fails to recognize that corporations are fundamentally composed of people. Slashdot commentators like to reduce corporations to fancy names like Artificial Legal Entity, but those entities are created to provide some organization to the collective exercise of natural rights by groups of real people (shareholders, management, and employees - ok, mostly management, but management are people too. . .).

      If I am the owner (shareholder) of a corporation, and I operate servers, I have the right to freedom of speech (and freedom of the press, which is basically just an aspect of freedom of speech, ultimately) with regards to the content I do or do not choose to host on my servers. The government should not be able to compel speech - freedom of speech also implies the freedom not to speak, not to be compelled to say something I choose not to.

      Of course, with regards to services like Flikr, this raises thorny questions of liability - to whit, to what extent should Flikr be held liable for the content it hosts. After all, if the corporation Flikr wants to argue that it should have the right to take down images it does not agree with, based on freedom of speech, then it is essentially claiming that the content hosted by it represent *it's own* speech, and not the speech of others which it is merely a hosting infrastructure for - that's the real problem, that corps want to have their cake and eat it too - in one court, claim they can suppress speech they disagree with, and in another court, arguing they shouldn't be held liable for illegal content (e.g. kiddie porn, copyrighted images which weren't uploaded with the owners' permission, etc) which people might try to upload to their servers.

      If you want to put up an image, article, or movie, which some corporation won't host for you, maybe you need to think about getting your own server. That still leaves the possibility of getting cut off by your ISP, but that's where contract law comes in (service agreements, where if you made sure the contract you were signing wasn't all screwed up, you can sue them for breech of contract if they cut you off) and where you can take more action to protect your own rights. With free services, the terms are never going to be fair to you. With services you actually pay for, you can negotiate terms which don't screw you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Definitions

[immcintosh]

There is a certain concept postulated by Wittgenstein that I think would resolve this confusion. "Public" as is meant with respect to the first amendment is used in a very different game from "public" as is meant by MySpace or Flickr being public (that is, open to general consumption). I've always found it rather silly when people get incensed by their first amendment rights being "violated" in privately owned fora. Unless I'm really missing something this is just such a non-issue.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

Citation needed. When has that ever happened

Why is a citation needed? A company that runs a web site to deliver a particular sort of service... and fails to do so, can go out of business by alienating their users. Content moderation is an important role in many business models. If flickr never moderated a flood of hugely offensive material, they'd lose most of their users. No users, no ad views. No ad views, no staying in business.

The net is not a democracy

[Opportunist]

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.

Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer

[carpeweb]

I can't believe this isn't obvious on /.

Free speech has never meant freedom to use someone else's podium. It's not free beer, to make an analogy that should find a natural home here.

The free press guaranteed by the First Amendment was never without cost -- and certainly never included the obligation to print something contrary to what the publisher wanted. We're all free -- at liberty -- to publish what we want to say on the web. We're all free to charge what the market will bear for that content. Unless one can show that Flickr operates a monopoly with the only means of publishing certain information (please!), I don't see what this has to do with free as in speech. It's just bitching about less than free as in beer.

Re:Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer

[bersl2]

I think the story is more that people are coming to realize that there is no true public space on the Internet, just private spaces masquerading as public.

Re:Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer

[carpeweb]

Can I get a mod up for bersl2?

I think the way you phrase it deserves more exploration. The only truly public "space" is the transport. By that, I mean that I don't think we're seeing any reports of routers selectively denying packets of content that their owners don't like. At least, I haven't heard anything like that.

Re:Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer

[bersl2]

The only truly public "space" is the transport. By that, I mean that I don't think we're seeing any reports of routers selectively denying packets of content that their owners don't like. At least, I haven't heard anything like that.

Even then, there's nothing that prevents from happening. If you can get away with proxying, they can inspect the contents of the packets and possibly come up with a heuristic that can block a certain site with a low occurance of false positives but with few enough false negatives that service from that site is still unusable. Then you would encrypt traffic. Oh, wait, that's starting to sound like a few projects that are being done now...

And of course, there are the examples of ISPs having disputes and not only severing direct contact between each others' networks but also indirect contact which was routed through another ISP.

Re:Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer

[carpeweb]

I wasn't really thinking about whether it could happen, but whether it would happen. I don't see the same incentives for blocking or refusing traffic as for refusing to host it. Transport is essentially anonymous. No one's going to ask "what routers did that content use?". Yeah, I suppose some router owners could decide they wanted to reject certain traffic, but I thought that one of the basic features of the Internet is that when one node doesn't work, packets seek an alternate route to their destination.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

and you don't see something fundamentally wrong with that?

The whole point of the US constitution was to remove the burdens of feudalism, and yet the above post describes exactly that.

If you're on someone's land, even if you're paying them for the use of it, you are not free, period. They dictate your life.

The "private property" angle is no more than a backdoor for tyranny.

In the days of our forefathers, The estates of the nobility were also the primary economic units.

In the modern world, corporations have equivalent or greater power than government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards as government. To do otherwise is to erect half a fence, and put a sign on the other half saying "it would be nice if you didn't enter", all the while claiming airtight security.

Flickr Dichtomies

[WwWonka]

I have to say Flickr is by far one the most disappointing experiences I have had online.

I am a professional photographer who uses Flickr as a means to promote my craft. I have even paid for a "pro" account to ensure consistency. Well, Flickr not only has taken censorship into their own hands, but have ZERO support for asking why and when and how to correct the situation. I have an account where I moderate my own material and have done it very well. BUT somewhere along the lines something happened and Flickr has made my account inaccessible for non-Flickr members and hard for even Flickr members to view. I tried to contact them through normal email channels many, many times with zero results and even rude replies from a moderator named "Terrence". I then went the phone method with Yahoo(their parent) only to find Flickr offers no support other than online, which has proven useless.

I have now lost noticeable business and online presence because of this, and all I was looking for was a little help. I have even thought to take Flick to small claims court for not only my membership price(which they refuse to refund) but also the time wasted and lost income. I also have fellow photographers who have lost their entire Flickr archive due to Flickrs weird self censorship.

I wonder how many people this has happened to. Now this article appears to show I am not the only one.

--tomjulio.com ...my Flickr account

Re:Flickr Dichtomies

[Cathoderoytube]

I posted a picture of a penis monster saying 'Hi I'm Muhammad' with a caption that said 'I'm pretty sure this is what Muhammad probably looked like' on my flickr account and it hasn't been taken down. I'm not that familiar with Flickr but I was 100% sure that pic would have been taken down. I guess the lesson here is, in Flickr's eyes a photo of a child with a cigarette is more objectionable than openly insulting somebody's religion. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2143/2214325041_4e6ed4516b_o.jpg

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

They are renting you the photo hosting for the advertising traffic.

It's no different than leasing someone a car (to bring up the famous slashdot car analogy).

Yeah, no difference, other than the whole "completely different" part. When you rent a car, you sign a contract. It probably stipulates, for example, that you can't paint it a different color, or damage it.

The completely different contract that you agree to when you opt to participate in the activities on the private system that is Flickr, also stipulates that you can't damage that system. Using it to exhibit material that's outside of the boundaries they've established puts you in breach of the agreement YOU made with them, and they're certainly welcome to decide what is considered damaging to the business they're running - as they explain in the terms to which you agree before you can use the system. Is the problem here that you don't actually understand what it means to agree to a contract with another party?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

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).

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[arbitraryaardvark]

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.
--
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.

By this definition, there IS no public cyberspace

[jfruhlinger]

On the one hand, if you phrase this as "Flickr can determine what runs on Flickr's Web site's", yeah, it's not shocking. But the truth is there is no online version of what in the real world would be thought of as public space. Which is fine, I guess, except that for the past 15 years we've been sold on the Internet as a place that allows for the free exchange of ideas and meeting of minds across cultures and so on and so on. Plus the R&D behind it and much of the initial infrastructure was built with public money.

It's not a problem restricted to the Internet. In the US, anyway, more and more of what had been public space is, in the 20th and 21st century built environment, private. A modern mall may serve the same social and economic function as a quaint 19th-century downtown, but in that downtown you could stage a protest and in a mall you can't. Increasingly, your only choices in daily life are to be inside somebody's house or inside a store.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Endo13]

That's a terrible analogy. But I'll run with it a bit. In your (awful) analogy, there's a reason why most cities have sound ordinances. It's so if you play that "damn negro music" loud enough for the public to hear it and be offended by it, you can be fined. A hosting site like Flickr is really nothing like your car analogy. The content on such a website is freely available to be viewed by the public, but the site itself is not public property. Therefore, the owner of that private property has the right to remove anything they choose.

A better analogy would be if you tried to host a little porn convention in your local Walmart.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Why is a citation needed?

Because you are making a statement about the world: that censorship can cause companies to go out of business. Your justification of this fact is baseless claims. In the real world, I posit this never happens.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Qzukk]

They have no right to tell you you can't listen to that "damn negro music" in that leased car, nor do they have a right to control the speed of the vehicle from the corporate office.

They can try, as long as they A) tell you (there is no written rule against kids holding a cigarette) and B) have some way of enforcing it (the picture was there for some time before someone with the ability to do anything about it noticed it).

And actually, several rental places do put governors on their vehicles, mostly for moving vans.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[arbitraryaardvark]

They are renting you the photo hosting for the advertising traffic.

It's no different than leasing someone a car (to bring up the famous slashdot car analogy).

