IP: A WEB WITH NO LINKS: Edupage, May 23, 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Recent actions by Yahoo!, eBay, and the federal government to
>restrict Web links are raising concerns over the future of the
>Internet as a forum for free information exchange. Perhaps most
>worrisome to free-speech advocates is the federal court order
>requiring the hacker site 2600 Magazine to remove its links to
>DeCSS code, which unscrambles DVD encryption, because it is
>illegal to publish that code. The lawyers for 2600 maintain that
>the links were protected under the First Amendment and that the
>site itself was not publishing illegal material. Meanwhile, eBay
>has announced that it will ban all links in reader-generated
>content that lead outside the site. Yahoo! also plans to restrict
>links to pornographic material from its clubs section, citing the
>easy access to obscene sites by underage users through those
>directories.
>(E-Commerce Times, 21 May 2001)



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