At 08:44 PM 9/12/96 -0400, JDLas@aol.com wrote:
>I still disagree with your premise, though.  The phone companies are publicly
>regulated utilities.  AOL is not.  It's a critical distinction. To suggest
>that AOL is a quasi-public carrier, as some suggest (including the
>plaintiffs, no doubt), is fraught with peril.  Would a Nazi hate group then
>have a constitutional right to have a Nazi chat room on AOL? 

This is an interesting question, because it affects a great many other
issues related to AOL censorship.

AOL has a user contract, its Terms of Service, which imposes certain rules
on its users over what they can say online (i.e. vulgarity, "harassment,"
and other communication AOL doesn't like).  These TOS are opposed by a large
number of people simply for their anti-free-speech leanings.

The Cyber Promotions issue essentially revolves around AOL's desire to
impose the same "punishment" on Internet users that it might impose on its
own users for the same offense.  If an AOL user were to spam, they would be
cut off from the AOL community (i.e. their account would be deleted); AOL
wants to apply this same logic to a non-AOL user.

If the court holds AOL's email system to be a public carrier, then it would
affect far more than junk mail - it would essentially prohibit AOL from
carrying out content-related censorship of mail on its service.  Personally,
I think the tradeoff between junk mail and freedom is a good one.

I am uncomfortable with the idea of a network provider arbitrarily
firewalling out a site because they think it's bad for their users.  It sets
a bad precedent for putting AOL in the position of "filterer/censor of the
Internet," a position they would most certainly abuse for other purposes if
their ability to block Cyber is upheld.


If you want to see more about AOL's censorship in other instances, you can
check out http://www.aolsucks.org/censor/.


- -james
- --
 James Egelhof, jme9@cornell.edu
  Why America Online Sucks: http://www.aolsucks.org

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