Arrington is completely inconsistent when it comes to the right to free speech. For instance, when it comes to another unsavory free-speech issue, Holocaust denial, he writes:
"Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews [...] But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root." (from http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/facebook-remains-stubbornly...)
He could just as easily swap out prostitution for Holocaust denial and Craigslist for Facebook, and make the exact same argument, no? After all, I'm pretty sure sex traffickers are doing more damage to society today than a handful of anti-semitic cranks.
Both facebook and craigslist have rights to block what they want. In facebook's case they wanted to block. In craigslist's case they don't want to block. Free speech is about letting fb or cl decide what they want to block or allow in their site and it is not contradictory to support both: fb's right to block and cl's right to allow.
Did he say they should be forced to block by the law or was he making a strong moral argument that they should block? My impression is that both FB and CL were (possibly inconsistent) moral arguments and not so much about the right to free speech.
If you let anti-semitic cranks rant freely, then you know who the anti-semitic cranks are. Likewise, if you let sex traffickers openly advertise on Craigslist, the vice squad knows where to find them. So the case for free speech on both is similar.
Screw republican v democrat, these are the kind of issues that matter to me but I'm too lazy to look up if my state's AG is one of the 17 that shookdown Craigslist. Even if I did I don't know when that election is, and if it's 2 or 4 years from now I'll probably forget this issue. And there are other issues and other candidates that I might care about but don't know about.
So I need an organization that I trust, like the EFF, to come out with a guide each election telling me who I need to vote for or against.
Ironic he chose the quote from A Few Good Men since Nicholson in that movie was arguing in favor of the forces for security, not the forces for freedom. His character would have been on the opposite side of this debate.
In the context of this particular thread of the meta-narrative w/r/t the impedence of the distribution of control throughout the legal/cultural/informational network by widely recognized but contextually barren pop-culture touchstones, one can understand Arrington's outburst as a performative reference aimed at the distracted postmodern crowd, with little relation to the original semiotics of the sampled media. </pomo>
Arrington's post seemed unnecessarily condemning of craigslist. Why should a listings website be burned at the stake for removing adult services?
I can't make the connection between "that kind of emotion", or rather, craiglist's decision to remove a section from its listings and "weakening a country". I know that it is hyperbole, but is America really less of a nation because craigslist doesn't have an adults services section?
"Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews [...] But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root." (from http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/facebook-remains-stubbornly...)
He could just as easily swap out prostitution for Holocaust denial and Craigslist for Facebook, and make the exact same argument, no? After all, I'm pretty sure sex traffickers are doing more damage to society today than a handful of anti-semitic cranks.