They have no right to tell you you can't listen to that "damn negro music" in that leased car, nor do they have a right to control the speed of the vehicle from the corporate office.

Actually they can, if it's what you've contracted for. Did you read page 4 subparagraph 16? They could give you a radio that only plays the Lawrence Whelk station, and cuts the ignition if you go over 100 mph. If the rental car radio didn't play that "damn negro music", I would consider that a feature, not a bug.

Re:Network Freedom.

[Endo13]

You should find out the difference between "own" and "lease". And then there's also this thing called "contract" that usually goes along with "lease".

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The article makes the basic mainstream journalism mistake that used to happen when some reporter would confuse AOL with the internet

No, it doesn't. It talks about censorship by Flickr, webhosting companies and ISPs. RTFA before you complain about it.

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

Most slashdot users that use windows seem to avoid IE for stability/security reasons. And IE still is the dominant browser in the world. And websites still have to conform to the IE way of rendering things, possibly in addition to the Firefox/Safari/Opera way. So I claim it is a counterexample of what you are looking for.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[nine-times]

Maybe they should be allowed to put riders in my rental contract saying I can't campaign for my local green party

No, but they probably should be able to put something in your rental contract saying that your 7 year old can't smoke in the house.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Chrono11901]

The price your paying to live there is based on those conditions, if you want to changes those conditions argue with the landlord before you sign the lease or buy your own land and build your own house.

They have the right to impose those conditions as long as they do so before hand, thus giving you the right to accept or reject them.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[multisync]

Maybe they should be allowed to put riders in my rental contract saying I can't campaign for my local green party, or post signs in the yard detailing exactly why supply side economics is flawed?

How long do you think that would fly in court.

I don't think that's a very good analogy.

A better one would be your landlord putting a rider in your rental agreement that says you can not paint the walls, change any fixtures or smoke in the residence, all of which are perfectly reasonable and well within your landlord's right to stipulate. Local city bylaws may also prohibit your yard sign, along with clothes lines, barking dogs and junky old cars in the driveway that don't run.

"Public" is even worse

[mi]

the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations.

Your being able to use even a public road for driving is not a right, but a privilege. This is the doctrine, which justifies licensing access to the public roads. Because if it is a right, only a judge can take it away, but if it is a privilege, than the Executive branch has complete discretion.

Wearing objectionable clothing on public commons is even more difficult, and protests/demonstrations on public land also require government's permits, while private property can still be used for any (political) speech.

That said, I'm alarmed, that my predictions for (even if only implicit for now) calls to nationalize Internet-businesses is getting fulfilled so soon...

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

that censorship can cause companies to go out of business

Exactly backwards. My point is that business that actually states that it polices its content to keep the trash away from it - essentially that's part of its advertising pitch to prospective users/customers - and fails to do so, will hurt their business. It's not "censorship" to actually do what you say you're going to do, and failure to do it can wreck your business.

Re:Freedom of the press belongs to those who own o

[mikelieman]

those entities are created to provide some organization to the collective exercise of natural rights by groups of real people

I disagree. Artificial Legal Entities are created to provide PRIVILEGES to the Corporation (e.g.: Limited Liability ) .

But what I think people forget, ( and it's in the corporation's best interests, if not Good Faith that The People do forget this fact ) is that those PRIVILEGES carry DUTIES. Such as admitting the Health and OSHA inspectors onto the property, and obeying their instructions. Paying a lot of extra taxes, etc.

Now, we're back to my point. It *seems* that the so-called-rights of a Corporation are in fact a subset of their Creators ( The State ).

And I ask again, anyone have any citations for the counter argument?

Damn right the Internet is Private Property...

[hyperz69]

We are reminded of this daily, when some crotchety old CEO or Senator tells us to get off their lawn. Even though we were the ones that fertilized it, moved it, and kept it clean of pests. We the geeks made this *the internet*, and we sold it to the very people we hated growing up. For a shit ton of money yes but still... we sold it bit by bit. So this type of action should not surprise us.

Now with that said do we really want the government protecting our RIGHTS on the web. If we call them in over some You Tube Videos and Flickr photos, they will be here to stay. Sure it might be AWESOME at first, but Government World Wide has not had a great record as of late when it comes to rights. I would rather just do what we did before...

Start my own site. Place what I want there, and be the crotchety old fart who tells the CEO's and the Suits, and the politicians to get the FUCK off MY Lawn! This time maybe when they come with the briefcase of cash I can say, no thank you I like this yard. Grass is Green enough here.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

If you're on someone's land, even if you're paying them for the use of it, you are not free, period. They dictate your life.

Yeah, until you simply buy your own, like they did. Or, in the case of web sites - which, unlike real estate, are vastly less expensive - you build and host your own. You seem determined to complain about everything, but don't mention that little detail: that just like Yahoo did, you can persuade people that you've got a good idea, and can attract the funds it takes to set up shop the way YOU want to... or you can use your own cash. Either way.

Try again, Reaganite.

[sethstorm]

However, using said power to (effectively) end-run the Constitution is just covering up tyranny. Using libertarianism to defend it only makes it more obvious.

There comes a point where The Unquestionable Market fails. When a private entity is able to exert influence by means nearly identical to censorship, the balance has been lost. That is, you've given too much power to entities that censor and use "private entity" as a shield.

Metaphor?

[Derosian]

This isn't so much going over to someones house randomly and saying whatever you want.

This is like them inviting you over saying "Don't cuss." and then when you say "Look at that fine mule you have, yes that is a rather fine ass." they take ducktape and tape up your mouth, then say "If you don't like it you can leave."

People will not click elsewhere.

[sethstorm]

It's just like any convenience store, it's a public space but private property.

What part of attempted end-run around the Constitution do you not understand?

If this really is such a problem stop devoting so much time and effort onto areas controlled and governed by private entities

Nearly impossible to do when they can exert undue influence. When they are the only practical (as opposed to the favorite realms of libertarians, the theoretical and hypothetical) choice, the balance needs to be shifted away from the private entity.

...meanwhile back in the UK.

[BigBadBus]

I used to work for a company called Autonomy, based in Cambridge. I found them to be a bunch of bullies, more keen on profits than the workforce and its comfort and rights. I put an article on my website about their work practises, and faced the onslaught by their legal teams. But the worst part when their legal muscle, Allen Overy, bullied my ISP to not only take the article down, but rescind my web and email access. The worst part is that this happened in January 2007, and I am still being charged by BT for webspace and internet access which doesn't exist. I have tried everything I know of and I can't even get BT to admit there is a problem, never mind get a refund. Its quite a tally of cash, and even my credit card company can't get the money back as this would require some admission by BT that they are at fault and that they acted without consulting their user (me!) first. Fortunately, my original article has found a new home here.

. In short, I had no rights at all.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ins0m]

I wouldn't think Nicolae Ceausescu would approve of any Romanians smoking Poles.

Why are you so thick?

[sethstorm]

No one is forcing anyone to use ...
Nothing is stopping you from...

The favorite excuses that do not apply. When somewhere is the practical choice, it is indeed censorship, albeit from an entity that end-runs the First Amendment.

Perhaps you would do well to remember the following:

Force is force is force even from a private entity.

The logic here is the same as me letting people put signs on my lawn, but if I don't like one of those signs, and I remove it, they complain. Too bad, it's my lawn

Forum != lawn. The only thing that should be done is to require a procedure similar to due process. This procedure would also have to discourage gaming it by the likes of you.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[dgatwood]

Agreed. In a truly free market, most submarkets would quickly devolve into monopolies that would then abuse their monopoly power to ensure that no newcomers could enter the market either by flooding the market with goods at a loss until the newcomer went bankrupt or by using extra money to exhaust crucial resources from the newcomers' suppliers, ensuring that they could not obtain enough of those resources to meet demands. This, of course, assumes that there are still laws preventing what would be the obvious tools of a truly free market---knocking off their competition (assassinations), burning down their competitor's corporate headquarters/manufacturing facilities, stealing their competitor's physical assets, bribing banks/bankers to not give loans to their competitor, threatening businesses that distribute the competitor's product with pulling all of their most popular products (including products their competitor does not make) if the distributors don't drop all of their competitor's products, etc.

The promise of a free market as the solution to the world's ills is a fanciful notion that fools many who have never experienced anything resembling a free market. Those who have experienced it, however, immediately see right through such foolishness. Entrenched monopolies are hard to get rid of even with controls on monopolies. Without those controls, they become unstoppable rather rapidly.

Not so.

[westlake]

I know you're just being a smartass, but what you have actually said is literally true.

I have said it before.

The geek is libertarian only when it is convenient.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Bill of Rights

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies only to suppression of speech by the federal government - state governments were bound through the application of the fourteenth amendment.

Frederick Douglass had this to say about the pre-war South:

There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. Frederick Douglass: The Hypocrisy of American Slavery [Rochester, New York, July 4, 1852]

If the Pope decrees that discussion of the ordination of women is off the table within a Roman Catholic Church - then it is off the table within a Roman Catholic Church.

He has the right to keep order within his own House.

You have no right of appeal.

No private individual or institution is legally obliged to provide you a forum.

If you are a drunken fool mouthing off at the local gin mill - and disturbing the paying customers - you won't be asked to leave, you will be booted out the door.

Re:Not so.

[westlake]

No private individual or institution is legally obliged to provide you a forum.

It is true that a drill site, farm or factory or might be required to open its doors to a labor union.

But usually such exceptions apply to a hermetically sealed environment - where you are effectively cut-off from almost all outside contacts.

