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poets on AOL
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 17:55 EST
From: Jordanne
Jordanne Holyoak P.O. Box 33063 Indianapolis, IN 46203 jordanh@iquest.net
The Communications Decency Act is now law. If you use on-line services, it is going to affect you, just as it affected a brilliant young poet who sought freedom in the USA but found her freedoms seriously compromised by the Act.
THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT Who Stands to Lose ?
When Isa Sadiq fled the brutality and oppression of Somalia and came to the United States seeking political asylum, she never dreamed that she would encounter some of the same restrictions here. But she did.
A beautiful and talented twentyyearold, Isa had studied abroad. As a poet, growing up in a culture of repression, she longed for the freedom of expression she would find in the United States. She lived in various parts of the middle East before she came to the U.S. and applied for political asylum. She settled in Minneapolis and sought out poets and places where she could send her poetry. One of the first places she tried was America On Line. Isa had got a free disk in a computer magazine and so, armed with her ten free hours, she popped the disk in her a: drive and was "wired" into America.
Among the cyberscape lush with chatrooms, data bases, and online magazines, Isa found, tucked away under 8 layers of cyberthread, the Poetry Corner. There she found poems posted by online poets, critiques, posts of comments and afterthoughts. The tone was welcoming, friendly. Isa loved the freedom she saw represented in those poems, and she posted one of her own. In a few days, she went back to Poetry Corner and discovered that other poets had read her poem and had left encouraging comments.
Isa's spirits soared. Young, and in the prime of her sexual awareness, she posted her poems of eroticism and sexual exploration. She posted too, poems of sadness, depression and exile. Still other poems explored the language of addiction and compulsion. Over and over again she posted and received overwhelmingly positive notices from her fellow online poets. She made friends there and became a cherished part of this tightlyknit on line community of poets. Things were idyllic for a year. Isa and the other poets went about the business of writing and posting and criticizing poems in relative harmony. But in November of 1995, pressure was applied to America On Line CEO Steve Case, by rightwing fundamentalists. They emphasized that all language inappropriate for children had to be taken off AOL bulletin boards. Selfproclaimed right wing activist, Diana Leach vowed to make AOL "God's own server" and to bring AOL's TOS (terms of service) regulations to the Internet.
Overnight things changed for Isa and the other poets in the Poetry Corner. Dozens of poems which were there one evening, were gone the next morning. Approximately a third of the online poets received Terms of Service (TOS) violations. One poet actually received sixteen violations that day. Suddenly poems were pulled off the boards for using the word "breast." Poems which contained no questionable words at all were pulled for their content. And some poems were deleted for no discernible reason at all.
At the same time, an online breast cancer support group found themselves suddenly unable to use the word "breast" to talk about their disease. The systems operator of the Atheist bulletin boards, abruptly had a new supervisor who reportedly was a retired Baptist minister. The postings by the atheists were disappearing with the same regularity as that of the poets. When questioned by one of the leaders of the atheist group, the supervisor replied that he saw no conflict with his Baptist orientation and his new job as supervisor over the atheist boards.
In frustration, the poets and the atheists, each without knowing of the tribulations of the other, wrote to Steve Case explaining that they could not voice their opinions or post their poems with AOL practicing this kind of censorship. No answer. Many of the poets and atheists wrote over and over again. The response was usually the same. None. Two poets did get identical form letter responses from a vice president, though their questions were very different. The form letter was basically a "nonanswer" which thanked them for their letters and stated that AOL was "looking into it."
In desperation, the poets formed Creative Coalition on AOL, (CCA), a group born out of the need of the poets to have AOL hear their concerns. CCA quickly formed a board, drew up bylaws, and began to tell their story to the media, and to fellow writers on the internet. As you might expect, responses were mixed. Some contacts expressed their thoughts that AOL was private industry and could do as it pleased. If the poets did not like it, they could go elsewhere. Others thought, as the poets did, that since AOL bills itself as "an online community, a city larger than Los Angeles," that first amendment rights ought to extend to the inhabitants of that "city." Sympathetic webmasters posted the poems that AOL had deleted, and told the story of the poets' struggles to share their poems.
Of course censorship is not new to poets. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and a long list of other beat poets were banned from sharing their work in the 50's and 60's. Isa Sadiq thought America had come some distance since then, and was sad to find out we had not. She stated, "it seems ironic to me, that a service which names itself after America, calls itself 'America' On Line, has sought to take away the first amendment rights of its consumers." She further added, "we plan to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. Steve Case should know that poets are not willing to sit in the shadows and be quiet. That is why we write."
Isa and the other poets sent a barrage of mail to America On Line requesting that the Poetry Corner come under "parental control". This means that if parents do not want their children reading online poetry, they could block access. This feature could allow the poets to continue uncensored, while America's children would be "safe" from their poems. The poets received no answer from AOL management, but in early January, all areas of AOL except the areas specifically for children, came under parental control with the push of a button. Still, the censorship of poems and postings did not abate.
CCA and the poets also contend that TOS guidelines are not administered fairly, that they and the atheists have been sorted out for "special" discrimination. Upon investigation, this seems true. The poets have pages of poems which were pulled from the boards for using the word "breast" or "sex" while in the chat rooms, one sees the words "cock," "fuck" and "pussy" regularly, with no consequences to the user of those words. Often the users of those words are children, or worse, are child predators looking for cybersex. When asked about this seemingly unfair application of the TOS rules, AOL said, "we depend upon our subscribers to report offenses when they see them. Room guides drop into chat rooms unannounced to discourage the use of obscenity."
To test this assertion, this reporter stopped in to chat rooms every night for nearly a month. In that time, I saw one, count 'em, ONE guide. I saw every objectionable word imaginable, and numerous comeons for online sex. I guess the "subscribers" are not working hard enough.
To clarify the issues, the poets asked Steve Case, and their bulletin board systems operator, who goes by the screenname THopeB, for a list of the objectionable words which they were not supposed to use on AOL. It seemed a reasonable request. They were told that no such list existed. However, this reporter obtained a chatlog of a roomful of guidesintraining. In this chatlog a whole list of banned words is exposed. In fact, the guidestobe actually use those words in conversation with one another, and then laugh about it. Some of the words make one wonder, "hot, wet, wild," are not thought of as objectionable by most people. In fact, AOL uses those very words to draw people into looking at it's own photos of Anna Nichole Smith. But just try using them in a poem, of course no one will tell you beforehand that you may not use them. So, poems are still being pulled with amazing regularity. And poets still have no guidelines, despite their requests.
In the past few days, Congress and the President have passed legislation which makes "indecent material" illegal anywhere on the net. Those who violate this provision are subject to up to $250,000 fine and 2 years in jail. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to obtain an injunction and to contest the constitutionality of the "indecency clause" of the Telecom legislation. In an ironic twist, the ACLU, who enjoys a "free speech" area on AOL, offered all AOL poets and writers space on their bulletin boards to post writings and discussions. They generously opened up several folders for the poets and screenwriters who wish to post there without censorship. As this text is written, the internet enjoys a temporary injunction protecting its freedom of speech. But who knows how long it will last? Diana Leach has stated, "we want the whole internet to adopt the same standards as AOL." If she and other fundamentalists get their way, they will be deciding for the entire internet, as they did for AOL, what is "decent" and what is not. Get ready. They did it to Isa. And they are coming to a server near you. To join CCA send e-mail request to CCA1996@aol.com. Membership is free. ```
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