Re: Censorship in America, Part II

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 12:50:53PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> That doesn't make it not censorship.  It just makes it not
> *constitutionally-forbidden* censorship.  In the USA, private entities
> are allowed, in general, to censor whatever they want - and, indeed, in
> some cases, that's their job (eg, the editor of a newspaper, when
> deciding what stories to run, is censoring the ones turned down).

Alright, this (and other comments) have combined to convince me that
perhaps it is censorship.  (Damn y'all for being persuasive!)  But here's
my concern: to me, censorship carries a connotation that one has been
deprived of one's right to speak (in a particular way, at a particular
time, on a particular topic, etc.) *involuntarily*.  Those agreeing to
up-front constraints (like an NDA, or like NetSol's draconian TOS) have
voluntarily given up some measure of that right.  Perhaps they didn't
realize it, or perhaps they didn't mean to, or perhaps they never thought
the terms of the contract would be enforced -- but they did willingly
enter into it.

What I'm getting at (perhaps not very well) is that I worry that this
somehow diminishes the evil that is government-backed censorship.
Corporate (or other) censorship is just as offensive to my free speech
sensibilities -- but it's not enforced at the point of a bayonet.
At least not yet.

So while this is Yet Another Reason to avoid NetSol like the plague,
at least there are other registrars, other DNS providers, other
web hosts.  And even without those, this kind of censorship can be
readily evaded via other means (NNTP, P2P, etc.).  But it's often
much more difficult to sidestep governments.

---Rsk
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