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## author : labornews@igc.apc.org
## date : 31.01.99
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January 31, 1999 New York Times
Worries About Big Brother at America Online By AMY
HARMON
Like the divided generations of Irish before them,
the two opposing camps of contributors to America
Online's discussion group on Ireland rarely agree
on anything. But when the world's leading online
service suspended their contentious electronic
debate last month, participants on both sides were
united in their dismay.
"Don't stop just to appease the AOL Thought
Police," one proponent of a united Ireland wrote
to the Unionist contingent. "I'd much rather have
someone vehemently disagree with me than know that
anyone has been silenced!"
America Online reopened its Irish Heritage
discussion after a 17-day "cooling off" period,
and if there was a strangely muted quality to the
contributions at first, things are mostly back to
normal. The politics folder, which now bears the
slogan "a place for cordial political debate in
the spirit of harmony," has spawned more than
12,000 of the usual postings regarding British
treason and Sinn Fein terrorism since the
beginning of the year.
But the episode has fed a growing discomfort with
the social and political power America Online has
come to wield by dint of its surging popularity
and its unusual purview over individual
communication. And it underscores the challenges
the company may face as it seeks with mixed
success to maintain both civil discourse and
satisfied customers while presiding over 180,000
continuing conversations on topics from the
teen-age idols 'N Sync to Presidential
impeachment.
Balancing free expression with civility has always
been a struggle for America Online and other
electronic publishers that provide areas where
people can voice their opinions by typing them
into the ether. But it is America Online's scope
combined with its editorial control that some
critics say is cause for concern.
With 15 million subscribers, America Online is now
the gateway to cyberspace for more Americans than
the next 15 largest Internet service providers
combined, according to a report released last week
by the International Data Corp., a market research
firm. This week, announcing strong earnings, the
company said 1.6 million accounts were added in
the last three months of 1998 alone.
But some members have begun to chafe at its
definition of civility, or at least the way it
seems sometimes arbitrarily applied. And some
civil liberties advocates are scrutinizing the
service more closely as a new breed of institution
that governs speech and yet is immune from First
Amendment claims.
A flurry of recent clashes in discussion areas
ranging from race relations to fiction writing
have served to heighten concerns over the
company's more subtle methods of monitoring the
discussions on its message boards -- the
continuing discussions that subscribers can follow
and contribute to over time, as distinct from the
simultaneous and sometimes chaotic (but also
monitored) exchanges in what it calls chat rooms.
In particular, some subscribers cite the online
service's practice of deleting message board
postings without explanation and of attaching the
equivalent of demerit marks to the accounts of
individuals deemed to have offended another
subscriber.
Who Decides What's Offensive?
The question is, who gets to decide what's
'offensive?"' says Renee Rosenblum-Lowden of
Riegelsville, Pa., who recalls being cited for a
violation for posting a message in a debate on
abortion advising an opponent, "If you can't stand
the heat get out of the kitchen."
Under America Online's contract, universally
referred to among members in both noun and verb
form as TOS, for "terms of service," all
subscribers promise not to "harass, threaten,
embarrass, or do anything else to another member
that is unwanted." Often transgressions are
reported to America Online officials by other
discussion group participants, whose identities
are not released to those they accuse. According
to the company's subscriber contract, three such
violations may result in the suspension or
termination of an account.
Ms. Rosenblum-Lowden -- whose screen name is now
"Prejteach 2" because her "Prejteach" account was
closed -- says she and a group of other women who
take part in discussions on the Women in Action
board have been picked as targets for complaints
by those who disagree with their liberal views.
"Unlike a court of law, you don't face your
accusers," she said. "That gives people free
rein."
America Online officials concede that judging what
is unduly offensive in often-complex political
disputes or long-running personal battles can be
tricky, especially given the volume and range of
messages. That is why the company has enlisted
nearly 14,000 volunteers to patrol the boards, and
employs a group of about 100 known as the
Community Action Team to determine when a comment
crosses the line.
In intervening in conversations between its users,
America Online says its objective is to maintain a
sense of community. Although legal liability for
libelous statements appearing on its boards was
once more of a concern, a provision of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 essentially grants
online services immunity from prosecution over
such matters, characterizing them as a "common
carrier" like a telephone company -- simply a
means by which information is transmitted, with no
responsibility for the information itself.
Most terms-of-service violations are handled case
by case. In an extreme case like the Irish board,
where dozens of violations were being reported
every day by the most active participants, the
company said there were enough profane and
offensive postings that it became necessary to
shut down the whole discussion. The discussion
archives, which sometimes remain on the service
for several years, were wiped clean during the
weeks that the board was shut down, so no trace
remains.
