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THE HERD AND THE TRIBE
The people over at Boing Boing have a piece up linking to this article on Fleshbot, this piece on SFist, and blogger Violet’s post on her Tiny Nibbles blog, all of which detail the decision by Tribe.com to apply Federal 2257 regulations to pages created by Tribe users. After December 20, all Tribe pages containing sexual content will be rendered “invisible” to the public at large.
Comments Violet: “Now everyone is confused about whether or not they can put up a picture of their own boobies and not end up in federal prison. They’re confusing everyone, and kind of really doing the Justice Department’s job for them by making everyone very nervous and confused about obcenity and sexually explicit materials, and who owns them. But the hilarious part of this whole sad joke is that 2257 is just another organized crime tactic from the government to keep people confused about whether what they’re doing is illegal or not in realtion to sex (and free speech).”
And here’s Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Jason Schultz in SFist: “What happened at Tribe is what we can expect in a world where the FBI dictates the terms of what freedom of expression means. It’s disappointing that Tribe overreacted like it did and banned far more speech than necessary, but one also has to realize, in a world where you can go to jail for what you help publish on the Internet, there’s a serious chilling effect from laws like 2257.”
