On Aug 10, 2007, at 12:54 PM, Conor Schaefer wrote:
More to the point, the concourse of a mall is by my definition completely public.
ed wrote:
and this would absolutely wrong and total nonsense, at least in America. In American, EVERY mall is private property and is specifically posted as such. No one may do research within them without the express written consent of the mall owners.
DLB wrote:
Hm, well, not completely true. In some states, malls are public fora for purposes of the state constitution -- the right to expression overrides the private property interest in those cases. The point being that it is dangerous to draw parallels between physical spaces and virtual spaces, something many of us have written about.
DLB
Ed wrote: Don is right in that I overstated the "every" . . . there are exceptions as there are differing state laws AND there are different kinds of malls. However, there is also a difference between free speech rights (rights to expression) and laws that apply to doing private work (like collecting research data). I won't argue over whether there are some limited exceptions. I will, however, continue to note that MANY malls ARE treated, both by their ownership companies and by the jurisdictions in which they do business, as private real estate in which property interests and the rules owners set ARE the controlling feature and collecting data without their consent is specifically prohibited. I also think that Don is right "that it is dangerous to draw parallels between physical spaces and virtual spaces". My response to Conor was intended to note that the assumption that mall=public is NOT the default condition in many places in America. Sorry to have overstated the case. Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Multimedia Program and Department of Communication Co-Director, New Media Center 1501 W. Bradley Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 309-677-2378 <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam Second Life: Professor Beliveau