Sunday, July 06, 2008
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'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080706/ap_on_hi_te/tec_disappearing_freedoms;_ylt=AsgE6hZz92wk9uVhQwaxVLis0NUE

or

http://tinyurl.com/57azvr

NEW YORK - Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't
eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.
ADVERTISEMENT

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional
rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's
controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users
worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They
serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as
their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video —
become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the
Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government
regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s
photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy
with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in
his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten
ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that —
far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and
street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a
kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you
always have to think about what Flickr will delete."

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