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[BigLee Haslup <biglee AT haslups.com>]

I have a friend who was thrown out of one of those "banned book"
events in L.A..  There was a table stacked with copies well-known
books that had been banned somewhere or other -- Mark Twain,
Walt Whitman, etc.. My friend brought a genuinely controversial
book to go on the table and he, and his book, were physically
thrown out.  [ The book was political, not pornographic and, no,
I will not tell you what it was; that's not the point. ]

I tell this story to illustrate that one man's "censorship" is often
another man's "editorial restraint."  Because of this, I take a very
narrow view of the meaning of the word censorship (which I am
against) so it doesn't come as much into conflict with property
rights (which I am for.)

I see no need to characterize the ISP as "narrow minded"  just
because they have a policy on content, even if that policy is an
open ended reservation of the right to decide on a case-by-case
basis.  They own the server farm and they get to control the
content served by their machines unless their contract with
YellowTimes.org said otherwise.

It would have been censorship if there had been an attempt to
use the coercive force of the government to threaten with litigation
any ISP that served their page, or to attack their ICANN
registration or DNS registry listing.

I cannot see how the YellowTimes can claim to be much damaged.
I suspect that, since their page is now served by machines owned
by fellow cranks, they are paying less for hosting than before.  And
as for claiming to be censored -- they are still on the air.

"Look!" they seem to be saying.  "Ping my URL!  See?  See that
number -- 209.237.228.10 -- It used to be different!  I've been the
victim of censorship!!!"

BigLee

At 09:36 AM 3/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> A tempest in a teapot.  There are narrow-minded fools all
> around these days.  Don't go yelling "censorship" when one
> of them decides they don't want your business, whether it is
> political or not.  (As long as there's competition that you
> can go to.)
>
> TaB
>
>
> > 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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