'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
 

This should bring Radar out. Too long to post.
NEW YORK (AP) - Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.
Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
HERE

Just shut up and do what the corporate overlords dictate.:rolleyes:

The problem is that hypothetical park is public land, maintained by the government at least partly with tax dollars for the benefit of the citizenry.

Those Yahoo servers are owned, operated, and paid for by Yahoo.

One of the most long-standing principles of The Internet is that you can generally do whatever you want on your own network. A recent example of this was a court case (in Texas?) where a spammer sued a university for blocking emails the spammer had sent to students. The court ruled that it was OK for the university to do that. I'm as much of a first amendment partisan as the next guy, but I wouldn't be thrilled if it suddenly became illegal for my employer to operate a spam blocker.

(The role of actual ISPs as common carriers--or not--is admittedly somewhat murkier, but that's another discussion I don't have time to wade into right now.)

I've always known that private property is private property. For instance, the cellar belongs to UT. He alone can set standards for those who post on his board. Though this would normally severely limit the size of your online community.

When I was running for congress a couple of years ago, I mentioned that I flag messages that violate the terms of use and someone got upset because they said, "Libertarians aren't against free speech".

I had to explain to them that Craig Numark owns craigslist and he has the right to set standards for its use...which he has done. He has also given the community the ability to flag offensive messages. I told them, if they want free speech, they should open their own website, but even then, their provider could choose not to host certain kinds of websites.

The only way for it to be truly free is for you to have your own fiber lines and switches going into the internet. Other than very large businesses and colleges, I don't know anyone who has something like that.

I've had arguments with people who refer to themselves as "owners" of groups on Yahoo. I have explained to them that they don't own anything and that Yahoo owns the servers, switches, and even the words left on those groups by people.

:lol2:

It is fairly well documented Merc. Radar may have some ideas coming from far left field but he does get out and do something for those ideas. he isn't just hot air and bombastic declarations.

Hate to say it, but true.

It could be worse; the US Defense Department could intervene and decree that only pro-military remarks are allowed to be posted, imaged, and disseminated. After all, they invented the Internet.

Damn; had they done that, there would be no easy expansion of terrorism. But then there would be no free porn. Choices, choices. No porn or or allow porn, and terorrism.

I thought UT invented the Internet.:)

No, Al Gore invented it, UT is just the king. ;)

:D yea, well that and global warming.

I remember being censored on Prodigy a long time ago. I asked on what grounds I was being censored, and an employee wrote that I could be censored for making negative comments about Prodigy or its advertisers.

I canceled the service immediately.

You were censored for being a firestarter, twisted firestarter?

:lol: