I am thinking that a FREE public message board is EXACTLY like that public street
I'm thinking that it's not. This message board has private owners and I'm one of them. It's not like that government street where your taxes pay for its existence and maintenance.
Although there is a similarity: You can be taken off that public street for breaking the laws in much the same way you can be taken off of an internet site for violating its rules.
I don't know that this idea has been approached legally, since the internet is so "young".
I'll take that as a compliment since I'm only about 5 years older than the internet. :)
Suppose a person posts about religion, and they are terminated for whatever reason? Is this an intrusion on someone's
rights to "freedom of religion"?
I think that's also an interesting issue. Here's my answer, right or wrong: If they keep posting about religion in the INTC thread, they're off-topic, and I've got a problem with that. If I terminate their account, I haven't denied them their freedom to worship as they see fit.
I got a lot of really upset-sounding complaints a while back on SI because someone was posting historical material, in a thread about religion, that was very upsetting and portrayed Christians in a very bad light. Things like the details of the Spanish Inquisition. I was told that the person was a Satanist and needed to be booted out. I refused because a person's religious beliefs are really irrelevant when deciding whether or not they should be allowed to post on the site.
