Armstrong outlines one of the primary reasons for her leaving the church: the belief that she was not permitted to speak up against church doctrine. A strategy of censorship is one that supports the power of the church by silencing dissent and dulling resistance efforts.

Here’s part of the text of this post:

And so, I guess to be honest and maybe as an attempt to continue healing, I’ll tell you that this issue is one of the reasons why I left the Mormon Church. And although it may seem like an issue specific to just Utah culture, you have to understand that for a Mormon it’s very hard to disagree with any Mormon doctrine or practice and still maintain good standing in the church. And I don’t know if you can tell or not, but I have a hard time agreeing with anything.

Armstrong’s strategy then was to leave the church in order to express her freedom and the recalcitrance of her will. Her strategy to continue to speak against the church provokes a dialectic that is productive of that which she is resisting. In the same way that church sponsored censorship contains within it its opposite so Armstrong’s espousal of free speech contains within it a constraint and a censorship of the church.

The point is made that the initial hopes for the Internet was that it would become a “grand “public forum”" in which free speech, at least in the US, would be given the very highest protection; however during the development of the Internet, the US government was influenced to hand over the regulation of the Internet to private organisations. Effectively these grand public spaces have become owned commercial spaces under the control of their various owners. As a result, the government is no longer able to protect the rights of free speech in these privately owned commercial spaces. The promise of the Internet, that it would become a grand publci space has all but been lost. At least in real space we have the opportunity of both private and public speech, but in a commercially owned space, much of this balance is lost.

The authors claim that “[o]n the Intemet, however, essentially no places exist to serve as “pub-
lic forums” because the places within which expression occurs are over-whelmingly privately owned.” However they appear to ignore, or make light of, the existence of private blogs, particularly those using freely available, publicly developed software such as WordPress. Whilst there argument may be that the files making up the blog are hosted by a privately owned ISP, and therefore subject to the private censorship of the ISP, the experience of the private blogger is that, utilising such software, they are quite free to say whatever they chose.

If their argument is that there are essentially no public spaces on the Internet in or on which individuals can avail themselves of the opportunity for uncensored free speech, then the nature of private blogs must be questioned. If they are not public spaces, then at what point do they become commercially owned spaces. It is understandable to say that private blogs on MySpace or Blogger – controlled and censored as they are by their corporate owners – are the subject of corporate censorship of free speech. Just how a private blog, hosted on an individual’s own domain, and regulated only very minimally by the regulations of the ISP – which could be a very liberal overseas ISP – is regulated by commercial interests is not made clear.

It is this unusual nature of a private blog, one of the few remaining platforms for free speech, that is so interesting for this research. If employees attempt to use a corporate blog to create organisational change they must inevitably come up against the power of the corporate censors. On a private blog, they are free to say whatever they chose. Inevitably corporations will attempt to broaden their domain and sphere of influence into the world of the private blog if it is thought that their interests are not being served by the employee. Their attempts to do so will be by way of employment contracts that consider a variety of censorship options aimed at the regulation of the otherwise free speech of employees, including that of private blogging, and employees will continue to test these censorship limits.

As a footnote to this short review, it is worth noting that the article is very US focussed with a very detailed legal examination of the First Amendment rights of free speech in the United States. There are many countries in which no such amendment exists (Australia is one such example); and it is worthwhile examining the nature of private blogs and the use to which they are put by employees.

THE DEATH OF THE PUBLIC FORUM IN
CYBERSPACE
By Dawn C. Nunziato
downloaded from http://web.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/ehost/pdf?vid=27&hid=8&sid=0a5b81f3-76eb-4ab1-95b8-57abec0b1014%40sessionmgr2
on 4th March 2008

Tatum Lytle has produced an excellent article (subscription required for this link, but can also be found here) about the manner in which the US (and one would assume other administrations to have done the same) military has censored and stopped a number of US military personnel from blogging about their experiences in Iraq and other theatres of war. Such a move is hardly surprising. After all there are a number of unique reasons why giving too much information away. Placing too much information in the hands of the enemy can endanger lives and create unnecessary risks. However the military appear to have gone further than simply shutting down blogs that contain too much operational information. The article suggests that there are a number of instances where the rights of the individual of free speech has been violated; and this has often been with the support of the US judicial system.

