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.

If you want a job done right,

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

Re:If you want a job done right,

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].

No Shit?

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?

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?

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

Re:No Shit?

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.

You're missing the point.

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.

Liberty is not just impinged by the government

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.

Um.... duh?

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?

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?

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.

Click Elsewhere

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...

Privately owned spaces have never been free

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

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..

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.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

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.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

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..

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.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

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..

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.

Re:Cue the Reaganites..

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..

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.

Or cue the common sense

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

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:The ignorance is breakthtaking

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.