In WWII the issue was framed around a front line soldier's right to vote.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[religious freak]

Are you seriously comparing banning a pic of a stupid kid smoking to expressing your political views on a property where you have leasehold rights?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Endo13]

You might want to do some research on "feudalism" and "tyranny" before posting more ignorant garbage.

Public Forum?

[michaelepley]

The real question is will courts extend the logic set forth in cases like Amalgamated Foods to the modern day equivalent "virtual" properties, perhaps controlled by the type of activity (allowing passively posting otherwise innocuous content vs activism vs hosting vs commercial) or the site (destination sites like Yahoo or Facebook being more likely to be considered public forums than a storefront like bestbuy.com). In any event, should Amalgamated Foods be extended, private web sites that operate forums could very well be considered limited public forums with some First Amendment protection, despite being private property.

PS. Before you start believing statements like this which imply Amalgamated Foods is no longer good law, read the cases referred to (Hudgens v. NLRB was looking at the applicability of the NLRA, while Pruneyard was applying California's more liberal freedom-of-speech rights).

PPS. None of this should be considered legal advice, nor have I shepardized anything.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[hedwards]

This is a very different situation. Most of the policies that require this sort of content to be removed are a result of law suit risk.

If we want more private organizations to allow nudity or risque art, then there's going to need to be provisions put into place to protect them from spurious law suits.

The ability to get a job, apartment or health care is a very different thing than the ability to post something online. If you can't post something here, there's probably somewhere else you can easily reach to make the posting.

That's really not the case for jobs or apartments.

Re:

[sethstorm]

My thoughts exactly. You're calling me a Reaganite because I oppose you [hyperbole removed]?

No, you're being called one as you defend the end-run around the Constitution just because you're a "private entity".

It's been a practice around that time to stifle sentiment.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

In a truly free market, people wouldn't have to pay taxes

Would there be police forces, or is a free market an anarchy? If it is an anarchy, what prevents a large gang from taking over as an autocratic government?

In those conditions racism, sexism, and etc. don't fly.

Then explain why racism, sexism, etc. have decreased as a result of the US moving away from a free market.

We would also have virtually 0 monopolies

Same question as above, but with "monopolies" instead of "racism, sexism, etc."

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[falconwolf]

The "private property" angle is no more than a backdoor for tyranny.

Private property leads to improvements and democracy not tyranny. When government controls all property then you have tyranny.

In the modern world, corporations have equivalent or greater power than government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards as government.

Thomas Jefferson foresaw this when he warned about the Corporate Aristocracy: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." The fact is is corporations were originally granted their Corporate Charter to improve the common, or public, good. The first corporation to be granted a charter was the Dutch East India Company and the second, two years later, the Honourable East India Company. Both were shipping companies trading goods between Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Shipping was a risky business, pirates could attack ships stealing the cargo and killing the crew or bad weather could cause ships to sink. When one of these happened the owner of the ship was held liable for the loss of cargo and lives. Even someone rich could loose everything they owned, so there weren't many people willing to take the risks. So the Dutch East India Company was granted a corporate charter to limit liability. The only thing someone who invested in East India could lose was the amount of money they invested. This enabled people to invest more in ships which increased trade, which was a common good. The problem, as Jefferson saw, was that corporations became too powerful and are no longer held accountable for improving the public good. If corporations faced the possibility of having their Corporate Charters revoked then they could be held responsible again.

Falcon

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mosb1000]

I don't see how they could enforce a clause claiming you aren't allowed to campaign for the green party, but they should definitely be able to prohibit you from posting signs in their yard.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Objection: there's no such thing as a truly free market. It's an abstract concept only.

Re:Freedom of the press belongs to those who own o

[Creepy Crawler]

And then all the providers band together and deny service for the class of people they wish not to do business with.

Sounds like fascism to me.

going out of business

[falconwolf]

If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.

Citation needed. When has that ever happened.

eToys.

Falcon

Re:going out of business

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Did you read that link? The wikipage has a string of warnings at the top that iit needs citations, cleanup, etc. It's also an eCommerce site that went out of business when the bubble burst; it doesn't relate to censorship at all.

MOD PARENT UP

[vyrus128]

Way the hell up.

please mod parent up

[Reality Master 201]

Seriously, common carrier status. Yes, please, for ISPs, backbone carriers, etc.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[arbitraryaardvark]

The article makes the basic mainstream journalism mistake that used to happen when some reporter would confuse AOL with the internet

No, it doesn't. It talks about censorship by Flickr, webhosting companies and ISPs. RTFA before you complain about it.

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

stuff So I claim it is a counterexample of what you are looking for.

I was under the impression that flickr had been bought by yahoo, and some additional censorship imposed, as a further example of the kind of thing i'm talking about. AOL was an analogy; you could say "internet 2.0" if you prefer; a few big sites instead of lots of little sites. I read the article a couple times last week when it was going around.

        If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.

Citation needed.* When has that ever happened.**
* http://xkcd.com/285/
** oh, Mussolini.

and what do you think about this example?

[just_asgard]

Alos look at this example occured some time ago in russia:

Imagine: you are a local police officer, or rather police team - why not. You have just been criticized rather nastily by a 20-something in a blog entry. What do you do? Well, you wouldn't even notice because you don't bother to check blogs, right? Wrong. At least when we're talking about the regional authorities of the north-Russian city of Syvtykar. On this LiveJournal blog, 22-year old musician Savva Terentiev decried Syvtykar's militsiia in February 2007 for measures taken against the local oppositional press. Gripped by the event, Terentiev didn't take recourse to the friendliest possible terms: he proposed to regularly 'set a bad cop on fire' on the main square of every Russian city. The comment was recalled later, but by then the damage had been done: in August, Terentiev was charged with inciting hatred against public authorities. This week, prosecutors announced that he is sent to court, facing up to 2 years in prison or an 8.000 EU fine.
http://russ-cyberspace.livejournal.com/32016.html

Don't like it, use another service.

[Ortega-Starfire]

Can't find one that does everything you want, start a business providing it. No demand for your business? Well gee, I guess no one really wanted to see that picture.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[MyLongNickName]

This is NOT flamebait. This is simply pointing out that rights are NOT unlimited.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[danielk1982]

>In a truly free market, most submarkets would quickly devolve into monopolies

And you know this how? You thought really really really hard about it? Given how wrong you are in everything else you wrote, I'm just going to safely dismiss this point as well.

>..knocking off their competition (assassinations), burning down their competitor's corporate headquarters/manufacturing facilities, stealing their competitor's physical assets

I think you're channeling the conflict resolution strategies of past (and current) governments. This has not been the route that business have took, and there's no reason to think that this would be different in any another scenario.

You're also forgetting that businesses, large and small, have no qualms about cooperating with each other, even if they are competitors. Microsoft and HP might fight for the same enterprise market (Windows Server vs. HP-UX), but at the same time can partner in consumer space and relase jointly developed products. Hell, my father works for a medium size frozen food operation, that sells their own branded TV dinners, but also takes contracts from Nestle and various Grocery chains to make their branded dinners. You see similar co-operation in every segment of economy, from automative, to manufacturing, to sofware. None of it is government mandated. None of it is coercive. In the financial sector there are billions of dollars transferred amongst parties based on nothing more than a handshake agreement(and of course, dacades of built-up trust). Has this kind of uncoercive trust been seen at this scale during any other time in human history?

You are absolutely wrong in your characterization of capitalism and the free market. Looking at it anther way. The US GDP is approximately $13 trillion dollars. There are not enough regulators and auditors in the entire world to monitor even a small fraction of transactions that make up such a staggering GDP. If even a small minority of businesses behaved in the way you caricatured them, the economy would not function and would collapse. It clearly hasn't.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mazarin5]

To do otherwise is to erect half a fence, and put a sign on the other half saying "it would be nice if you didn't enter", all the while claiming airtight security.

I believe that would fall under the jurisdiction of the TSA.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr100percent]

In those conditions racism, sexism, and etc. don't fly.

I disagree. You have conservatives boycotting things like Dunkin Donuts and liberals boycotting something brands like Walmart. Chick-fil-A explicitly refuses to hire non-Christians, imagine if there was no government policy to press them.

For example, I believe that if airlines could get away with it, they'd segregate Arabs from planes etc. Heck, the Fox News and Ann Coulter crowd would love it (Coulter once said she'd love an airline like that).

If there was no government restrictions, how much sexual harrassment would go on unchecked?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Malevolyn]

$5/yr for a domain and $5/mo for hosting doesn't seem like an aristocrat-exclusive club to me.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Malevolyn]

Anti-smoking clauses aren't the norm for rental properties? I'm sure there's no age attached.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Descalzo]

Not so. I once hosted my own website. No one visited it, because it sucked. So only those with skill have freedom. How do you propose we fix that one?

Rights and Protections

[Doc Ruby]

Humans have rights, including the rights to free expression. We make governments as our means of protecting those rights. When our governments don't protect our rights, we've failed.

Humans also make corporations to protect our rights. Sometimes these different rights conflict. That's the real work of getting along: negotiating those rights.

When human rights are abused for long enough, the people rebel. Along the way, those people might not rebel, at least not enough to succeed. But they underperform, resist in lame ways. They're ungovernable. The degree to which we create goverments that protect our rights, and form corporations that don't abuse them is the degree to which we can get along.

