I would like to take a moment of your time to introduce myself. My name is Jay Med and I am the founder of Contraband Magazine. We are currently based in Washington, DC, and have a readership around the world. We are a young magazine with a lot of room to grow; our first issue was published on the Internet on May 7, 1997.
I want my magazine to be controversial, within limits. Soon we will be publishing a column on pornography issues. How can I keep this controversial without angering everybody? That is what I have to deal with in every subject. We all know this topic is a sore spot with women’s groups and some other people. There are also plenty of men and some women who never want to see pornography go away.
I like to link web sites from both sides of issues to these kinds of editorials, because my readers come from different backgrounds with different point of views. In addition to an anti-pornography web site, I considered linking a mild X-rated site to counteract it. That was until I read America Online’s Terms of Service Agreement.
Rights and Responsibilities part C states, "You may not use your AOL account to post, transmit, or promote any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable content."
The way that I interpret this is that if I go overboard with controversy in Contraband Magazine, I will lose everything that I have worked to get. This does not bode well with me. What ever happened to Freedom of Speech? Do I not have First Amendment rights?
My mother said in a discussion with her family about 15 years ago, "If you don’t like it, don’t look at it." I have always felt that way too. Recently I had been ordered to throw all my "dirty" magazines away, "Because they are degrading to women." I could not bare to waste them. I left them next to the trash chute and they disappeared in minutes. I have never purchased pornography. It is funny how I always had something pornographic. You would trip over magazines when I lived on a ship. You could not get away from it. Just because I have never purchased any, that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the rights of others.
AOL’s point of view has to be that it is their company. They can make whatever decision they want within the laws. I have my right to post pornography and AOL has the right shut me down. They are not big fans of controversy. Controversy can offend people. In their eyes, that would not be good business. If you view pornography on my web site, that could give them a tarnished image.
Based on looking at it through their eyes, Free Speech
or not, maybe, we should all try to understand our Internet
Service Provider'’s point of view. If you pay extra for the right
to Free Speech, more power to you. If you have a free service, as
AOL gives me, how can you complain? When I outgrow AOL, I plan to
move up. Until then, I will just have to deal with the rules that
they lay out for me.