Posted on 06/24/2002 4:48:40 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The owner and creator of a pair of popular pro-life websites claims he is being denied access to online audiences because Internet service providers either dump him after he becomes a customer or refuse to sell him bandwidth at all.
Neal Horsley, publisher of Pathway Communications and creator of The Christian Gallery and AbortionCams.com, says "dozens" of Internet service providers, or ISPs, have taken his money over the past three years, only to "shut me down later because they receive complaints about my work."
Horsley's "Nuremberg Files" websites first gained national prominence because they contained graphic depictions of abortions. Pro-abortion-rights organizations complained that Horsley's sites illegally persecuted women seeking abortions, as well as the clinics they attended, because his AbortionCams.com website featured streaming video footage of abortion clinics.
Because of the exposure and resultant complaints, Horsley explained that he has parked his websites on "maybe 50" different ISPs over the past few years, only to have them yanked after, he says, "the pressure got to be too much for them."
"I am finding that I am blacklisted from the Internet, not because of legal action taken against me – not one injunction or court order has been directed against either site – but because of ISPs refusing to do business with me when they receive complaints from Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation members," he said.
Horsley told WorldNetDaily that he's been through three ISPs in the last week alone. Also, he said a Memorial Day Wall Street Journal column chronicling his sites eventually led abortion-rights supporters to identify the Fortune 500 firm for which he worked. The discovery led to "volumes" of complaints, prompting the company to fire him last week, citing a previous agreement that said he'd be dismissed if his Web activities "hurt their bottom line."
He would not identify his former employer – where he said he was employed as "a top Web developer" – but he did name EZ-Web-Hosting.com and Hostway.com as two of the most recent ISPs to drop his sites. Neither firm would respond to interview requests.
'Hysterical analysis'
"The Wall Street Journal article opened the door to literally a deluge of publicity," Horsley told WND. "By the second week, [my] company started getting complaints about the site."
Horsley says that being fired was bad enough. But he worries that in these days of potential new terrorist attacks, being saddled with incorrect labels – he says "some people call me a terrorist" – could land him in prison.
Indeed, since Sept. 11, Congress and the Executive Branch have given much more authority to the Justice Department and federal law-enforcement agencies to track down and prosecute people under the guise of threatening national security.
Some civil-rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as more than a few lawmakers, have voiced concerns that the new federal powers could be abused or misapplied, though administration officials deny such charges.
To underscore his concerns, Horsley pointed to a June 20 Washington Post report that said Justice Department lawyers argued before an appeals court this week that those deemed "enemy combatants" by the military have no right to counsel, and that civilian courts cannot question the military's classifications or decisions surrounding such classifications.
"Effectively, all rights are negated, even if [the accused] are citizens," he said. "I'm living in a time where it's conceivable that I could be labeled a 'combatant,' arrested and kept" in jail indefinitely.
Even the WSJ article said "I am exposing women [seeking abortions] to assassins – that I'm putting targets on their backs," Horsley explained.
"This kind of hysterical analysis has been repeated for three years. What I've found is that it's been repeated so often that people have begun to accept as a matter of self-evident truth that I'm just a terrorist," said Horsley.
Immediate termination unconstitutional?
Horsley said ISPs "tend to ask you to give up your constitutional right to free speech" when customers sign Web hosting agreements. He said they can be arbitrary about what they will permit to be hosted and what they believe should be censored.
In fact, according to EZ-Web-Hosting.com's online policy, the company will terminate an account for "transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States federal, state or city law …" which "includes, but is not limited to … copyrighted material [and/or] material we judge to be threatening or obscene."
Hostway's online "terms of use" policy says essentially the same thing.
Horsley says letters like one sent to ISPs by the National Abortion Federation usually lead to his sites' immediate termination.
"As you may know, Neal Horsley has posted the Nuremberg Files website on the Internet through many different service providers. After being made aware of the site's contents, each provider that has hosted the Nuremberg Files has removed it," said one letter, signed by Vicki Saporta, NAF executive director.
The "Files," claims Saporta, "is a list that targets doctors, clinic employees, judges, politicians and law-enforcement officials for violence and that we believe only can be understood as encouraging such violence."
"Federal law makes clear that no ISP may be held liable for any action it takes 'to restrict access to or availability of material that' it considers to be 'harassing' or 'otherwise objectionable,' whether or not such material is constitutionally protected," Saporta wrote.
Saporta has been out of the office and could not be reached for comment.
That is the crux of his problem today, Horsley says. "The ISPs ask you to give up your constitutional rights to get hosted."
"The question becomes, is it proper to require someone to give up their constitutional right to free expression?" he said.
Horsley explained that even though there are hundreds of ISPs, they are dependent on just a handful of larger, gatekeeper services that manage Internet access. Effectively, if those companies band together, entire businesses, enterprises or movements can be "blacklisted" from the Internet.
"I compare this to what happened to blacks in the Antebellum South," he said, noting that even his local banks were shutting him out. "There's not even a semblance of 'separate but equal' going on here."
Same thing the British said about the Founding Fathers.
No, this guys website gained national prominence for publishing the names and home addresses of abortionists with the implicit encouragement that they be killed. Horsley is a fanatic.
I have a technical question, couldn't this guy get a server and set up his own connection to the internet?
No, a server isn't an ISP.
Did you ever see his website for yourself, when it was online? I did. What I saw were over the top pictures of butchered babies, along with names and addresses of abortion doctors/providers.
Because he crossed out the name of ONE abortion doctor after he was murdered, people were being led to believe Horsley was actually encouraging these murders. In fact, it was just another lie, brought to you by the abortion industry and their willing accomplices in the liberal media.
Perhaps they might respond if Freepers were to send Hostway some emails complaining that Islamic Jihad is violating some part of the TOS.
Like these guys, for instance....
-archy-/-
Mr. Horsley is inappropriately trying to wrap himself in the Constitution, IMO. Having the right to speak is not the same as having a right to a particular forum. My webserver, my rules - his right to free speech doesn't trump my right to control my property as I see fit.
As others have pointed out, let him contact a backbone provider and run his own server if he doesn't like the way ISP's are treating him.
"I don't agree with your candidates and so I've decided to drop you."
For me, the bottom line is clear - Mr. Horsely doesn't have an inalienable right to use my webservers for his free speech, any more than he has an inalienable right to use my front lawn. If he can't find an ISP to host his website, he can always do it himself.
You are correct. I used to write a column for our local paper, and one week the editor said the owner didn't want to run one of them (I don't remember why).
I asked, "What about the First Amendment, freedom of speech and press?"
The editor replied, "Freedom of the press only applies if you own the press."
Carolyn
If I rent a billboard on your property and my ad complies with your policies, by what right can you take it down before my time is up?
Occassionally a printing factorye will reject a book because of the contents. Such policies don't seem to be evenly applied though.
Sure, which is why I worded my first response to you the way I did. If it's a breach of contract, then remedies should be available to him. If there's a provision in the contract that says I can take it down under the following circumstances and refund the balance of your money, then that's the way the ball bounces. The problem is that, according to the courts, Horsley's website is of dubious value - IIRC, the 9'th Circuit ruled against his claims that the First Amendment should protect him from being sued by people who claim injury from his website. Whether orr not we agree with that ruling, it's hardly unreasonable for ISP's to not want to get dragged into a mess like that, and be sued themselves for hosting the thing.
And, there's always a way out, like I said - he can always get his own server and administrate it himself, and that way never have to worry about the whims of any ISP ever again. It's more expensive that way, but it can be done - besides, nobody ever promised that life would be fair, did they? At least, no non-liberals I know promise that ;)
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