None of this is even the tiniest bit different on the Web. The Web is just the latest in spaces somewhere between public and private. Private property is used to admit the general public. And since the space is somewhere between public and private, the interplay of rights to public access with rights to control of private property are the subject of the negotiation. If that negotiation protects only the rights of the private corporations owning the property into which the public is admitted, and abuses the rights of that public, then the people will become ungovernable. Likewise if the public's rights are protected to the exclusion of the private rights, the people whose property is being used will become ungovernable.

Corporations will naturally tend to protect their own rights to the exclusion of others', of the public's. That's exactly why we have governments. The governments might also tend to prioritize the people's rights, except that our current governments are so much more interested in corporate people that such a conflict doesn't happen: the corporations have all the advantages. But if the people's rights aren't protected in the appropriate balance, the people will become ungovernable, and rebel.

Citation

[Descalzo]

Didn't Digg.com have to change their policy a year or so ago? If I'm not mistaken they backed down due to pressure from their members.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Rolgar]

It's not wealth, it's self-determination. If your priority is being free from the dictates of others, there is nothing stopping anybody. There are plenty of places that you can buy a plot of land to call your own for a reasonable price. It's all about priorities and and choices.

Are you sure your house is safe?

[danaris]

It isn't possible to "own" a piece of the web in the same way I own my house. Even my domain name... If BigCo decides they want it, I wouldn't be able to afford the court costs to keep it.

I would say that if BigCo decides they want my house (or, more likely, the land it's standing on), if they're big and ruthless enough, I probably can't afford the court costs to fight them off for that, either. It's just that big companies don't usually care enough about any particular piece of residential land to go to that kind of trouble.

Dan Aris

censorship

[falconwolf]

I think I prefer censorship, conducted under public scrutiny, to any idiot with an agenda being able to whip up chaos.

You don't fight bad speech by censoring it you fight it with good speech.

Not that the US doesn't have censorship - for all intents and purposes, if Walmart won't carry your work you've been censored.

Funny, I buy most of my books and magazines, the ones I don't subscribe to, at Barnes and Noble though I also order books from Amazon. And if B&N doesn't have it and won't order it, which I've never had them do, I can go to Borders or another store. I don't recall ever buying a book at Walmart. And as for the First Amendment, it only restricts government from censorship, not businesses.

eBay forcing PayPal in Australia, which was ruled a monopoly action but probably would have happened in the US

eBay could lose a lot of customers. Some sellers only accept certain forms of payment, like VISA. Amazon would love to take some of eBay's customers. As would Yahoo!. My sister both buys and sells on eBay and I bet she'd switch in a heart beat if she had to use a payment system she didn't want to use. Ah, competition.

Whose rights, whose laws, do we respect on the Internet? Should the rest of the world be forced to respect America's laws when America isn't willing to do the same?

You follow the laws of the country you're in when you connect, unless you're willing to pay the price.

Falcon

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

ah, so only rich people are entitled to freedom, how nice of you to betray your elitism.

Are you really so desparate to avoid the few dollars a month - less than the cost of a couple slices of pizza that it takes to host your own web site where you can say whatever you desire - that you're willing to torture the meaning of the word "freedom" to mean its exact opposite? Your definition of freedom is right out of Orwell. Freedom for you is someone else spending money and effort according to your wishes, instead of according to their own. You're no different than every other lazy tyrant that would wait for someone else to build something before moving in to bleed it to death. I imagine you love Hugo Chavez's brand of freedom - he's right up your alley.

Do you complain that I'm denying you your freedom to drive around by cruelly not buying you a car? Or is it only successful businesses that are mean for not buying you a car? Those bastards, denying you your freedom! I'll bet you've lost track of how many Eeeevil Corporations have denied you the freedom of free food, free mobile phone service, and all sorts of other amenities that you - if you were only free from them - would have for free. Free! Free free free. Other than the whole "someone else actually gets to pay for it" part. It's OK, you're such a superior intellect, and so deserving of having other people toil on your behalf, you SHOULD have businesses making special exceptions to their terms, just for you, because you say so.

Yeah, we all know who the elitist is here. It looks good on you, too. Anyway, I know you're busy. The people you've got chained up in the basement cleaning your clothes and whatnot probably need supervising. Just remind them that it's your personal freedom that's at stake, and to use extra starch.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[servognome]

and you don't see something fundamentally wrong with that?

No. The only restriction is on the modification of property. A landlord cannot discriminate based on your beliefs, nor stop you from inviting associates, sign a petition, etc. Typically such clauses on signs are generalized, with the purpose not being to restrict specific speech, but to protect the visuals of the property. It's not that the landlord doesn't want you to put up your "I Hate the Mayor" sign, you also can't post your "Go local sports team" sign either.

The whole point of the US constitution was to remove the burdens of feudalism, and yet the above post describes exactly that.

The US Constitution was not designed to remove feudalism. Originally it was designed as a structure for the association of the member states. Some of the founders like John Adams believed an aristocracy was needed to ensure a stable country. In fact, a psuedo-aristocracy was in place given that Senate members were elected by state legislatures and not individual citizens.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[DigiShaman]

Plasmacutter is a Communist.

After reading his posts, you can clearly see that he believes in equality at the lowest common denominator. But hey, misery *loves* company! The Chinese and Russians have learned this, why hasn't he?

No sane and rational person would advocate the abolishment of private property rights. But those that do are fools.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[sumdumass]

Your a little off here. You see, housing is a necessity and the government see people offering as a quasi branch of themselves which is why they created housing authorities.

The concept is that when you rent a home (note home doesn't have to be a house), it becomes the occupiers "home" with restrictions to protect the property interests. Going online or getting a job is really not the same because there is no expectation of absolute privacy or last refuge.

Expecting the home and a website to be the same would be like me expecting you to lose all control over something you offer. Suppose you run a business pr charity that finds sponsors to help battered women in relationships start a new life by getting affordable housing, jobs, lawyers for divorce and custody cases and so on. Now suppose my political ideals are that women should have no rights, be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Should I be able to wear a shirt saying "the world went to hell when women got the vote" while working at your organization? How about a shirt that says, "slavery never hurt nobody worth caring for" or "the thing a thousand battered women have in common is that they just don't listen"?

Surely you can see how my "free speech" is counter to the goals of your organization. So how could you reconcile me working there and while working against your goals? Should you, like you suggest, lose all your rights to maintain your appearance and public impressions and allow my presence counter or undermine your efforts or should you have the ability to do something about it. It isn't like uniforms would help because that would squash my free speech, it isn't like you could do anything to stop me if you think the businesses have no ability to limit my rights so how do you proceed?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[osgeek]

The expectation implicit in the complaint of this article is just so hopelessly naive. Then you support the article by making an attack on Reagan supporters? Such rabid political dogma and hate is just depressing.

Do you *really* want to live in a world where every business is forced to follow in the bureaucratic footsteps of our necessarily constrained government? So maybe Flikr should have its own judiciary system equal to the US government's or clog courts with free speech arguments for every picture they need to remove, since it will need some way to enforce "free speech" as well as the govt does?

Maybe Flikr could then charge us taxes to pay for their enforcement and judicial infrastructure?

Do you really not understanding the difference between carefully restraining the powers of a monolithic/monopolistic government that has the power of force to hurt you and take your money vs restraining the powers of a business that offers a free service in a market of competitors?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[osgeek]

I'd say "nice straw man", but it's blatant and weak.

What does restricting someone's right to campaign for a political party based upon their renter's preferences have to do with Flikr's enforcement of their acceptable use policy?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

** oh, Mussolini.

Mussolini was removed from office as a result of losing WWII for Italy, andexecuted by the communists. There was no uprising because of censorship.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[nine-times]

Yeah, it was supposed to be a bit of a joke, since the complaint was about Flickr taking down the picture of a child smoking a cigarette.

I was trying to point out that the given metaphor (your landlord making you agree not to campaign for a political party) isn't really applicable. Flickr isn't saying that, in order to use Flickr, you can't support a political party. They're reserving certain rights to decide what happen on their site, which is comparable to a landlord having rules about what you can do in their house.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[sumdumass]

Would there be police forces, or is a free market an anarchy? If it is an anarchy, what prevents a large gang from taking over as an autocratic government?

The same thing that makes communism possible. People just wouldn't do it. But as we have seen with unfree markets and police forces, nothing is preventing gangs from taking over either.

Then explain why racism, sexism, etc. have decreased as a result of the US moving away from a free market.

Have they decreased because of moving away from free markets? Or was it because of outlawing the jim crow laws that sought to oppressed minorities. And if it was specifically because of moving away from a free market, then what caused the move if it wasn't already moving away?

I mean this is a classic chicken and egg concept. You claim that because of restrictions in a market, people moved away from racism. But obviously, people were moving away from it before the restrictions otherwise there wouldn't have been support for the restrictions. So was it really the restrictions or was it generations moving away from the problems in society that caused the racism in the first place and the further away we got, the less that was there?

I guess if you don't understand the reasoning for the racism in the first place, you can use anything you want for a reason. But the Racism in America is Unique to America because of specific circumstances that only happened in America. Of course we exported a lot of that hate in the world wars but nothing like what was seen in America. The KKK wasn't started because black people were in America, it was started because the black slaves were dumped into society without a means to support themselves after the civil war. They ended up taking jobs that white people held and worked those jobs for less in order to get them. and guess what, those basic premises of conflict still exist today with illegal immigration and are still seen as a problem.

