Dear Greenwich Roundup,Topix has apparently evolved its notion of community policing of hateful speech by making people pay to remove defamatory posts.
The Greenwich Time should be thanking their lucky stars (if they have any) that they stopped using topix.
Kentucky Attorney General Addresses Topix Website
Do you ever fear getting a subpoena to reveal the identities of your contributors?
Name Withheld By request
COMMENT:
The rule at Greenwich Roundup is that we publish who a contributor is unless they tell us not to.
While complying with subpoenas isn't unusual for newspapers and some bloggers.
However, the ease with which an ID can be acquired should be made clearer to those using comment boards.
News organizations everywhere are untangling these issues.
A few times a month Greenwich Roundup gets threatened with lawsuits.
Sometimes big corporations actually go out wasting money on lawyers in an attempt to intimidate Greenwich Roundup.
Once Greenwich Roundup traded angry e-mails with Hearst Corporate Lawyer Ravi Sitwalla because a former Greenwich Time Editor named Bruce Hunter wanted posts about his poor performance removed from this blog.
The Greenwich Times threats of a SLAPP lawsuit (Strategic lawsuit against public participation ) were soon dropped as Greenwich Roundup stood his ground and published Hearst Newspaper letters And emails at this blog.
Even under subpoena Greenwich Roundup would try to inform a commenter before releasing information about him or her, something the Greenwich Time might not do.
Greenwich Roundup has been subpoenaed for information about anonymous posters, who people felt they had been defamed and criminal cases where someone may have witnessed a crime.
Greenwich Roundup would always try to give time to let the poster go to court and quash the subpoena.
There may also be instances where Greenwich Roundup would determine that the commenter was acting as a news source and Greenwich Roundup would elect to fight to protect the person's privacy.
Internet culture of free-wheeling commentary, and the results can be unpredictable.
Greenwich Roundup is a free speech purists who think the internet is a fundamentally different medium and that the old rules — that is, vetting letters to the editor — should not be applied to comments.
If you limit these comments like the Greenwich Time does, then you're engaging in censorship.
At Greenwich Roundup Or At The Greenwich Topix message board, you will find that those judged guilty of violating a poster's privacy can be sentenced to serious digital scorn.
A good example is Kurt Greenbaum, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who tipped off the employer of an anonymous commenter who posted an offensive statement on the paper's Web site.Greenbaum posted a question last November on a blog on the Post-Dispatch site asking, "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" One commenter, according to a post Greenbaum later wrote, replied with a vulgarity. Greenbaum reported he deleted the post, but it popped up again from the same user.This time he used the Internet protocol address to contact the place where the comment originated, a school. Officials tracked down the poster, an employee, and confronted him. The man resigned, Greenbaum reported in a blog post titled: "Post a vulgar comment while you're at work, lose your job."Hundreds of comments excoriating Greenbaum were posted on the newspaper's site — as well as on Greenbaum's personal blog posts on the topic.
"Did I overreact?" asked Greenbaum in a later post. "Maybe I did. I am constantly frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with this kind of language."
Some lament civility's demise online.
Others like Chris Tolles the CEO of Topix.com, which posts between 120,000 and 150,000 comments a day, says....
"Enabling people to say what they will makes for a better society in the long run, because it means people have to have a thicker skin and it means a lot of things come out that wouldn't have come out."
As a matter of full disclosure, Greenwich Roundup has been the editor of the Greenwich Topix board for years and he has never banned any commenter or deleted any comments.
However, other Topix moderators have banned and deleted persons and what they have said on the Greenwich Topix message board.
When the Greenwich Time used the Topix message boards, Greenwich Roundup was horrified at how the news paper banned and censored members of Greenwich society who disagreed with the newspaper and the powers that be.
Greenwich Roundup knows some may not like what he writes.
However, Greenwich Roundup is not going to stop commenting online and defending the rights of others to express their own controversial or silly opinions.
Whether people want to hear it or not, a commenter does have the constitutionally protected right to say something really stupid.
Further, Greenwich Roundup does not believe that topix users can get posts removed for $19.99.
Should Glenville Principal Marc Marc D'Amico Be Able To Pay $19,99 A Revise History By Removing This Post At Topix....
Should Glenville Principal Marc Marc D'Amico Be Able To Pay $19,99 A Revise History By Removing This Post At Topix....
15 posts - 8 authors - Last post: Jun 1, 2008
Glenville School Principal Marc D'Amico was suspended pending an investigation into serious allegations, school officials said yesterday.....
Read 15 Comments
When You Search The Sanitized Greenwich Time Website You Will Read Nothing About Cupcakes, Changing A Written Policy To Punish A School Critic, Poor Administrative Judgement, Personal Vendettas, Or School Administrators Lying To The Superintendent.
Glenville Principal Marc D'Amico Is Probably Willing To Shell Out Another $19.99 To Delete This Topix Post
As Glenville parents grappled with the turmoil besetting their school, suspended principal Marc D'Amico prepared to meet with district officials next week, his lawyer said ....
At Topix You Can Still Read All 85 Comments In This Post, That Is Until Principal D'Amico Pulls Out His Credit Card.
But The Real Question Is Why Has Hearst Newspaper Editor David McCumber Sanitized And Protected The Powers That Be, By Removing The News Articles About Marc D'Amico Suspension From The Greenwich Time Website.
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