Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
THAT is what "Free Speech" is about -- not about your right to get your message out on the Internet free of interference from private individuals who disagree with you.
However, private individuals and corporations cannot interfere with web sites they do not own. That is, they cannot hack them or cyber attack them.
(The skeptics at Wikipedia who tossed out Carbonnelle do not actually own the web site. The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. does. The Foundation either lets the skeptics do as they please, or they are unaware of this situation. Either way, it is their business.)
Years ago the status of the Internet was fuzzy. I asked the ACLU about this in the 1990s. They advised me that companies such as AOL and Compuserve were private and they could ban any communication they wanted. There was some discussion in the government and at the ACLU back then as to whether this was fair, but the topic faded away as the technology changed and the Internet opened up. Along the same lines, the "fairness doctrine" faded in importance and was rescinded as the number of television stations increased. For a time television and radio were in a fuzzy domain because they used "the public airwaves" -- a limited resource back then.
In the 1990s the Internet evolved into a common carrier, like the phone company, and there are few legal restrictions to speech on such things.
There is still a legal gray area about whether an ISP can silence a user, but I think you have to be in violation of something like the child pornography laws, or a Ponzi scheme, or illegal spamming before either the government or an ISP can ban you. It is unclear whether an ISP can be forced to host something like an extreme racist site. I think the Congress and courts have still not defined that to everyone's satisfaction.
A common carrier, by the way, is: "A business, including telephone and railroads, which is required by law to provide service to any paying customer on a first-come, first-serve basis."
- Jed
