query about commercial regulation of internet chat
I wonder if anyone knows of any academic writings on the commercial regulation of chatrooms, mailing lists etc. I remember and can find heaps of annecdotal evidence of AOL regulating the use of posts with 'vulgar' terms in them. This has supposedly lead to the discontinuance of serious discussion on homosexuality, breast cancer and so on. However i've not yet found any academic discussion of this, or articles which put this in historical context. For example, does AOL still behave in this kind of way, if it ever did. I also remember that Prodigy was accused of obliterating complaints against itself. In one book i saw mention that one supplier simply replaced any word it did not like with a series of #s, but the source does not mention either where or when this occured. I've also heard of companies attempting regulate comment about them in internet groups by threatening legal action over the use of trade marks, but cannot remember any details, and again don't know anything about the historical trajectory. thanks for any help with this. jon -- UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.
There are numerous cases of Intellectual Property grabs in terms of URL names enough in fact that I took a whole course basically in domain dispute resolution. You can find this in the policies of domain regiasters for various countries. For instance in Canada for awhile you could only register a dot ca address if the domain name was the name of your company. But this aspect is very well known. This has probably been thouroughly discussed here too I am sure. But about chat's I am not sure. But there have been cases of insiders chating or posting comments about companies they work at, such as disparaging comments and being taken to court and one case where yahoo was forced to revile user id information. Also Lessig in his book Code meantions that AOL rooms are not true free speech (ie soap boxes) for technical reasons because the rooms have user limits on the order of magnitude of 25 users thus anyone person in a chat can only reach a limited audience. But look for battles concerning ISP's having to keep and revile user ID's in court cases. You might study the adverts in chat clients like yahoo's messenger. Because this is commerical chat. Albite a more subtle form of regulation. Peter Timusk B.Math Just trying to stay linear www.crystalcomputing.net >blog> http://logbook.crystalcomputing.net www.webpagex.org >blog> http://notebook.webpagex.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Marshall" <Jonathan.Marshall@uts.edu.au> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 1:56 AM Subject: [Air-l] query about commercial regulation of internet chat
I wonder if anyone knows of any academic writings on the commercial regulation of chatrooms, mailing lists etc.
I remember and can find heaps of annecdotal evidence of AOL regulating the use of posts with 'vulgar' terms in them. This has supposedly lead to the discontinuance of serious discussion on homosexuality, breast cancer and so on. However i've not yet found any academic discussion of this, or articles which put this in historical context. For example, does AOL still behave in this kind of way, if it ever did.
I also remember that Prodigy was accused of obliterating complaints against itself.
In one book i saw mention that one supplier simply replaced any word it did not like with a series of #s, but the source does not mention either where or when this occured.
I've also heard of companies attempting regulate comment about them in internet groups by threatening legal action over the use of trade marks, but cannot remember any details, and again don't know anything about the historical trajectory.
thanks for any help with this.
jon
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Jonathan Marshall -
Peter T.