The Internet has been called the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the best advancement in democracy since universal suffrage, the greatest soapbox ever built, reaching even the most fettered corners of the world, in which people freely speak their minds about issues of the day. 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 rein 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. A survey of 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 offered rewards for their addresses and license plate numbers, with lines drawn through the names of doctors who had been murdered.