On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Sunder wrote:

That is not upto you to decide. That is upto Bob. Since you haven't entered any business agreement with AOL, you cannot make such claims against them.

Sometimes you don't have an effective choice. According to a friend, there are still areas (especially rural) in the US where AOL is the virtually only game in town.

The 1st ammended prevents >CONGRESS< from limiting the freedom of speech. More precisely from creating laws that do so. It does not limit private or public companies from doing so. The 1st has nothing to do with this. You're clueless.

There is an emerging potential problem linked to continuing privatization of virtually everything, and - the most important - to consolidation of owners. You can easily end up with the situation when everything around is owned by one of a handful of Big Corps, all with virtually the same restrictions, if the Market allows them that (eg, there will be enough consumers that won't care, and the rest will be the commercially uninteresting fringe). Then - tough luck.

...

While I have gotten all but one friend and all family members to drop their AOL/Earthlink services, this still remains an issue for users whome I don't know personally.

And you have no contract with either AOL or that friend. Like I said, you have no right to interfere in AOL's business. If you can convince their subscribers that AOL sucks, and they chose to cancel their service, that's fine, that's wonderful - though if AOL finds out, they may sue you for loss of business.

Now this is an interesting question. Can AOL really sue the one who tells their customers the truth about the drawbacks of AOL's service? Isn't the existence of those drawbacks - including their refusal to correct them - ultimately THEIR OWN fault?