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  • From: "K. Jo Garner" <kelly AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [internetworkers] From the Department of Full Disclosure
  • Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 09:20:43 -0500 (EST)


a forward from Salon ...

Cheers
KJ

------ Forwarded Message
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/25/yellowtimes/

No dead bunnies, no dead soldiers A Florida Web-hosting company pulls the
plug on a site that dared to show graphic images of war.

- - - - - - - - - - - - By Tim Grieve

March 25, 2003 | As the editor of the alt-journalism site YellowTimes.org,
Erich Marquardt thinks war coverage should go beyond the breathless reports
of "embeds" and the is-it-the-Fourth-of-July-already live shots of Tomahawk
missiles exploding into distant targets. So when Al-Jazeera aired videotape
of U.S. soldiers captured and killed by Iraqi troops, Marquardt posted
screen grabs of the images on the YellowTimes site. It was a chance, he
thought, to counteract the "romanticized" view of war offered up by the
mainstream media.

That chance didn't last long. On Monday morning, the Florida-based Internet
company that hosts YellowTimes told Marquardt it was pulling the plug on his
site unless he took the photos down. Marquardt didn't blink, and YellowTimes
is now off the air.

Marquardt calls it "outright censorship" -- an attack on YellowTimes'
ability to show that war has human consequences. "The mainstream media
doesn't show the real effects of war," Marquardt told Salon. "They send in
their embedded correspondents and they get all excited, and then people
become excited by the image of war and not the truth."

In fact, the mainstream media has shown little from Al-Jazeera videotape of
Americans captured and killed. The Pentagon asked the networks not to air
the video because it showed the captives who had been killed and because,
the Pentagon said, the making of the videotape violated the Geneva
Conventions. The U.S. networks have complied with that request, and many
major newspapers have refrained from publishing photos taken from the video
as well.

In a note accompanying the photos on the YellowTimes site, Marquardt's
colleague Matthew Riemer expressed hope that seeing the photos would allow
Web-surfing war junkies to make a "more real and human-based assessment" of
both the Iraq war and war in general. Instead, at least some of the people
who saw the site contacted YellowTimes' hosting company, Vortech Hosting
Inc., and demanded that the photos be removed.

Vortech owner Craig Smith said that his company's decision to suspend
service for YellowTimes had "nothing to do with politics and nothing to do
with how we feel about the war in Iraq." He said that the Florida-based
company is a small family business that would "like to keep the emphasis on
'family.'"

"The fact is, we don't allow adult content, be it pornography or violent
images," Smith said. "I personally saw a picture of a soldier with a hole in
his head on that Web site. This, to us, would be considered adult content.
Whether it was a dead soldier or a dead bunny rabbit, we don't want these
types of images on our Web servers."

Cindy Cohn, the legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said
it is unusual for a hosting company to shut down a site because of its
political bent. "Most people who host other people's speech actually believe
in freedom of speech," she said. Cohn said the "isolated" actions of a
company like Vortech aren't particularly problematic so long as there is
competition in the Web-hosting market. "I tell people, 'If you don't like
your ISP, vote with your feet.'"

That's what Marquardt has done. He has found an individual in San Francisco
who is willing to host YellowTimes, and the site will be back up -- complete
with the controversial photographs -- within a day or so. But that doesn't
mean he's happy about it.

"What's so great about the United States is that the government does not
regularly censor dissenting views," Marquardt said. "But the problem you
have is that private companies do."


salon.com

Copyright 2003 Salon.com Salon, 22 4th Street, 16th Floor, San Francisco, CA
94103 Telephone 415 645-9200 | Fax 415 645-9204 E-mail | Salon.com Privacy
Policy | Terms of Service


------ End of Forwarded Message





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