By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1990, The Syracuse Newspapers
I was banned in Boston the other day.
And in Chicago and Los Angeles.
I was banned in the rest of the country, too. It lasted for
a week.
It was the first time I'd ever been censored.
It all started when I tried to catch up on my mail. I had thousands
of unread messages to look through on one of the national computer
networks. Nearly all the messages were public postings in the
conferences. Anybody in the United States can read them just by
calling the network by computer.
Public messages on this network are supposed to be civil. After
all, the notes that are posted are just like the scraps of paper
that you see on supermarket bulletin boards. You don't want to
embarrass anyone or make unpleasant remarks in public.
But as I started to read the public messages, I came across one
directed solely at me. If it had been a private letter, I wouldn't
have minded at all. But out in the open, where any caller could
read it-right out on the supermarket wall, so to speak-was a note
that said, more or less, that I had an unorthodox way of dealing
with the truth.
A liar? Was that what I was being called?
So what, you say? You write for a living, you take your lumps,
and that's that. I get letters now and then from regular readers
who tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. One guy even
sends me unprintable references to my ancestors. I'm used to it.
But these aren't public remarks. They're personal and private.
You can ignore something like that and nobody else cares. Nobody
else knows.
The public note I found on the computer network had gone too far.
I wrote a reply pointing this out. I made a couple of pointed
remarks about the letter-writer's grumpiness, and then I posted
my reply in the same area of the conferencing network.
Since his note about me had been public, I made sure my response
was public, too.
I called back to look for any new mail the next day. I had a private
note from one of the people in charge of the network. Cool it,
he said. The other guy is being told the same thing, his note
said. The two of you should calm yourselves down.
I didn't like being told not to defend myself. I wasn't about
to keep quiet.
So I checked back into the public messages and found another one
from the same caller. It slammed me even harder.
And so I slammed back. Nothing could stop me now.
Or so I thought. When I called again two days later, everything
seemed normal. While I was reading a message, I pressed a couple
of keys to tell the network that I wanted to write a comment.
They were the same keys I'd always pressed.
But this time instead of getting the OK from the computer system,
I got a note back from the network. You can't do that, it said
in network language. You can't reply to that message.
I tried again. Same thing. I went to another message and tried
to respond to it.
Sorry! This isn't allowed, the network told me. The actual note
was "access denied," or something like that.
It was that way for all of the conferences I checked into. I had
been silenced. I could read but not write.
Later, I found an electronic mail letter from the network manager.
His note had been mailed to both me and my antagonist. It said
we were being childish. Our angry messages had been deleted so
nobody could read them.
The censorship would last a few days, he said. He also said things
could get worse if we didn't behave.
This last part was a little odd. Without the ability to write
public messages, we had no way to misbehave. We were like patrons
of the supermarket who were locked out just outside the door.
We could see the little pieces of paper on the public bulletin
board, but we couldn't put up any ourselves.
I fired off a private reply to the manager. I pay for this service,
I reminded him. It's not a service when I can't respond to public
messages.
I told him I shouldn't have to pay for the time that I was censored.
He wrote back right away and told me I wouldn't be charged for
that period.
By the following week I was back to full status. I minded my manners,
and I've been a good boy ever since. I haven't had an argument
with anybody.
But the whole experience has been unsettling. It's clear that
nobody came out ahead, but I still haven't figured out who lost
more-the other network callers, presumably embarrassed, who had
to pick their way past our public spat, or the two of us, muzzled
and singled out, treated like 7-year-olds.
Maybe the real loss is an almost insignificant erosion of the
right of free expression. This decade will mark the beginning
of true mass communication by computer. In some ways, conferencing
networks will become as important as newspapers, and much of the
time they'll serve as a replacement for the U.S. mail.
However, unlike the press and the postal service, with their long
traditions of free speech, computer networks don't have history
as a guide. They'll do whatever their managers want. And that
means censorship just as easily as it means anything else.
When that day comes, who will decide what can be said in public?
It's worth thinking about now, while networks and other information
services are still in their infancy. It may be too late when they've
grown up.
technofile:
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