By John Chaffee
So here you are in the electronic age, happily sending emails to your friends and coworkers, posting messages on school or company network bulletin boards, and chatting away in a computer service forum with buddies who share interests with you. It's fast, it's modern, it's easy, and it's the true manifestation of free speech, to communicate with anyone you want to, whenever you want to, by whatever means you want to use. Suddenly, you find a baby photo of yourself at age two, in the bathtub, posted on the Internet. Or a scribbled complaint about your work supervisor, sent via email to a coworker to vent your feelings after a bad day at the office, is forwarded by who-knows-who to your boss, with a copy to the Human Resources Department.* Or your school email box is bombarded with junk mail,
It's important to understand that all of these computer online tools—email, chat rooms, message boards—are relatively new and still being developed. The regulations that govern them are unclear and still emerging. While informal rules among computer users are fairly common, institutions such
Who actually owns the Web? No one. As the connections to more and more parties expand rapidly, control weakens. Before you post a message or picture on a community electronic bulletin board, think about who will see it, who can copy it, and where it might end up. Privacy is almost nonexistent in cyberspace. Do you really want your future employer to see that picture of you? Do you really want your story about a stressful day fighting crowds and dealing with interoffice politics or about a particularly tough professor to be seen by everyone—five years from now? And the affection conveyed in the invitation to your boyfriend or girlfriend to spend the weekend at your family's house over the holidays—do you really want it sent to everyone in town?T
Many companies and schools now have newcomers read and sign statements that spell out the institution's policy on use of their computers. They caution folks to remember that anything written via email belongs to the organization and not to the individual. Since the computers and their electronic services belong to the school or company, its representatives feel that whatever is written or said via their communications systems also belongs to them. Violation of acceptable behavior online or abuse of email for personal use can sometimes result in the expulsion or termination of the user privileges of the offender. Are you thinking of using
Can your supervisor read your email and have you disciplined for being annoyed when corresponding with a friend?* Is this an invasion of privacy on the manager's part, or is it a misuse of company tools on yours? When you go into an online chat room, and the host warns you that your language is inappropriate for the group, can you angrily assert your right to free speech—or does the service have a right to restrict such behavior for the overall benefit of its customers? Do you have any recourse against the person who created a Web site that resembled a formal library and from which you quoted facts and figures, all of which turned out to be fake? Or is cyberspace an open canvas where anyone can write anything at anytime and where you must learn to check and double-check their accuracy before taking any words at face value?* T
Related Information
1. Voice of a defender for freedom of speech in cyberspace
2. EPIC files brief in wrongful invasion of privacy suit
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