Weighing in

[textualdeviance]

So, I've been watching The Great LJ Purge debacle with some amusement. LJ's response to the kerfluffle is amusing, too.

But one thing that does not amuse me is the raft of people having conniptions about "censorship" and how their rights are being violated.

Um, folks?

There is no such thing as "freedom of speech" on the Internet.

The vast majority of the Internet--the computers on which it lives, the connecting cables and wireless signals by which it is accessed--is privately owned. And almost everyone online does not own every means by which they access it. Some individuals may own a domain, but likely don't own the ISP by which they access it. Even independent ISPs have to get their connectivity from somewhere--usually large providers like phone or cable companies.

And as privately-owned spaces, the owners of those private spaces are completely within their rights to moderate or delete content as they see fit. I can delete offensive comments from my journal, LJ can delete offensive journals, LJ's ISP can delete LJ if they deem it offensive and the ISP's connectivity provider can cut them off if they decide they're supporting something they don't like.

The only legal protection U.S. citizens have online is that our government cannot censor what we say or do online if it is otherwise legal (not libelous, copyright infringing, etc.) if all of the companies that make our stuff show up online have no problem with what we post. It is legal, for instance, for me to say that I think Bush is a traitorous sociopath. The government can't stop me from saying that. But LJ could, if they wanted to. So could my ISP, if it decided I was violating their TOS.

I think the backlash against LJ for the purge is warranted. Customers raising their fists against a business that does something unethical is always a good thing. But enough with the pissing and moaning that rights are being trampled on. They're not.

People who really care about fighting for rights need to take the time to understand what those rights actually are before getting in a hissy.

/First Amendment Geek

Comments

[halophoenix.livejournal.com]

I'd take this aspect of the discussion a bit further, and point out some very important elements of creative expression that were posted over at the ErosBlog (which had some very poignant things to say about the entire situation) that rang with me quite a bit:

Anything worth saying or doing on the internet that you care about it worth doing on your own domain.

Livejournal isn't alone - any hosted and managed blogging platform can screw any of its customers over like this at will. You sign away your real right to your expression as soon as you sign up for an account. Your account can be edited, terminated, anything, at will, as long as it doesn't violate the terms of use you agreed to when you signed up, and isn't blatantly illegal. Any blogging platform can and will exercise this authority when the chips are against them or someone complains, or even worse when the government comes calling - Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress, Vox, Livejournal, Twitter, Jaiku, all of them.

So what's the solution? Don't trust your creative material to a hosted service. Buy your own domain - your domain registrar doesn't care what you put on your website, they just sold you a name. Purchase your own web hosting. Your web host won't care unless your content violates their TOS or is actually illegal - complaints about your content will fall on deaf ears - it's not their practice to monitor and manage their customer's sites - they just hold the data.

I agree, the backlash against LJ here is definitely warranted, and for all of the right reasons, many of which pixxelpuss pointed out above - but in the end, you simply can't trust a hosted or managed solution, owned by a private entity, to keep hold of your data.

I think the argument is a little looser than what you're describing, eg, the internet is completely privately owned and such, but I think you're on point. The ISP generally doesn't get involved in a situation where you post information on a website - they wouldn't shut you down for what you post or what you say, but they would shut you down for trafficking in illegal content, like video and music. The folks you really have to look out for are the web hosts and the companies that provide you a service, like LJ in this case. I really don't mean to hold LJ out in front this time, they've been actually much more lax than other platform owners, but they didn't help themselves, I have to say.

Anyway. You're right, I think there's a deeper lesson to be learned here by everyone involved: (one that I know full well - it's why my LJ is peripheral to all of my other blogs, which I manage myself on a host whose terms of service I know very well) don't trust your creative content to someone who can freely take ownership of it based on your service agreement.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Your web host won't care unless your content violates their TOS or is actually illegal - complaints about your content will fall on deaf ears - it's not their practice to monitor and manage their customer's sites - they just hold the data.

In practice, this is largely true. However, I would hesitate to rely on this completely. The truth is that web hosts are just as subject to political and public pressure as any other business involved in putting content online.

And then there's the whole ISP issue and net neutrality and all that. The fact that the majority of the net's connectivity is handled by just a few companies is scary, especially when you realize how deeply connected with the Bush administration most of those companies are.

If Certain People had their way, user-generated content would be hard to find, if it existed at all. The only users that would get their stuff online would be those whom Verizon, Comcast, etc. had deemed acceptable. In other words, they want the net to be subject to the same kinds of corporate/government control that broadcast is.

The arguments they're putting forth against net neutrality, for instance, sound suspiciously as if they're aimed toward quantifying the net as a limited resource, much like broadcast bandwaves. And, as it's illegal for people without FCC approval to broadcast over airwaves because of the theory that they would clutter out "legitimate" content on those channels, so, too would it become illegal for people to post bandwidth-heavy net content, as it might slow access to "approved" content.

Once those premium payments for access start coming in, people without the financial resources to pay the toll on the infobahn would be shut out. Which is the point. We can't have the drooling masses going out and saying what they think to large audiences. Too damned hard to push propaganda on people when you don't control the means of information distribution.