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Censorship Your Rights Online

ADL Tries to Censor Yahoo Sites 12

Posted by michael from the censors-to-the-left-of-me... dept.
BMIComp writes, "The Anti-Defamation League is asking for Yahoo! to take down club sites that promote hatred, such as "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the World Church of the Creator." They are asking this of Yahoo, since its terms of service state that users are not allowed to: upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;" ZDNet's story here " Ah, the ADL. My favorite left-wing censorship group.
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ADL Tries to Censor Yahoo Sites More

ADL Tries to Censor Yahoo Sites

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  • The ADL doesn't "get it" when it comes to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. During the assault weapons scare, the ADL was lobbying for a ban on assault weapons because a few racist nuts were running around in camouflage fatigues, playing soldier. This really pissed me off because their attitude was based on the bankrupt old ideas that "good Jews don't own guns" and "the government will protect us from the antisemites", ghetto thinking that helped make the holocaust possible. They think that the government will only ban "bad" speech, certainly nothing that would affect them.
  • Yahoo would be opening themselves up for lawsuits if they enforced the terms of service. Once they assume editorial control by removing some offensive sites, they can be sued for the content of sites they failed to remove.
  • > As someone once said (don't ask who, I'm awful with names)...

    I believe you are referring to Voltaire. Of course, I Could Be Wrong.

    There's another quote that springs to mind -- and this one I don't remember the origin of:

    "If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you despise, you don't believe in freedom of speech at all."

  • ADL (Score:1)

    by BMIComp ( 87596 )
    I agree with the ADL, that hatred is bad and all, but I don't agree with the way they're going about preventing it. Companies like Yahoo, have their terms of service and other guidelines in place in case they need to use them, but they don't always enforce them, and they aren't expected to. On the other hand, the ADL comes in and tried to exploit Yahoo's terms of service by telling them that they basically have to terminate certain users clubs/accounts/websites... whatever... because they violate the terms of service. If Yahoo removed the material from their website, I wouldn't care, but people from the outside trying to force them to do it, doesn't seem right.
  • The ADL is one of the biggest hate groups around. They spread hate and intolerance towards people who hate other people. Talk about being hypocritical.

    Burris
  • Maybe they don't claim to support free speech.

    Does anyone remember when the ADL got caught a few years ago illegally spying on Americans? The only details I remember are that they maintained a database on thousands of Americans who anyone reported to them had criticized them or said or done anything anti-Semitic, and they actually acquired police databases illegally. I seem to recall that they had tried to harm the people in their database, but I don't remember any details. This story received surprisingly little press coverage. If the KKK had done this, we would still be hearing about it.

  • I agree with burris. Hating hate is hate. This ADL stuff is crap. Censorship is censorship. Let us ban ADL sites from the web. They promote hate and I hate that.
  • Do we grant them their request to take away access for fringe groups (PC for hate groups), or do we stand by a persons rights for free speech?

    If the sites are removed, they will simply go elsewhere. There will be no victory, only free publicity for groups that should be ignored. The ADL, in its zealous quest to rid the world of bigotry, is only promoting them.

    Its sad that people and groups like the ADL neglect and/or overlook the most powerful (and only effective) weapon against hatred: Education.

    Jailbrekr.
  • Yahoo can and should enforce their policy uniformly. If they do not, they could lose their ability to enforce it at all. They can't be arbitrary about it.

    Rob Leduc
  • Very Interesting!!! Seems that this is a free-speech vs terms-of-service vs obligation to enforce terms-of-service (tos). Just because a company has the right to terminate a site because of a tos violation, is it obligated to do so? If it is obligated to do so, doesn't that at least imply that said company would be required to monitor or inspect all sites on at least an occasional basis? Or need they only remove offending sites that are brought to their attention? What standard does a company use to determine if a site is offensive enough to be removed? Quite a can-of-worms here. :-)
  • As someone once said (don't ask who, I'm awful with names)...

    "I don't agree with what you say,
    but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

    Modify that to "I absolutely detest what you say", and you've got my sentiment.

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