Thursday, October 04, 2007
My comment on Verizon Policy Blog
You can see the crow feathers around the lips of Verizon's Policy Blog these days. They *say" that they don't censor (and that's a very good thing!), even though Verizon's terms of service make it clear that they reserve the right to censor.
Here's my comment on this story which will appear in the story's comments section (at Verizon's sole discretion):
(UPDATE: Verizon did post it)
Here's my comment on this story which will appear in the story's comments section (at Verizon's sole discretion):
(UPDATE: Verizon did post it)
I'll believe that you "fixed" the problem and you won't screen political or other controversial speech when your Terms of Service replace all the legal weasel language with a clear statement of this guarantee. Right now your TOS won't let me criticize Verizon, post anything "that is objectionable for any reason," or even post an "off-topic" message to another newsgroup. The problem is that Verizon, in its sole discretion, decides what is disparaging, objectionable, and off-topic.
Once I read a Verizon TOS sheet that was much better -- it said, essentially, that bad stuff happens on the Internet, and that the user of Verizon's services understands that it is the user's responsibility to choose what that user's Verizon connection is used for. Now THAT'S the way to go! But I don't see language like that now.
How about a clear statement in your TOS that says, Verizon supports freedom of expression, no matter how controversial it might seem to some, and it is up to the user to decide how to use the Verizon connection.
NOTE: I'm glad that you don't enforce these anti-free-speech written policies, but you can't say the problem is fixed until your TOS shows it is fixed!
Technorati Tags: Censorship, FirstAmendment, FirstMile, Freedom, Verizon
Comments:
Free speech includes the right to post racist, sexist, agist, networkist hate speech. Free speech includes the right to send as much unwanted email (aka spam in case I'm not being obvious enough) as you can convince SMTP servers to accept. Free speeds includes network abuse such as SYN flooding, ICMP flooding, mail bombing, etc.
Or are you perhaps wishing that Verizon would keep restrictions on how people may use the Internet from hosts identifable as Verizon hosts?
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Or are you perhaps wishing that Verizon would keep restrictions on how people may use the Internet from hosts identifable as Verizon hosts?