But the hate surrounding racism today has more to do with dumping thousands of unemployed people into the market then the market deciding it did like black people. Of course the later is the appearances given off when whites started banding together to repress the black population's advances but it has to do with the major distinguishable factor in common was that they were black. The rest of the hate was basically attempts to reconcile with the oppression put in place. Modern racism is still misguided anxiety expressed in hate. It generally resides in one or two acts that drove a person to being a racists or it was taught to them by others who have one or two experiences.

Same question as above, but with "monopolies" instead of "racism, sexism, etc."

You have to look at how a monopoly works and why it is bad. You see, a monopoly happens when there is no other competition. It is bad when they use that position to either escalate pricing or to force unwanted products onto buyers. Now here is the rub, when a business becomes profitable that it grows to a point of being the only competitor, others looking to make money will jump in the same markets. When the potential monopoly starts raising prices, the value line or cheaper suppliers makes more sales. When the potential monopoly starts forcing other products onto people, the competitors offer it without. When there isn't copyrights or patents to protect against competition, the only thing restricting competition is going to be raw materials. When a company buys it all up, they lose money and can only do it for so long which means while some competitors would or could go out of business, as soon as it becomes profitable agains, other competitors will start up.

There is sort of a built in protections against a monopoly. It is called greed. When there is money to be made, people will think they can make the money. Without artificial limitations by government (patents and so On) this can and will happen at any time it starts looking to be profitable.

Safe Harbor?

[PPH]

If Yahoo (or anyone else) is going to start exercising this sort of editorial control, their safe harbor protection may just have gone out the window.

When this happens, please let me know where the line forms to sue them for hosting offensive content.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[sumdumass]

You apply yourself and gain the skills necessary.

Are you suggesting that you shouldn't have to work to obtain the things you want in life? I mean you even had to work at typing at one point in time.

Freedom at the Gates

[Shihar]

It isn't an end-run around the Constitution. It is a touch of common sense and nothing else. Yes, people have a right to determine how people use their services. MySpace can kick off pedophiles, Flickr can dump whatever it is they find offensive, and I can delete Viagra ads from my blog's comment section without violating the 1st.

The Internet of all places is where private censorship actually makes the most sense. It is hard and costly to avoid physical areas that don't conform to what you think is proper expression (be that free or restricted). What makes the Internet so wonderful is that you can easily bypass the areas that you find distasteful.

It takes no effort to avoid a right wing religious website that heavily censors their forms in a manner I find repulsive. It takes no effort to drop into a place like Slashdot that offers mild optional self mild self censoring options (karma and user ratings).

The Internet is better than a democracy in that it isn't majority rules, it is YOU rule. You pick the rules you want to live by. Feeling a little anarchist? Merrily only log into place that support your style. Feel like your eyes will bleed if you see a naughty word? Head on over to something safe and sanitized. Want to go some places where BDSM is the ONLY allowable topic of discussion and distracting things like politics are not allowed? I bet my soul that there is a place on the Internet for you. If you really can't find a place that fits you (you probably are not trying), you can make your own with a very small barrier to entry.

The Internet offers up something better than democracy. I want "free speech" on the Internet only in so far that nothing is made illegal by law. If Disney wants to ban sex stories on their forums, more power to them, so long as it is the website owners making the decision and not the government.

So long as the "gates" of the Internet remain open and website operators are given free reign over their tiny little domain of the Internet, I am happy. So long as Time Warner or the government can't hose my packets without my consent because they think I am about to see something offensive, great. If Time Warner wants to police their own personal website like the customer hating bastards they are, more power to them.

The "gates" to the Internet are what need to be protected. Preventing carriers and the government from deciding where you are allowed to go and deciding what packets are can be sent or delayed is where the fight is. Flickr though? Let Flickr set the rules for Flickr. Don't like their rules? I bet you can find another photo sharing website. Don't like that your comment got deleted off a blog? Find another one. Offended that Slashdot doesn't delete offensive posts? Brows at a different level or find a new website. So long as the gates remain open, the Internet is something better than democracy.

Are you sure of that ?

[aepervius]

I thought that this was actually a myth and U.S. ISP don't have a common carrier status.

Re:Are you sure of that ?

[drinkypoo]

Well, that's pretty much my understanding too. So let's hold them responsible for everything that happens over their network until they behave like common carriers! That'll rein in their bid for glory pretty quick. Why should a telco be treated differently than an ISP? (Especially when often they are the same company)

Idiots

[DerekLyons]

"the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations."

Fucking duh. If it's controlled by a private corporation - it isn't a fucking commons. Fucking internet jackasses who hijack terms with a long history behind them without a fucking clue what the term means.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[KGIII]

Only rich people can buy television time, only rich people can buy a full page in the NYT, and only rich people can afford to start their own radio station to say what they want. Would you propose that ABC has to air your opinions? Would you propose that NYT has to post a full page dedicated to your ramblings? Would you say that your local radio station has to devote their air time to your phone call when/if you call in? Of all of those things, to get the message to the masses, you need wealth. Freedom doesn't mean you can afford it at any level you desire. These are, sorry, private servers that have some public content and allow the public to use some features with a set of terms that they agreed on. 'Tis really that simple. I don't like it much either BUT that's the reality - they are still private. I hear you (read really) bitching about this and yet you've not offered a single workable solution. When people have tried to tell you this you have done nothing more than froth at the mouth. Of ALL of these options for expression the easiest and cheapest is to, in fact, use the web wisely.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[BonzinoMuschweshe]

talk, no pun intended, to US airports and malls for a short, i hope soon to be relevant, primer on the matter.

yes those are owned and may wholly be torn-down in protest to such liberties.

ymmv

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[PieceofLavalamp]

So your saying all the Companies and corporations would just skip hand in hand thru the flowers. All of them.

Yeah sure...

I received this from Yahoo a few days ago....

[Skylinux]

The message below informs me that I have violated TOS but it will not tell me how. I contacted Yahoo support, requesting clarification and they did not even bother to respond.
I have already removed my Yahoo marketing account due to the inability of technical support to understand a spam report I filed. Now I will stop using Yahoo all together.

Dear REMOVED

By creating and using your Yahoo! account, you agree to abide by
Yahoo!'s Terms of Service (TOS). Pursuant to the TOS, Yahoo! reserves
the right to terminate your account or otherwise prohibit use of your
account in the event that, among other things, Yahoo! believes that you
have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the
TOS.

It has come to our attention that you may have violated the TOS
(http://www.yahoo.com/r/ts) on Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com).
Please reread the TOS and cease any use of your account that may
violate the TOS.

If your use of your Yahoo! account is brought to our attention again,
and we believe that such use violates the TOS, then we may terminate
your account without further notice.

Please do not reply to this email. Any questions concerning Yahoo!'s
Services should be submitted through the on-line form in the help area
( http://help.yahoo.com/ ).

-Yahoo!

Public space privatisation

[dugeen]

This issue becomes more and more important as more and more IRL public spaces are privatised. We need to assert more strongly the position that if the public at large are admitted, their rights come in with them.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Aceticon]

Clearly McCartism is alive and well when some people resort to labelling others as Communists to discredit their ideas and get modded insightful for it.

Obviously it is too hard to actually try use logic and reason to make your point instead of shrill political labeling and attacking straw men ("abolishment of private property rights", wtf!???)

Still, the usage of bullshit by the parent poster to try and win the argument is not what disgusts me the most (he is not the first and won't be the last), it's the brainless modders that gave him +4 Insightful that really keep me from believing there is still hope for Mankind ...

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[daem0n1x]

Good luck with that. People still believe this nonsense?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Mayrel]

Suppose you run a business or charity that finds sponsors to help battered women in relationships start a new life by getting affordable housing, jobs, lawyers for divorce and custody cases and so on. Now suppose my political ideals are that women should have no rights, be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Should I be able to wear a shirt saying "the world went to hell when women got the vote" while working at your organization?

You wouldn't be working at my organization, if I knew your "political ideals" were directly opposed to the goals of the organization. Why would I trust to do your job? It'd be like a Christian Scientist being a surgeon.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[FLEB]

So... get off someone else's land. It's not that difficult-- or at least not as difficult as to be called "feudal".

The enshrined rights and freedoms are there to guarantee that there is no absolute repressive force (law or government). There still may be opposing forces, in the forms of people, in a superior position, exercising their own legitimate rights to oppose you. There are ways around them. You just have to be willing to put in the effort.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Dan541]

And the Internet is under private ownership so there is a lower expectation.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Arthur B.]

It wouldn't fly in court, and it's a shame. If I own a house, it's my right to agree with the renter on a set of conditions for the rental to occur.

The obvious mistake

[DaveV1.0]

the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations

There is no such thing as "online commons" nor is there such a thing as "public online space" because all the servers that make up the internet are owned and controlled by someone or some organization.

The only way there would be such things is if there were publicly available, public owned servers, and even then, said servers would be controlled by the government and would be subject to the governments rules on internet use.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[sumdumass]

That's exactly my point. Thank you.

Although, I would limit the christian scientists to a Church of Christ: scientist. Being a christian and a scientist itself is no direct conflict. But the Church of Christ Christian scientists, well, that is another story.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[CowTipperGore]

Given how wrong you are in everything else you wrote, I'm just going to safely dismiss this point as well.

I find the extensive support offered for your position much more convincing.

I think you're channeling the conflict resolution strategies of past (and current) governments. This has not been the route that business have took, and there's no reason to think that this would be different in any another scenario.

