TUESDAY'S LETTERS: What if 9/11 Never Happened, Keller Dodges Calame, Bloggers and the Law

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, a reader responds to our piece on the legal liabilities of blogging, another offers his own "what if 9/11 never happened" scenario, and a reader weighs in on New York Times editor Bill Keller's artful dodging of public editor Byron Calame.


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What If 9/11 Never Happened?

Take it a step further ... What if Gore had won the election ? No, 9/11? It's much easier to justify a terrorist catastrophe like 9/11 when there is a palpable "world" tyrant like Bush as President of the Great Satan. We soon forget that even before 9/11, Bush was viewed by the rest of the world as an inept, confrontational bully with his eyes on bringing down his perceived axis of evil and absolutely no idea on the importance of rectifying the Palestinian travesty. Gore as President would likely have taken the US into a non-confrontational, co-operative Kyoto era. Bush became an obvious bete noir that Gore could never be.

Geoff Clarke


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On Blogs and the Law

Given the comments that were made [in this article], I thought that you would want to know about a California Appellate decision, which the California Supreme Court has agreed to hear, wherein the Appellate Court held that Section 230 of the Communication Act Does Not provide absolute or blanket immunity to certain Internet users and providers who allow others to post or republish libelous articles on the sites. The case is Barrett vs.. Rosenthal, California Supreme Court N0. S122953.

In my opinion, the Appellate Court's 56 plus page decision in Barrett vs.. Rosenthal, should be affirmed since it is the first time any Court, state or federal, really analyzes Section 230 under the general rules applicable to statutory interpretation as well as the Constitutional rules for statutory interpretation when competing Constitutional Rights are at issue. ...

If Section 230 is found to provide absolute immunity, absurd results will abound. For example, Internet users and providers like Craig's List, are presently being sued for violations of the Fair Housing Act, for allowing the posting of discriminatory housing advertisements. Should Section 230 be interpreted as providing absolute immunity to such Internet users and providers, discriminatory on-line advertisements -- which, under any other situation, would violate this law -- would now protect users and providers who allow these discriminatory ads. How many other federal and/or state law that could be violated if Section 230 is determined to provide absolute immunity remains to be seen. ...

By affirming the Appellate Court's ruling limiting immunity under Section 230, the California Supreme Court will also avoid the absurd result of immunizing Internet users and providers who knowing allow discriminatory online posting of housing or employment ads, which, in any other situation, would violate the law.

Hopefully, the public and civil right groups like the ACLU will realize that if blanket immunity is provided under Section 230 their efforts to protect the public against discrimination will be of little, if any, use for online discrimination.

Christopher E. Grell
Oakland, Calif.


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Calame Being Impeded in By Keller?

Though I believe New York Times public editor Byron Calame is sincere in his efforts to answer readers' concerns about the Times, he is not allowed to do his job.

According to Calame's confusing piece in the Sunday Times, editor Bill Keller simply ignores Calame for months before he answers his inquiries and then those answers are dubious, at best.

The Oct. 24, 2004 Times lead story on the "looted" Iraqi ammo dump, based on a claims from Bush critic and UN-IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, and coordinated with CBS News, disproves Keller's stated concerns about pre-election accuracy. The Times obviously would have turned the flimsiest bits of negative information into a banner headline to defeat Bush.

Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger, and most of [the paper's] news staff are each equal parts political activist and journalist. Sadly, the vehicle required to get the true story from any of this crew will be the federal criminal subpoena.

Brad Silliman