It's the blessing and curse of the web really.

The printed word is and always will be the most dangerous form of "speech" out there because it relies almost entirely on the reader's interpretation of what was put out there. As a result, it can be easily mistaken or even manipulated. It can be a tricky thing...

...unless you have a major and very public presence. And that, to a degree, is what social networking sites translate to. It's information that's publicly available, ergo it's a public situation and by posting there, you make yourself into a somewhat-public figure...

...but that also brings up the debate of whether or not the net is "public" since not everyone has ready access to it. Public is just that, public. Walk out the door and you're in public (well, outside of your "private property" boundaries, such as they are). The internet? Not so much. You have to find some way to access it. It's not like you open up your eyes and there's the Intarwebs. That, of course, is changing.. especially in light of projects like the one that just died here in Portland: public wifi.

All-in-all it's a tricky subject that has a single conclusion: information must be free. The flow of information is critical to any society's survival and that includes both good and bad info. Sure, there are obvious kinds of information that should be sought out and destroyed.. thing like child pornography and the like. The determining factors need to be exceptionally limited and that's going to take time to figure out. The internet's current incarnation is still in it's relative infancy and is something that the scientists of the 1960's (or the 40's, depending on your perspective) never would have envisioned. Although, I dare say it exceeds their wildest dreams.

So if someone feels that trying to prosecute based on blog comments is appropriate, that is certainly their right. However, I would argue that such actions are entirely counter to the truest nature of information, which is to spread. What we choose to do with that information shows who we are as a people. To paraphrase George Carlin... "BANME! BANME! fag slope.. these are words, just words. it's the fat, ignorant, racist bastard behind the words that makes all the difference."

And, of course, it also comes down to a quote that I've long forgotten where I got it from...

"I'm gonna kick that guy's ass cause he called my momma a whore..."

"Well.. is she?"



*** and we can see from the "Ban Me"'s above, the idea of what constitutes "bad" speech is entirely relative. all four words are harmless words that have harmless meanings, but misuse has given them all an extended, "hateful" angle. Two of them were banned and two were not... all based on the DC Forum folks' idea of what should be in a banned words file. Or based on Dino's own personal standards, I'm not sure which. I'm not complaining at all, just merely illustrating a point about the recipient of a message being the final arbiter of what that message really is.

I'm pretty much ignoring the Wiki