If you had read the GP's post, you would see that his comments were about the theoretical free market, not the highly managed economy that you've seen. The post to which he replied made the point that people like you do not understand what is meant by a truly free market and unbridled capitalism, and you made his point for him by continuing to use the US as your example of a free market.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Descalzo]

Exactly my point.

You have a weird sense of freedom

[geoffrobinson]

Then the landlord isn't "free" to use his property as he sees fit.

Someone's freedom has got to give. There has to be some restriction of freedom given your definition of freedom.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[danielk1982]

>So your saying all the Companies and corporations would just skip hand in hand thru the flowers. All of them.

The vast majority of them necessarily have to. If too many of them were like Enron or WorldCom, the economy would have collapsed. The exception proves the rule.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[sveinungkv]

You are correct that Plasmacutter is advocating the abolishment of (at least some) private property rights. (the right I have to decide what others are allowed to do and say on my website, my land and in my house) Does that make him a communist? The NRA is also advocating the abolishment of some private property rights when they support laws that makes it illegal to forbid guns on your property. Does that make the NRA communists?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[danielk1982]

>If you had read the GP's post, you would see that his comments were about the theoretical free market, not the highly managed economy that you've seen.

His post fails even on that level. There are no free markets so what is he basing his hypothetical speculation on? He clearly cannot extrapolate from the free market fragments in our economy because companies just don't act the way he argued they would. They work with their competitors, and they don't resort to violence. The former isn't government mandated and the latter, if they really wanted to do it, they could get away with. After all, the Mafia has been using that model for decades. Maybe it is counter-intuitive but physical violence has never been a feature of trade ... unless governments have been involved.

You should also re-read my comment because I anticipated your kind of objection anyway. I argued that the size of the US economy precludes the possibility of any real top-down oversight. Only in this respect we might as well be in a free market, because the vast majority of transactions happen with no government knowledge of them. To put it another way, if most companies approached business with the intent of cheating shareholders or partners or _______(insert bad behavior), the government couldn't stop it. Enron got away with it for a few years, and if you had 10 000 other Enrons how much harder would it be to track them down. And how hard would the economy and investment market have crashed by now. Clearly, Enron is the exception that proves the rule.

These are good enough reasons for me to label the original poster's comment as complete fiction. His views are not rooted in reality. Furthermore he hasn't tried to justify any of those view. He simply threw out assertions, and I supposed if your ideology runs left of Kucinich, you'll take them on faith.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[The Slashdot Guy]

Your justification of this fact is baseless claims. In the real world, I posit this never happens.

Citation needed.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[hypergreatthing]

Private property and public spaces are completly different things though. If i put up a store in a public place I must let anyone who wants to enter. I would think it's illegal for me to put up signs like "no whites" "only people with 50k or greater income allowed" "only republicans welcome" "english speaking only" ect. Yet more and more i see public places such as stores, websites, online games having policies on what is accepted and not, and yet since they're written in legalese, not being clearly understood and not being enforced all the time. Clearly if you establish a public "anyone is welcome to come and use/buy" area, then it's not strictly private. You should not be able to apply private restrictions unless the area is definately not public. A private residence for example should be accessable to a defined set of people, be locked and or gated with clear and defined borders. The owner can do whatever they want on the residence short of breaking laws. You don't want to invite christians in your residence then don't, you're in your perfect right not to. Now if you have a garage sale open to the public with a sign that says "whites only" I'm pretty sure you're in legal trouble.

That being established, websites that are open to the pubic (for anyone to use) and yet have policies against certain things (lets say dipictions of kids that smoke) are clearly crossing the boundary. Whether or not it's morally reprehensible, the fact that they're disgriminating against a subject means they clearly are not a public space, yet they are open to the public (the fact of a website). Unless they have a defined userbase and clearly defined boundaries i'd say what they're doing is wrong. That's one step away from saying yahoo will cancel all email accounts from anyone who votes for bush in 04.

In a public forum it's all or nothing, not how each owner defines it.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ubuwalker31]

Profplump is correct. Depending on what State you live in, a landlord may be able to force you to remove a political sign from your property.

The First Amendment only provides that the government may not abridge any citizen's right to freedom of speech...BUT it does not cover interactions between private citizens. Thus, a landlord and tenant can sign a lease that forbids the tenant to display a political or commercial sign on the property without the approval of the landlord.

However, the apartment or house that you rent is not only the landlord's property, it is your property as well, and you have rights that go along with that property that are not alterable by contract. You have the right to use the property as your home. The landlord shouldn't be able to tell you what you can do in your home. Obviously, you shouldn't be able to knock down the house, or put in a new wall, but in a residential lease, why should the landlord prohibit putting up wall hangings...or tell you how to raise your children?

People do not have any bargaining power when it comes to signing residential leases usually and provisions like this are overlooked. Besides, people have a reasonable expectation to do home-like things to their rental property, like putting up pictures and hanging curtains.

How does this relate to the internet? The internet is a quasi-public space. Users have an expectation that they have the right to say what they think, as long as what they are saying or doing isn't illegal. So when a private company comes along and says that you are violating our TOS then people get pissed...especially because our private money helped lay down the infrastructure for the internet.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[xappax]

Maybe it is counter-intuitive but physical violence has never been a feature of trade ... unless governments have been involved.

First of all: drug cartels.

Second, above-ground businesses themselves don't have armies, so I guess it's technically true to say that they rarely commit violence themselves. They're more than happy to hire someone else to do it for them, though. Look at the number of wars that have been exclusively fomented by business interests, invasions that have been conducted for the benefit of specific companies, and guerrilla groups that have been formed or directly financed by businesses. If you're more of the "economic theory" type rather than the "history" type, here are some examples to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_fruit_company#Banana_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_paramilitaries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Nigeria

Businesses are smart. Building an army is expensive and difficult, better left to a separate entity who can specialize in it (the military). Then, when a business is in need of some physical force, they "outsource" the violence to this third party without having to get their own hands dirty.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

what country do you live in where a hard line costs 50 bucks a month?!

if you buy your own server, the web provider will cut the account, if you own the web provider, icann will kill your domain name.. it never ends..

you would need millions of dollars to own everything from end to end.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Your justification of this fact is baseless claims. In the real world, I posit this never happens.

Citation needed.

No, it's not. Citation for why it's not.

A citation is needed though for the assertion that companies that practice censorship go out of business. There is a theoretical framework, but I question if it has ever really happened. Please justify your theory with evidence.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

the web provider will cut the account

Why? You have thousands of hosting companies to choose from. Did you choose one, but lie to them when you signed a contract? Are you unable to think clearly about the content you're putting up on your own web site, and just can't mentally reconcile it with the agreement you made? What sort of content is it that you're so obsessed about hosting, anyway? The thread is about - for example - pictures of kids smoking. There's nothing illegal about such a picture, but it certaily fell outside of Yahoo's boundaries defining what they want showing on their web site. You don't have to have such boundaries on your own web site, and there are plenty of hosting companies that don't care what you host, as long as it's not actually illegal. So, the only conclusion here is that you're looking to use a web presence to actually do something illegal.

Now all of your flimsy arguments and tap-dancing around reality are starting to make sense. You're angry that there are laws governing the publishing of certains types of images. Just do it: come right out and say that what you're all about here is kiddie pr0n. No? Then what IS it that you're so sure will be illegal? Are you sure it will NOT be illegal? Then you have your choice of thousands of hosting companies that will only charge you a few dollars a month. Like, $10 a month. Your red herring arguments about needing a private circuit are just as transparently sophomoric as everything else that you've said. What you're really saying is that it seems expensive to you to set up hosting for something that would be illegal in any country in which you might park it. Anyone who would go through all of the intellectually dishonest thrashing around that you have in order to indirectly stake out a position like that can't possibly be expected to be taken seriously.

The good news, for you? The first amendment. You can stand on a street corner all day long, and preach about how the web content you want to post, currently illegal as it is, should NOT be so. In fact, you can say that right here, right now. You won't get arrested for attempting to string together such an argument - people do it all the time, obviously. So, have at it. Make the case you REALLY want to make, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Eeeevil Corporations taking away your freedoms. What you want is a change in the laws limiting whatever illegal content you have in mind, and you want a business run and funded by other people to set up hosting for you, on their dime. Just say it. Just boil it down to those basic things. You'll fee so much better.

Or - here's an idea - admit that you're just mad that people want to govern their own systems so that they can better shape what they're offering to the customers they want to attract. You want to tell them how they should run their business, and are too cheap to pay GoDaddy $9.95 a month to host your ramblings. You doth protest too much. You probably have NOTHING controversial, image-wise, to put up at Flickr, and are making a giant straw man argument out of this whole thing because you just want to rant about how people who start up a business should only be allowed to run them according to your rules. You want all of the fruits of a market economy (like cheap web hosting), but you want to run it according to a philosophy that - actually expressed in practical terms - destroys the very means by which competition provides those services. In other words, you have a classic case of badly mixed premises, upon which you have built a shaky, inconsistent world view and a childishly acute sense of entitlement, seasoned with resentment over the fact that people not as lazy as you can go out, mow one lawn, and take the proceeds to run a web site that month.

That's only defending non-freedom.

[sethstorm]

It isn't an end-run around the Constitution. [bunch of strawman comments snipped]

It is as it permits things that are normally in violation - the only difference is the non-involvement of government. That is what makes it the end run that it is. Marginalize a community, break up its dissent, they're effectively silenced. Works well when there is a presence that is hard to move.