What Lytle does well is build her case based on a very detailed understanding of the ways soldiers are using blogs and of the way the military and the courts are prosecuting adherence to rules and regulations. What would be of interest is to find out where she comes from in terms of philosophical underpinning. Lytle appears to accept that the US courts are the final umpire and the precedents they set therefore become the final arbiter of the issue. I think Lytle could have helped the issue further by addressing more fundamental issues of humanity and the rights to personal sovereignty. Does the US military, or a any corporation or organisation for that matter, have the right to control the free speech of a human. How does this control come about? These are matters probably not within the scope of Lytle’s article but would make for interesting research nonetheless.

A soldier’s blog: balancing service members’ personal rights vs. national security interests

Lytle, Tatum H. Federal Communications Law Journal • June, 2007

It isn’t just workers who get fired for blog posts. Students are also coming under fire for their contributions to MySpace reports Associated Press. The battle for control over blogs as public spaces is not simply limited to arrangements that have a commercial nature. The article suggests that schools are seeking the power to control students’ activities to ensure continued control over the school environment.

Such extensions of control will be useful to examine in the context of my research thesis. Beyond school yards government instrumentalities may want control over what people have to say in order to reduce the spread of terrorism. Whilst these may be interesting extensions to the central point of my thesis I think I’ll probably leave them out in the interests of clarity and available space.

Here it is, one of the biggest jokes circulating the Internet today. As reported on the Lessig Blog, social bookmarking site, Digg, has removed what they call “adult content” despite all of the content of the video having been previously shown on the Fox News Network.

Cool work Digg, nice to see you becoming the new world censorship authority. The world needs another one – not!

UPDATE: As of last night Digg has done the right thing and removed the restriction.

News that access to Youtube was blocked earlier this year by the Thai Information and Communication Ministry, appeared to many foreign commentators as an over-sensitive reaction to what many Westerners would consider to be plain vanilla free speech. Claiming that some videos on Youtube were offensive to His Majesty, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the Thai communications Minister advised that, until all offending videos were removed from Youtube, his government would have no alternative but to block all access to Youtube in the country.

Quite predictably, many media rights groups were quick to attack the military backed government, claiming that the move was nothing more than over-zealous censorship and a danger to free speech. However, Thai Minister of Information, Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, countered that he was supportive of free speech and in no mood for a lecture on the subject and that, until the offending videos were removed, he would have no alternative but to keep the embargo in place. However, Google-owned Youtube was quick to respond to the potentially damaging loss of Internet audience numbers by creating filters which stopped Thai’s from accessing any video clips which may be offensive to the monarch. Furthermore, some clips were removed by their owners and still others were removed by Youtube claiming they breached their terms of service.

But to imagine that the censorship of Youtube is a Thai government initiative alone significantly understates Google’s role in the scenario. Clearly, Google and its subsidiaries have significant commercial interests in opening up, and maintaining new markets and audiences. And these commercial interests can, and do, place the company in conflict with consumers on the issues of privacy and censorship. After all, the Thai Youtube scenario is not the first time Google has agreed to censor content as a means of gaining or maintaining access to a market. Google actively censors search results in China to ensure various blacklisted sites are not displayed. In addition, the company censors some search results containing reference to various Wikipedia content, replacing links to information with a censorship warning. Similar censorship is undertaken in Germany, where websites containing displays of Nazi emblems and holocaust denials are removed, as are some pornographic websites, including popular porn 2.0 site Youporn.com. So what does Google’s self-censorship mean for the average Internet user?

For most web surfers, a search that fails to display a link to a porn site or a video vilifying the king of Thailand would hardly be the end of the world. Other information would be found or the website or video in question could be located in another manner. But to dismiss the issue of censorship so easily misses the important point that Google is putting a price on free speech. Although one could argue that Google’s actions amount to being the greatest good for the greatest number, their actions also show that they are willing to trade free speech and human rights for profits. It makes it ever more important for human rights advocacy organisations to maintain a close eye on developments and keep up the pressure on the company to protect and nurture free speech through their