"There's a certain amount of judgment required in
situations on whether something is particularly
harassing or threatening of other members," said
Katherine Boursecnik, America Online's vice
president for network programming. "That's where
things get the most difficult. We train people to
be agnostic about the specific content and to look
more at things like tone: Is it threatening,
harassing, profane, vulgar?"
But given the well-documented tendency of normally
sober citizens to act out on line, the problems of
privacy protection and threats to minors -- as
well as Congressional efforts to regulate online
speech -- Ms. Boursecnik said the company's
supervisory policies were necessary to provide the
open atmosphere its customers wanted.
"We are a service that prides ourselves on having
a wide-ranging appeal to a wide range of
individuals," she added. "But at the same time
we're also a family service."
For Some, Control Is Seen as a Virtue
Indeed, for many subscribers, America Online's
virtue is its controlled environment. A
members-only online service distinct from the
unfettered Internet, America Online has achieved
market dominance by promoting itself as a place
where families and first-time Internet users can
feel comfortable. While members can venture out
into the World Wide Web and other parts of the
Internet from the online service, many seldom do,
preferring America Online's relative safety and
familiarity.
The service is far from the only Internet
discussion area to enforce its own standards of
acceptable speech. Popular Web destinations like
the search and directory site Yahoo,
discussion-oriented sites like Theglobe.com, and
sites operated by traditional publishers
(including The New York Times) reserve the right
to remove postings on the message boards they
provide to Internet users. And those who find
America Online's terms unacceptable can always go
to another online service, or to the Internet's
entirely unmonitored forums called news groups.
But America Online's extraordinary market
dominance, critics argue, makes it the only place
in practical terms for a growing number of people
to speak their mind in cyberspace. Many Internet
users find the unmoderated news groups too
technically complex to use and too overrun with
advertising to be productive for discussion. Since
it serves as an Internet service provider, America
Online has a far more potent enforcement mechanism
for its rules than most other discussion areas on
the Web. Since subscribers pay a monthly fee with
a credit card, the company can bar individuals
from logging on -- thereby denying them, among
other things, access to e-mail.
"America Online is the operating system of the
Internet," said Andrew L. Shapiro, the First
Amendment fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice
at New York University Law School, comparing the
service to the Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating
system, which runs on 90 percent of the world's
personal computers.
"We've moved distressingly close to the model that
the Internet was supposed to replace, which is a
couple of big companies having a disproportionate
amount of control over the information market,"
Shapiro added. "A good argument can be made that
AOL needs to take on more responsibility for
protecting free speech, whether courts require it
or consumers simply demand it."
Canceling Service as Sign of Protest
Although some subscribers, like John Navin, 38, of
Mount Lake Terrace, Wash., said he had dropped his
America Online account to protest the Irish board
shutdown, others dissatisfied with its
interventions remain with the service out of
choice, habit or necessity.
When Sheila Fahey found the Irish discussion
shuttered last month, for example, she and others
tried to migrate their discussion to a site on the
World Wide Web called Ireland Uncensored. But she
found the forum confusing and too difficult to
follow. Instead, she says she and several other
Irish nationalists now screen each other's
postings before making them public to vet them for
possible terms-of-service violations.
"We've all learned not to use first-person
pronouns," said Ms. Fahey, 41, a paralegal in
Chicago. "If an English teacher looked at some of
our postings, they are so passive-language-filled
they'd have a cow."
(When the discussion was reopened, the monitor
posted a message pleading for harmony: "We
encourage you to make this a more amiable place
where any person, regardless of faction, can
openly discuss political issues and current
events.")
For Robin Olderman, 54, a high school English
teacher in Houston, it means putting up with what
she describes as feeling like a kid in a
playground whose friends go running to the
teacher.
"I take issue with the way the rules are enforced
arbitrarily," said Ms. Olderman, who is currently
operating under a "mutual nonharassment notice,"
an e-mail message from America Online explaining
that she and another subscriber are never to speak
to each other via the service again.
Perhaps more disturbing to some subscribers is the
removal of postings from message boards. On the
Writers Club board, which like many areas of
America Online is administered by a separate
company that contracts with the service, more than
a dozen of the most active participants over the
last several years recently left en masse after
the board monitors began removing their postings
and reporting terms-of-service violations more
frequently to the Community Action Team.
The writers now congregate on a board called
"Sanctuary" in the American Civil Liberties Union
area on America Online, where the terms-of-service
rules do not apply.
On the race relations message board, Jay Lutsky,
31, of Edison, N.J., said he compared an active
participant who accused everyone on the board of
being his enemy to Robespierre, the French Jacobin
leader responsible for the revolution's Reign of
Terror. It was removed by monitors after the other
participant said it was slander.
"I said it was opinion; I'm entitled," Lutsky, a
teacher, said. "I understand AOL is a large
private corporation, and I guess it's technically
their property, but I don't think it should be
allowed to interfere with the First Amendment
rights of people."
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