So long as the "gates" of the Internet remain open and website operators are given ... over their tiny little domain of the Internet,

That gets abused enough times not to be funny.

Interesting that dictatorship finds a new home, outside of government. Force is all the same, no matter who initiates it.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

This has nothing to do with prosecution for expressing one's self. It has to do with Yahoo not wanting the expression representing their service. If the guy wants to put pics on a web site without anyone else deleting them, he can buy a hosting account and have a web site. If his hosting company deletes his site, he can get a co-located server or get a DS1 or E1 to his office and set up a server.

This is just the same as a store owner telling you you can't yell "Fuck!" in their store or write the word on the little free community bulletin board some stores have. It's their property you're on. Go onto you own property or onto public property if you want to use a form of expression the store doesn't want in their store.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

You have a mistaken concept of a leasehold. A lessee typically has all the rights of a freehold owner other than selling, changing, or destroying/devaluing the property for the term of the lease. Any lease you sign that says otherwise is a contract agreement between you and the lessor.

When you're using Flickr, for free, you're not leasing anything. You're using a site Yahoo owns and operates for the benefit of Yahoo. It's not the same thing at all.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

Well, there are probably good counterexamples, but the drug cartel one is flawed. There's no such thing as a cartel for illegal drugs in a truly free market without government interference, because it's government interference in the free market that makes it illegal to buy and sell certain drugs in the first place.

It's violent enforcement of anti-drug laws against sellers and shippers that allows violent cartels to form. If it was legal and commonplace to transport and sell the drugs, anyone who was attacked for their share of the market could report it as a crime. The main reason violence among rival drug trafficking groups exists on the level it does is that they would go to prison for selling the drugs if they reported violence against themselves to authorities. So they must also defend themselves with force if they wish to continue selling the drugs.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

Harassment based on sex, color, religion, or anything else and unregulated buying and selling of goods have little to do with one another. It's possible to have a market that's free of economic regulation and product selection in which the participants are still held to treating people and their money equally.

Even if not, the BMI music publishing group grew up from ASCAP not wanting to sell "black music". BMI sold what ASCAP wouldn't sell, and cheaper than ASCAP's prices. The market corrected the situation quite nicely.

Housing is a particularly thorny market in which to allow discrimination, and it's difficult to fix by free market standards. So there's a good argument against.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

Just a fine point of distinction: the NRA isn't trying to tell everyone that they must accept the public onto their land. They are simply saying that once you accept someone onto your land, their right to personal protection overrides your right to dictate their keeping of arms. You may disagree with that balancing of rights, but it doesn't really "abolish" anything. It just places one right ahead of the other in a specific instance.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

Indeed, if someone else buys the land and you are free to do whatever you want on it despite their disagreement, they have lost the freedom to control their holdings. Their hard work and good fortune went into securing, improving, and maintaining the property, so why should someone else have the right to come along and destroy or damage it?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

Homeowner's associations, neighborhood covenants, and county health codes can ban some of those things, too.

In my town, if your grass gets taller than 10" the city mows it and tacks a $75 fee onto the taxes for the property. If you don't pay the taxes, they can sell your land for the amount of the taxes. It's not just an appearance issue, either. It's motivated by the fact that ticks, snakes, mice, and other vermin like high grass.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[mr_mischief]

I believe so, and on a site the poster doesn't own or lease, too.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[PieceofLavalamp]

That's the point. A lot of companies only care about the economy in that it affects their profits. Yes there are a few that really understand they need a good economy, but i really doubt there are enough to keep a stable "truly free market".

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

blah blah blah froth froth forth...

The plain and simple is, you believe in feudalism. You believe the haves should be able to gag the have-nots, and engage in intellectually dishonest rhetoric about "private property" to further this agenda.

I'll quote an astute point made which was passed over by the mods:

You are intentionally confusing two separate things. For me, possession is freedom: I don't get to share my possessions with anyone and can enjoy them anytime I like and for as long as I like. However, for some people, possession is others' non-freedom, it is POWER to put them in their place, like you just tried, some sort of acquired gentry, sort of holier-then-thou. It is often masked with profit prospects, but since it is an irrational feature of a kind of mind the truth is other way around: feeling being somehow above a number of others, dominating, making them mentally suffer, is primary and monetary profit is only a secondary reward.
My view of capitalism as it was pictured by freedom seekers from feudalism is: You can do whatever you want with your property... yourself. None could possibly complain to that and it is understood that it is an essence of what property actually means. However, if you are letting me use it (for a rent or whatever), or even worse, you possess it with sole purpose of letting someone else use it, it still doesn't entitle you to put additional rules upon my life, to subdue my (allegedly) unalienable freedoms. In essence, it is a core of a blackmail and should be illegal and void. We can negotiate the price of rent (amortization of rented goods plus your pure profit) and if I damage or destroy your property, you are of course surely entitled to complete reimbursement from me. You cannot let and not let at the same time. Either hold it to yourself or respect others you deal with, like you would respect your other, wealthier, business partners, or otherwise just admit that you are a hypocrite.

read it here

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

until someone disagrees with you, forges a DMCA notice, and your site gets nuked by ICANN, Your ISP, Your web host, or any of the "private property" holders who are between you and "your site".

They don't care if it's actually hosting illegal content or not, which in this hypothetical case it is not, but you have no recourse, and they get to do whatever they want because it's "their private property".

This is bullcrap. It's nothing more than feudalism hidden behind an intellectually dishonest facade of "private property"

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

Let's boil this down, shall we?

You assert that only rich people can have freedom of speech, because it costs millions of dollars to run you own web site. Of course, several people have pointed out that you can run your own web site for a few dollars a month. You carefully avoid being in any way specific about why that's a problem. You have your choice of hosting companies that will let you do anything you want that's not actually illegal. Specifically, how is this a problem? How are you being silenced, unless it's illegal material that you wish to post? Your complaint that businesses are controlling what you can say is absurd on the face of it. Use your own web site - and say what you want. You can either explain how $10/month is too much to have your own web site for all the world to see, complete with your own rules for what's acceptable content, or explain how a hosting company is silencing you when they won't facilitate something illegal.

Which is it? Right now. One or the other. If you (again) can't address that without saying "blah blah blah" like an infant that knows he's been caught BS-ing, then your only remaining option is to admit you're simply BS-ing. Hint: that is your only option, unless it's the illegal option that you're actually fussing about, here.

As for your citation of someone else's post: I didn't reply to that because it's muddle-headed, logically inconsistent, and doesn't even speak to your issue (your issue being that you think other people should provide you free services, and should have nothing to say about how those services are used... and that $10/month to get out from under their content guidelines is the sort of thing that only "rich" people can afford).

So, how about showing a little courage and actually addressing the specifics of the issues that you bring up?:

1) Less than $10/month is only for rich people. Yes or No?

2) Other people should pay for and do things for you for free, and cannot say how and whether they will. Yes or No?

I expect you're too craven to actually answer those questions directly because it will expose how you actually see the world. You will now attempt to mis-use the word "feudalism" again, even though the definition of that word, per the dictionary, is:

The system of political organization prevailing in Europe from the 9th to about the 15th centuries having as its basis the relation of lord to vassal with all land held in fee and as chief characteristics homage, the service of tenants under arms and in court, wardship, and forfeiture.

A web site is not a piece of land. A free web site is an especially bad parallel. Unlike land, you can create and occupy as many web sites as you like. For practically no money. Right about now, you'll probably switch gears and try mis-using the word "fascist," is my guess. That's the usual fall-back language abuse target for people having an immature tantrum over the fact that it costs money to run web sites.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ducomputergeek]

Actually, it's more like, If they suck, you are free to create your own site to host your own pictures or create a site to host the images of others with whatever level of restriction you feel is necessary.

In other words, you're free to build a better mouse trap.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[The Slashdot Guy]

I read the statement, "If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business." as a hypothetical statement. If he had said "Companies that suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense have gone out of business.", then maybe citation may be needed.

I haven't read much more of the discussion, did you ever get around to answering the relevant part of of his reply?

So you think YOU should be able to tell them how to run their business? Or do you think the government should take care of that for you?

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

You can run your own website for a few dollars a month:
-On someone else's private property i mean err.. servers
-Using a domain name registrar who is third party, and is leasing "THEIR PRIVATE PROPERTY", e.g. the domain name, to you, and "reserve the right to remove it".

etc. etc. a few dollars is horse hockey!. You have to own it end to end. The domain name registrar, the server hardware, the hard line, the backbone. Bill gates could "own" a website as his own private property, but few others could.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I read the statement, "If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business." as a hypothetical statement.

Hypothetical comes from hypothesis. I questioned his. You might be thinking of a hypothetical question, which is different from a hypothetical statement. A hypothetical question, but not a hypothetical statement, cannot have its assumptions questioned.

haven't read much more of the discussion, did you ever get around to answering the relevant part of of his reply?

Answer it? I cannot even parse it. Is he asking whether I wish to be granted dictatorial authority to run their business, or if I want the government to do so? I don't believe he intends to ask that.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

You have to own it end to end

Why? In what way is your freedom to speak being reduced by someone else's policy that says you can do whatever you want as long as it's not illegal? The whole point is that you're making arrangements - a contract, which serves you - that provides for exactly what that hosting company can and cannot do or require of you. Your agreement with Yahoo doesn't provide the flexibility you want, but you don't have to do business with them.

