General Discussion

Poking around the internet today, we stumbled across this interesting article in at Wired.com discussing free speech in the online space. While it doesn't address MMOs in particular, it is an interesting read.

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.

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.

Read their whole article here.

Given that large chunks of the internet are *not* in fact solely in the US,

"free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed"

shouldn't really be a shock now, should it?

Re: the rest of the article - interesting points on free speech and censorship, the internet being composed of a lot of private spaces - there isn't really public space on the internet.

Perhaps there's a niche for this? How can this be turned into £££, then?

**GASP** What do you meaaaaaaaaaan the Major TV Networks' news broadcasts are designed and scripted with the best interests of their investors in mind???  What about free speech?

When it comes to the Internet, if you're typing in any sort of url that doesn't end in .gov, chances are, at the end of the day, it's got somebody's name on it somewhere.  Bar bouncers are allowed to turn away people that want to come in for any reason they want with the exception of race, ethnicity, or religion.  If I turn you away because I don't like what your shirt says on it, am I impeding on your freedom of speech?  No, you still have the ability to wear the shirt, I'm not going to burn you at the stake.  I'm just saying you can't bring what you are saying into my establishment because I don't appreciate what you are saying, which is well within my right as the person that writes the checks for the building at the end of the day.  How is the Internet any different?  Freedom of speech means you have the right to an opportunity to make yourself heard.  If you don't like that whatever you are saying is being removed from some "public" forum, then make your own website that shouts your message loud and clear.  Nobody will stop you (although China might block you, but hey, China is China).

Even with the right to assembly, you still need a permit to assemble.  You can't just form a mob and start yelling stuff, you'll get some fun-loving cops crashing your party.  There's always going to be something to consider when you're in someone else's space and you're thinking about raising some issues.  Whether those considerations lead to your opinion being removed from their space or not is their discretion.

"seemingly public spaces" and "public spaces" are two entirely different things. There are lots of "seemingly public spaces" on the internet, but all of them are run by private corporations or organizations who have every right to stomp all over your freedom of speech rights on their private site. Just like every business has the right to impose a behavior policy on you in their place of business, or have the police forcibly remove you from their property.

I honestly don't know of any US government run site that has a public forum. That is the only forum freedom of speech would likely be protected in...when the government comes into play and hosts a public forum.

Doesn't matter if the server is a foreign country or not...an entirely US based operation can still censor you into the next millennium if they want to. It's all about how they want to be perceived by the public. That's why a lot of companies are extremely loose on what they allow on their sites. They want to appear to the public to be a freedom of speech friendly forum...when in fact they can restrict that any time they want.

What a bullshit article.

Space on the internet isn't public, it's privately owned.

Go start your own little space on internet if you can't deal with the rules enforced by the site of your choice.

Besides that, seeing the flame infested (%$%@ the internet has become (and is more and more becomming) I'd say most sites could use stickter policies instead of less.

It's not like humanity handles percieved anonimity well :)

The Constitution does not guarantee an unfettered right to freedom of speech even in the United States. Read this.
 
link

Um...MMORPG.com censors freedom of speech aswell.

MMORPG.com erases posts and punishes people for breaking third party non-disclosure agreements.  Whoever owns this space has the right to determine what is done with it because as the above posters pointed out it is privately owned.

As far as freedom of speech goes erasing a post that break third party NDA is bad enough but why do you feel that you need to punish or threaten to punish the person too?

For those of you who are saying "just get your own website," you missed a big chunk of the article.

These people sometimes CAN'T get their own website. I've heard of a lot of cases where an individual or group literally stalk people on the internet. When a person finds a host to set up their blogs/opinions on, these people start sending hate letters to the provider about the website. They bombard them with stuff because they know that providers would rather lose one customer then have to deal with a group of "angry people."

So then the provider drops them. They try to find another provider, the angry people complain, and that's dropped too.

For some, there is no recourse because it's VERY EASY to harass people in this way, and to my knowledge there has yet to be any legal action taken against such people.

On the subject of the LJ issue, I wanted to add that the main problem with the bans was that there were support communities out there where people who had been abused as children could talk to others who would help them work through their problems. Those were banned as well, and that's what made most people angry.

Originally posted by Wickersham

Um...MMORPG.com censors freedom of speech aswell.

MMORPG.com erases posts and punishes people for breaking third party non-disclosure agreements.  Whoever owns this space has the right to determine what is done with it because as the above posters pointed out it is privately owned.

As far as freedom of speech goes erasing a post that break third party NDA is bad enough but why do you feel that you need to punish or threaten to punish the person too?

touche'.

cuz they won't get the good stuff if they don't?

public betas are the biggest jokes, just like the NDAs.

I practice free speech on the internets all the time, and as can be expected, I am routinely banned. I don't really say alot on the internet anymore because of that. ~shrugs~