Message Boards

[Kelley]

MONITORING THE MESSAGE BOARDS
With the U.S. at war with terrorism, various Web services are choosing to 
decline submissions from people saying the country "deserved" to be 
attacked or making other comments along those lines. Stephen Killeen of 
Terra Lycos U.S. says that, in the past, "we would err on the side of `If 
it's distasteful, let it stay.' Now, we err on the side of `If you want to 
post this kind of information, you don't have to do it here.' The sentiment 
in the United States changed on Sept. 11 about what's acceptable and what's 
not in terms of what you can say." Of course, people are free to set up Web 
sites of their own and post whatever they want, just as private companies 
are free to accept or reject anything they want. UCLA law professor Stuart 
Biegel says, "In times of war, there has been a willingness among Americans 
to give up some rights -- to honor curfews, martial law, and even 
restrictions on speech. The filtering of Internet message boards is part of 
all this." (San Jose Mercury News 18 Nov 2001) 
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/censor111801.htm