As I expected, you were too cowardly to directly answer the simple questions that cut to heart of what you're saying. So, let's try reducing it to ONE simpler one for you:

Is some other private party obligated to provide you with a platform from which to speak?

Yes or No.

But, their's are bigger!

[falconwolf]

The bigger they are the harder they fall.

Falcon

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

Why? In what way is your freedom to speak being reduced by someone else's policy that says you can do whatever you want as long as it's not illegal?

because they don't bother to protect you. In other words, all it takes is an accusation, or even a threat of a threat of an accusation. They shut you down and you have to retain a lawyer using money you (according to the laws of averages) do not have to "PROVE YOUR INNOCENCE".
Ah, guilty until proven innocent, it's the american way.. wait a minute...

As I expected, you were too cowardly to directly answer the simple questions that cut to heart of what you're saying. So, let's try reducing it to ONE simpler one for you:

I didn't refuse to answer your question because you weren't asking one. You were simply frothing on at length about how private property should make you lord and master over other people. I did answer your question, but not with a yes or no because it's more nuanced than that. of course, only a sith deals in absolutes.. or a reaganite scumbag with an agenda against the public trust.

I will present that answer yet again:

You are intentionally confusing two separate things. For me, possession is freedom: I don't get to share my possessions with anyone and can enjoy them anytime I like and for as long as I like. However, for some people, possession is others' non-freedom, it is POWER to put them in their place, like you just tried, some sort of acquired gentry, sort of holier-then-thou. It is often masked with profit prospects, but since it is an irrational feature of a kind of mind the truth is other way around: feeling being somehow above a number of others, dominating, making them mentally suffer, is primary and monetary profit is only a secondary reward.
My view of capitalism as it was pictured by freedom seekers from feudalism is: You can do whatever you want with your property... yourself. None could possibly complain to that and it is understood that it is an essence of what property actually means. However, if you are letting me use it (for a rent or whatever), or even worse, you possess it with sole purpose of letting someone else use it, it still doesn't entitle you to put additional rules upon my life, to subdue my (allegedly) unalienable freedoms. In essence, it is a core of a blackmail and should be illegal and void. We can negotiate the price of rent (amortization of rented goods plus your pure profit) and if I damage or destroy your property, you are of course surely entitled to complete reimbursement from me. You cannot let and not let at the same time. Either hold it to yourself or respect others you deal with, like you would respect your other, wealthier, business partners, or otherwise just admit that you are a hypocrite.

...
there's also this answer:

and you don't see something fundamentally wrong with that?

The whole point of the US constitution was to remove the burdens of feudalism, and yet the above post describes exactly that.

If you're on someone's land, even if you're paying them for the use of it, you are not free, period. They dictate your life.

The "private property" angle is no more than a backdoor for tyranny.

In the days of our forefathers, The estates of the nobility were also the primary economic units.

In the modern world, corporations have equivalent or greater power than government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards as government. To do otherwise is to erect half a fence, and put a sign on the other half saying "it would be nice if you didn't enter", all the while claiming airtight security.

In other words, the spurious "private property" crap needs to end when you start leasing it out for others to use. At that point it needs to be treated like public property, barring permanent damage on the part of the tenant.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

Nice dodge.

We're talking about Yahoo's free Flickr service, and you said that Yahoo is restraining your rights to speak freely. Again: is it their obligation to provide you with a platform from which to speak? That is a fundamental, non-nuanceable question.

You seem profoundly confused on the subject of the government not being allowed to limit what you can say, and a business being able to enter into a contract with you about how you will use their web site. Can you really not see that those two things have nothing to do with one another?

because they don't bother to protect you. In other words, all it takes is an accusation, or even a threat of a threat of an accusation. They shut you down and you have to retain a lawyer using money you (according to the laws of averages) do not have to "PROVE YOUR INNOCENCE".

Who is "they?" StrawManHosting.com? There is no such "they" unless you choose, from thousands of inexpensve hosting operations, one that provides for that in the contract you set up with them. The process by which a web site is taken down is clearly defined in the contract you establish with the provider. Some have an elaborate review process, and some don't. Since you seem uncharacteristically obsessed with hosting content that you're convinced will be, to a reasonable observer, seen as illegal, you must surely be willing to take the time to read through the terms and conditions of several different hosting contracts to find one you like. There are thousands to choose from, and a highly competitive, global market for that commodity service. A market you can also enter into for far less than the "millions" you claim.

Again: what content is it that you are so sure will fall outside the bounds of the contract you will sign? If your content only appears illegal to a reasonable person, you have recourse: spend your $10/month somewhere else, or allow a contingency lawyer to make both of you money off of a demonstrated breach of contract.

But you know that won't be necessary, because you know that this is all BS. You are flailing around trying to dream up reasons why a hosting company's terms of service are equal to the feudal use of force against your person. Your ability to just take your business elsewhere, or set up your own at will, completely nullifies that absurd metaphor. There is no one stopping you from speaking (as you're doing right now), and the constition correctly has nothing to say about whether or not other citizens or the companies they form and run are under any obligation to provide you with a printing press, a web site, a telephone or any other mechanism for your to publish your thoughts. Just like those people, you can build or buy a press, or a web site, at will, and for a trivial cost. There is no one stopping you.

If you're on someone's land, even if you're paying them for the use of it, you are not free, period. They dictate your life

They are forcing you to be on their private property? Or if you made an agreement with them about how you would use that property, are you saying that they are in breach of that agreement? What consequences did they agree to, in the case that breach their agreement? Or, again, is it that you're too lazy to shop around for a lease that actually has terms you like? That's what a market is for. Or, again, are you contemplating illegal actions on that property, in which case it's not the owner of the property that you're really complaining about, is it? Since you've carefully avoided any acknowlegement of the fact that your complaints are meaningless without that context, there's no point talking about this until you say, yes or no, that what you're looking for is cover to perform illegal activities. Are you? Yes or no.

In the days of our forefathers, The estates of the nobility were also the primary economic units.

Which relates to your free use of someone else's web site, which they pay to operate, how? You continue t

WTF does that have to do with freedom?

[phorm]

Pay somebody with some skill to make it not suck? Use some pre-existing software (gallery2) to handle the photos in a nice way?

WTF does not getting visitors to your site have to do with freedom?

People can go where they want. If they want to go to "corporate site X" because it has a nicer layout, that's a part of being free. What's the alternative, forcing people at gunpoint to visit your site?

Seriously, if I take a crap on a canvas an call it art, it's not likely anyone will buy it. That's their choice (and a smart one). If *famous artist X* does the same, and names it a masterpiece called "fecalartopia," (look at the soulful placement of corn nuggets) then if somebody buys it they're still free... just not very bright.

Re:WTF does that have to do with freedom?

[Descalzo]

But if I pay someone skillful to make it not suck, then I must either be rich (making the troll correct), or give away my freedom to the skillful person.

I just want to make everyone aware that I'm being sarcastic.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[xappax]

Right, of course. So if instead of illegal drugs we were talking about some perfectly legal industry like, say, tropical fruit, or petroleum, or diamonds, then the violence would be absent. And yet.

And I know you can keep coming back with convoluted explanations of how governments are even remotely involved in any real world example, thereby saddling them with all the blame. It's funny how every real world bad thing is due to the small role the government played, but all sorts of real world good things are due to the small role the market played.

I admire your the purity and elegance of your economic theory, it has the satisfaction of a good math proof or emergent behavior algorithm - it's possible I've studied it even more than you. But there comes a time when it must be reconciled with reality. Because those who continue to place faith in clean, elegant models of the world even when they don't mirror reality are poor scientists indeed.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[plasmacutter]

just keep repeating the same old rhetoric, i'm sure one day, when corporations turn into the honest, holy, blameless creatures you characterize them as, it might actually be true.

BTW: TLDR

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

[ScentCone]

just keep repeating the same old rhetoric, i'm sure one day, when corporations turn into the honest, holy, blameless creatures you characterize them as, it might actually be true.

As I expected, you won't answer a single specific question that actually establishes anything you're saying as anything other than whiny crap.

And as an aside, is your implication (above) that all individual people are honest, and they are only dishonest when they incorporate a business? I mean, you've been dishonest a dozen times in this thread alone, so I'm not sure what your point is. Regardless, I do appreciate your tacit agreement with the actually meaningful, factual issues at hand. Now we see you're really just angry because some humans in the world are dishonest or annoy you, and that you're too uncomfortable to say that to them directly and prefer instead to fashionably rail against companies providing services that you want (but don't feel like paying for) as a bit of angry-sounding misdirection. It's got to feel better to have that out in the open, I'm sure.

At least now we know that you DO understand that the First Amendment only talks about keeping the government out of the way of your ramblings, and doesn't somehow oblige your fellow citizens to provide you with any particular technology or platform with which to broadcast yourself to others. That part is up to you, and just like everyone else, you can talk out loud with your mouth, or bear the costs of amplifying yourself by other means. What you don't have is the right to force other people to do that for you. I'm glad you see that now.

eToys

[falconwolf]

It's also an eCommerce site that went out of business when the bubble burst; it doesn't relate to censorship at all.

It went out of business during the bubble burst yes however it's attack of a Swedish arts group who used etoy as their domain name [WTO page with links to news articles] infuriated a lot of activists. If eToys had never attacked the group they may not of survived anyway, however by attacking them and trying to censor their domain name eToys made sure people would oppose them.

Falcon