Is there any freedom of speech on the Internet? by Martina Janeckova

Freedom of speech means the right to speak freely without censorship. Try it in a park, generally nothing happens. But say it on the Internet, you will find out that this right is not guaranteed at all. Today, companies in charge of public spaces delete the content that seems controversial to them, providers create their own rules regarding what you can post on the Internet and how you can behave using the world wide web. Sure there may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as stop child pornography, spam and security threads but sometimes the case is not that clear. One example for all- the case of Marten Dors, a Dutch photographer. He posted a photo of a smoking child at the Yahoo Inc.' s photo-sharing service, Flickr, but it was later deleted by Yahoo, giving the reason that it promoted child's smoking. Dors stated that he didn't want to promote smoking, but show the real life in Romania and persuaded the managers of Yahoo to upload this photo again. However, when deleting the picture, the law was fully with Yahoo, because it's terms of service state that " Yahoo has sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Only few service providers review content before it is posted, many take action only in response to the complaints. As you can see, the rules aren't always clear and users can find their content deleted or accounts terminated without a hearing. But in today's world where social networks as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Youtube and others are becoming more and more important, to evict a person from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

by Martina Janeckova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.<br><br><font size=2>These news are original content from young talents around the world and are selected for you by Chris Cantell.</font><br>


edited by Katarina Gaskova