Message Boards

Kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Mon Nov 19 19:07:51 PST 2001


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



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list