Comments on: Meatspaces, Cyberspaces, and (Relative) Expressive Freedom http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/09/meatspaces_cybe.html The Law, the Universe, and Everything Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:18:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Jon Garfunkel http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/09/meatspaces_cybe.html/comment-page-1#comment-47165 Jon Garfunkel Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:35:21 +0000 http://www.solove.org/archives/2008/09/meatspaces-cyberspaces-and-relative-expressive-freedom.html#comment-47165 Ok, I agree, but the intro is non-controversial. The reporter, (Anick Jesdanun) used the concept of a "public park" as an idealized free-speech oasis where time, space and manner restrictions don't apply. Had Jesdanun started, "Your speech rights are haphazardly guaranteed in cyberspace, just as they are in semi-public real world spaces" the reader would have probably come away from the article accepting the status quo. I take issue with this stock cliche in paragraph 4: "possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms." What are the possible remedies? None are listed. We can start with due process, which is what I called for with PONAR (<a href="http://civilities.net/PONAR" rel="nofollow">Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting</a>). It's wrong for MySpace to contact GoDaddy to kill a domain, when the webmaster, by all indications from the article, would have been available to answer their request. Ok, I agree, but the intro is non-controversial. The reporter, (Anick Jesdanun) used the concept of a “public park” as an idealized free-speech oasis where time, space and manner restrictions don’t apply. Had Jesdanun started, “Your speech rights are haphazardly guaranteed in cyberspace, just as they are in semi-public real world spaces” the reader would have probably come away from the article accepting the status quo.

I take issue with this stock cliche in paragraph 4: “possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.”

What are the possible remedies? None are listed. We can start with due process, which is what I called for with PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting). It’s wrong for MySpace to contact GoDaddy to kill a domain, when the webmaster, by all indications from the article, would have been available to answer their request.

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