Free Market Censorship.

Talk about perfect timing...

Yesterday I commented on the right's fears about government intrusion into personal liberties and its trust in the free market to protect consumer privacy.

I  subscribe to (and donate to) a feed from Truthout that aggregates news from domestic and international sources ranging from the New York Times and The Independent (see links for two recent articles related to climate change) to its own reports. Several email newsletters a day arrive in my inbox digesting news that might be of interest to what we'll call an anti-war, pro-environment progressive.

But suddenly, they're not showing up the same way for AOL subscribers and users of "free" email services such as Microsoft-Hotmail and Yahoo, no matter how they try to adjust their filters. Here are some representative comments from Truthout subscribers:

I subscribe via my Hotmail account to a couple of conservative newsletters to keep track of what they are doing. Hotmail is not censoring those mails at all.

What I receive is the newsletter from Conservative Alerts.com, Family Research Council's prayer targets newsletter, and the Northern Virginia GOP Agenda newsletter. I don't often go into my Hotmail account and read anything there, but there is no censorship of the conservative stuff.

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I have also had a problem with my newsletters from your organization, as well   as ones from antiwar orgainzations, now being diverted to my Yahoo bulk mailbox,   regardless of how often I mark them as "not spam". This started several   weeks ago, and before that I always received such messages in my regular inbox.   I find this insidious censorship frightening.

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It isn't just newsletters that are being blocked - articles forwarded from Truthout are also being intercepted. An article on Gen. Petraeus that I forwarded yesterday to an AOL subscriber was marked ARTICLE NOT AVAILABLE

You can read more here.

Comments

[kb]

Does AOL have an obligation to deliver any mail you send, when you do not pay them? The recipient signed a contract; unless AOL made promises to its customers promising no censorship, it has the right to decide what mail it will convey and what it won't. Most other carriers do the same thing.

The government can censor because it relies on force. The corporation can only persuade you to do business with them, or not.

The free market works by having somebody out there who does not want to filter political material out selling services as much as AOL or the others do, and then tell your friends to stop doing business with these censorious firms and do business with the ones who permit those messages to go through. Sounds like a market opportunity for you, Charlie! Good luck.

[Charlie Quimby]

I've read through the AOL terms of use and privacy policy. They make several statements that might provide a basis for their action.

Under NO DUTY TO MONITOR:

"You agree that we are not liable for Content that is provided by others. We have no duty to pre-screen Content, but we have the right to refuse to post or to edit submitted Content. We reserve the right to remove Content for any reason, but we are not responsible for any failure or delay in removing such material."

In other words, if you're bombarded with porn site solicitations, that's your problem. And if you don't get mail you want, that's also your problem.

However, the privacy policy says: "AOL does not read your private online communications when you use AOL Service communications tools (for example, AOL Service e-mail or AOL instant messenger), except in the limited circumstances described in this Privacy Policy."

So they can edit or refuse to deliver content, but they don't read it? Seems contradictory.

I think a reasonable user signing the agreement might fail to understand this permitted the company to refuse delivery of content that did not violate the list of prohibited material and activities.

Can I infer you'd have a similar response if AOL blocked Townhall.com newsletters but did not interfere with Truthout?

I'll probably respond to your larger argument in a future post.

[kb]

You infer correctly. It's a matter of contract law. There are these elastic standards for unreasonableness, but I can't see how this rises to that level. Nor do I think ignorance of the terms of the contract excuses the customer.

I suspect we'll exchange blog posts on this next week. I look forward to it.

[Damozel, Administrator]

I enjoyed your post. My progressive colleague at the blog where we both write had posted on this subject and---frankly---I was skeptical; it just seemed so entirely pointless for providers to selectively pick on Truthout as opposed to other progressive organizations. And I've heard contrary anecdotal evidence. But now, the NYT has an article about Verizon refusing to transmit text messages from NARAL. I do think this is a slightly different issue...it's strange that these companies would be willing to alienate customers in order to serve (whose?) political agenda....