Re: Webpage picketing

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

At 07:21 PM 6/3/97 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

>Under what conditions akin to sidewalk use might a provider or network
>provider be forced to provide any user requesting a link to the
>objectionable page with the page of the objecting group.

Let's abandon the meatspace metaphor, and just talk about what you're
proposing - you want to insert third parties into a communication between
two non-consenting parties. 

Why is this useful? I think it sounds like an awful idea.

>What I see is a simple single screen page that immediatly takes you to the
>desired page. Something conceptualy akin to a picket sign.

I don't see any reason to, if we adopt your reasoning, limit this practice
to web pages - shit, we ought to be able to attach things to each other's
E-mail messages, hijack each other's IRC sessions, tack things onto the end
of each other's files sent via FTP, add things to other people's NFS
directory trees .. yeah. 

Who's going to keep track of all of this stuff? Are ISP's and backbone
providers supposed to give other people free hard disk space/connectivity
to do this? Or do you want the government to do it? What about blocking
software, which erases the picketing notices? Will that be allowed?

Conventional picketing works where private space is adjacent to public
space, such that people in the public space can limit access to the private
space, or do things in the public space which are visible to peole in the
private space. Adjacency isn't really meaningful in "cyberspace", because
it depends on arbitrary and changeable "locations" .. and there's very
little "public space" in cyberspace, at least in the way that there's
public space (like streets and roads and parks) in meatspace. 

Do you think we should adopt "bookspace picketing", whereby public
libraries are obligated to include hostile rants with books in their
collections, or even notations that "The Authoritarian League believes this
book is harmful, read _Why I Need Someone to Run My Life_ by Joe Schmo to
learn more"? Perhaps we should implement a program of "wordspace
picketing", whereby we're obligated to, before we orally discuss our own
opinions in a public place, mention the counterarguments made by critics.


--
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