Feed my eyes.

The confines of free speech is a hotly debated issue. What is considered "appropriate" or "offensive" is continuously up for discussion. The latest area to be tested is the idea that "public" online spaces aren't necessarily covered under the First Amendment. When a company owns a Web site, they can control what is broadcast in that venue. An article released yesterday by the Associated Press details an instance where a Dutch photographer with a Flickr account posted a photograph of a Romanian boy smoking a cigarette. Without warning, Yahoo removed the photo saying it was in violation of an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Not only does this action infringe on one's right to share the documenting of life, it offers a frightening look into the idea that the Internet isn't as freeing as it is commonly perceived.
This Romanian boy was smoking. He couldn't have been more than 11 years old. Just because it may be considered "inappropriate," doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Nick Ut depicting a Vietnamese girl running down the street naked after being burned by Napalm was ultimately disturbing, but it happened. It also brought the attention of the world the Vietnam War and the fact that innocent people were being seriously affected. In modern times, the way we share information and images has changed.

The Internet is capable of reaching the ends of the Earth in seconds. The entire idea of how people perceive the world is changing rapidly due to the amount of information that is available with the click of a button. Along this vein, the Internet can be a dangerous thing for those who wish to oppress a group people with ideas different than their own. Because of the instantaneous access to a plethora of information, the Internet is a more efficient place to spread the word of rebellion; it's more effective than print publications. I'm not saying that in this situation Yahoo was trying to silence the Romanian people or anything. I'm saying there is a thin line between actual freedom of expression on the Internet and the veil of it.
There are myriad advocacy groups promoting the First Amendment in relation to the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one such group. The foundation's site states: "Preserving the Internet's open architecture is critical to sustaining free speech. But this technological capacity means little without sufficient legal protections. If laws can censor you, limit access to certain information, or restrict use of communication tools, then the Internet's incredible potential will go unrealized." They mainly cover the idea of the government infringing on the people's right to freedom of expression. However, as mentioned above, when a company owns a site -- such as Facebook, Flickr or MySpace -- they can determine by their company's guidelines what is acceptable and unacceptable. Networking sites are such an enormous part of modern culture, that the limitation on what can and cannot be expressed on them can have a crucial impact. The AP article mentioned above states that evicting a user from an online community or networking site "would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town." People easily forget that the sites we visit daily and build our social contacts on are owned. They are not free and clear. What we choose to place on our pages can be removed without warning or, depending on the severity of offending material, more severe penalties may be inflicted.

This all goes back to the idea of what is "obscene," and who makes that ruling. The legal definition of obscenity is as follows:
“Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.
Whether the work, taken as whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
However, there is a lot of gray area within this definition. A photograph of a naked woman isn't necessarily pornographic because it may include artistic or scientific value. Now say that same naked woman was engaged in intercourse with a male, would this be obscene? Again, it depends on the context. The photograph could have scientific value by being educational. It's all relative.
Is a young Romanian boy smoking obscene? Or does it have political and scientific value in that it educates people around the world to the issues of the Romanian population? Now obviously, the Dutch photographer isn't being brought up on charges or anything. His picture was just taken down. But the point here is, who makes that call? In the legal system of our society the government judges, but does that mean in the realm of the Internet that fat cats with bulging pockets decide how and where we can express ourselves? Maybe so.