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Cohen in a magazine
Once again the issue of censorship on the internet has come up, and this time in the form of a top model, her "friend" and Google. The question at the heart of this issue is: what are the rights of a blogger ? Can you say pretty much anything you want and be protected by the first amendment ? Or is there always a limit, and if you go beyond that you can be censored or revealed if you are anonymous ?
As we wrote earlier, model Liskula Cohen was targeted for slander by a vicious blogger. Any right thinking person would agree that what the blogger did was despicable, all the more so, as the blogger was anonymous, too cowardly to even make the accusations publicly. No arguments there.
But the judgement by the court to require Google to reveal the IP address of the blog, in other words reveal the identity of the blogger raises some fundamental first amendment issues as it relates to the internet. The internet medium is quite different from the print medium, in that it allows more people to participate in the generation of news, and for the most part, the reading public is responsible for sorting out the chaff from the wheat, so to speak, and make its own determination of what is good and what is bad. This is unlike the print media where a certain level of quality is guaranteed. To allow the medium to work according to its nature, therefore, you have to allow all sorts of participants in the news generation process. Censorship restricts not just the evil bloggers but the medium itself.
My question is - are modern judges as familiar with technology issues as they need to be to make decisions about it ? All parents for example, have been adoloscents which qualifies them to some extent, to make decisions for their kids. Judges too, need to be very familiar with new media to understand the decisions they are making, and the impact that these decisions will have in the development of the new media.
So, perhaps as you can tell, my take on this is that the name of the blogger should not have been revealed. If there is a threat of injury to another person, then of course the situation changes, a la the MySpace mom. But until then, we should not be doing anything that affects the development of this new medum (the internet) and the exciting possibilities that our children will be witness to.
Tech Policy and Happenings: You may be interested in a study showing that gamers are overweight and depressed, Brett Favre's "unretirement" and Twitter, the ban on social media in college stadiums , White House pulling the "flag" email, Why you should tweet on a Monday, Maureen Dowd's strange outburst, if your tweets show what kind of a person you are, Palin's brilliant use of Web 2.0 and her comments on death panels, Kundra's resume mystery, Microsoft not allowed to sell Word, the reasons behind a recent Twitter outage, how we can track criminal activity on the Web (George Sodini video), Teens and Twitter, the use of social networking in the military, American Innovation in Crisis , Why Government keeps getting Technology Wrong , Yahoo and Microsoft vs. Google , a recent look at consumer satisfaction with federal websites, Cybersecurity: an interview with Dan Risacher at DOD - Part 1 and Part 2, and Cloud Computing with Pete Tseronis
Lighter Side of Tech: For some more lighter tech stories, check out the abs and butt discussion between Andy Roddick and Serena, Palin's absence from Twitter, her Facebook statement, and how her hairdresser is speaking up for Palin, the Twitter prediction for "So you think you can dance", adorable online cat stories, the $50,000 Tweet, modern day hero:the libertarian Facebook pig on the lam., interviews with Twilight stars at Com Con, the Top Ten Fight Scenes and Top Free Movies on on YouTube, Bill Clinton's video with JFK and his status updates on Facebook, best of Hulu, and the top 10 creepiest vintage ads.
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