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notes to chapter six

suality: There is a difference between affection and vulgarity. There is also a difference
between a discussion of the health or emotional aspects of sex using appropriate language,
and more crude conversations about sex. The former is acceptable, the latter is not. For
example, in a discussion about forms of cancer, the words breast or testicular would be
acceptable, but slang versions of those words would not be acceptable anywhere. Violence
and Drug Abuse: Graphic images of humans being killed, such as in news accounts, may be
acceptable in some areas, but blood and gore, gratuitous violence, etc., are not acceptable.
Discussions about coping with drug abuse in health areas are okay, but discussions about or
depictions of illegal drug abuse that imply it is acceptable are not.
18. See Amy Harmon, Worries About Big Brother at America Online, New York Times,
January 31, 1999, 1.
19. Just as version 2 of this book was being completed, AOL switched to a free online service. The full scope of the change that this will involve is not yet clear. I have therefore framed
this discussion in the past tense.
20. Swisher, Aol.com, 31415. Available at link #40.
21. Ibid., 9697.
22. See Robert C. Post, Constitutional Domains: Democracy, Community, Management
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 199267.
23. See CyberPromotions, Inc. v. America Online, Inc., 948 FSupp 436 (EDPa 1996) (holding
that a company has no free speech right under the United States, Pennsylvania, or Virginia Constitutions to send unsolicited e-mail over the Internet to a competitors customers).
24. Nunziato, The Death of the Public Forum in Cyberspace, 1121.
25. Ibid., 1122.
26. E-mail from Alan Rothman to David R. Johnson (February 5, 2006) (on file with
author): When CC permanently went offline in June 1999, several members had established two
new forums over on in anticipation of this on Delphi called Counsel Cafe and Counsel Politics.
The end was approaching and this was viewed as a virtual lifeboat for the devoted and cohesive
community that had thrived on CC. About 100 CC survivors washed up together to settle in these
new forums. Both were established as being private but members were allowed to invite friends.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. See Elizabeth Reid, Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace, in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock (London: Routledge, 1999), 109.
30. See Josh Quittner, Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers, Wired (March 1994):
92, available at link #41.
31. See Julian Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace, Village Voice, December 23, 1993, 36, 37,
available at link #42.
32. Ibid.
33. In particular, see Dibbells extraordinary My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual
World (London: Fourth Estate, 1998).
34. Ibid., 1314.
35. If anything, the sexuality of the space invited adolescent responses by adolescents; see
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 326. On MOOs in particular, see Dibbell, My Tiny Life. The
challenge for the community was to construct norms that would avoid these responses without
destroying the essential flavor of the space.
36. Dibbell, My Tiny Life, 2425.
37. See Rebecca Spainhower, Virtually Inevitable: Real Problems in Virtual Communities
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1994), available at link #43.
38. Ibid.