MSN Spaces & Prior Restraint

I have this thing about free speech and free press, because it seems to me that all other freedoms depend on them. We are in a time where the press is being muzzled bu judicial threats of incarceration for not revealing source. If an reporter can't use back channel sources, than the only news we get is the official party line from those in power.

Now, my problem with MSN Spaces is not on that level. I think in may ways it's neat to see blogging so consumerized. And I believe the intent of the MSN Group is sincerely to stop the slimeballs from mucking up a nice thing.

Still, their rules to decide what you can and cannot do disturb me to the core. It is a big issue. Attempts have been made to establish prior restraints on free speech. In 1971 the Justice Department went to the US Supreme Court to try to stop the New York Times from publishing The Pentagon Papers . Thankfully the Supreme Court during the Nizon Era viewed the attempt at prior restraint to carry "a presumption of unconstitutionality."

I think it still does. Stopping dirty words on a public site may carry less impact than the Pentagon Papers that revealed Pentagon deceipts and stupidity during another devisive time but the issues are remarkably similar.

Microsoft would be wise to remove their rule entirely. Despite their desire to exude family values--a phrase that has always puzzled me because it implied the bad guys have no families, and single people have no ethics--Microsoft should yield to the wisdom of the First Amendment.

Comments

[Evan]

Nicely put Shel. I wholeheartedly agree. Any type of censorship will simply be battled by more and more workarounds, rewrites, and rewordings that it simply won't matter in the big scheme of things.

One of the things that truly puzzles me is that they claim that "only" censoring blog and post titles yet leaving the messages themselves uncensored somehow makes it "better" censorship.

So I could create a blog called Happy Furry Bunny Blog and then spew all the racial hate I can muster. And that's cool with them, because it's your content! You control it!

And then comes the ability for them to shutdown any site they view as vulgar, against the rules, etc. This type of mired power struggle has no basis and is as subjective as subjective gets. It borders on ridiculous and I'm glad someone else truly sees (and points out) the implications of such actions.

MSN Spaces and its blatant consumerism just begs to be broken and messed with by those who don't wish to have their blogs, or content for that matter, whitewashed by the powers that be over there.