Yet freedom on the Internet is the snarly sort, with faceless and often nameless ranters cyberbashing anyone and anything they please.
Truth often becomes the victim.
There's a war out there between those pushing the free-speech envelope, sometimes anarchically, and those trying to reign them in, sometimes oppressively. And for the mass of individuals and organizations in the middle, there are prudent steps to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Surveying recent headlines shows how central an issue this is. In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, students' Web sites containing derogatory or threatening comments about teachers have been taken down, and some students have been expelled. The site, called the Nuremberg Files, offered rewards for doctors' addresses and license plate numbers, with lines drawn through the names of doctors who had been murdered.