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Online "Public" Spaces Don't Guarantee Rights
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jul 08, 2008 04:41 PM
from the swatting-at-mosquitos dept.
from the swatting-at-mosquitos dept.
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.
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If you want a job done right, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...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, (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [opennet.net].
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No Shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:No Shit? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No Shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3)
Quick! Let us nationalize teh intarwebs.
That'll remove the fascism from the system!
You're missing the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Let's correct this flawed analogy. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Liberty is not just impinged by the government (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Um.... duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Um.... duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Click Elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
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
Artificial Legal Entities (Score:3, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one (Score:3, Insightful)
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 managemen
Privately owned spaces have never been free (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
The net is not a democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Insightful)
>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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Citation needed. When has that ever happened.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Or cue the common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 th
Re:Or cue the common sense (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Cue the Reaganites.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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, als
Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:The ignorance is breakthtaking (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 a
Re:Free as in Speech, Not as in Beer (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)