Canadian ISP Threatens to Cut Service to School Boy Political Activist: But Is It Censorship?
(Copyright © 1996 T Bruce Tober)
"I was at school one day when I received a call from my ISP (my town only has 5000 residents and one ISP). The person calling informed me that my page was offensive. [He said] people in this town did not like that sort of thing, freedom of speech must have limits, and they wanted it removed, they also informed me several "large corporations" were complaining."
The speaker is a 15-year-old student from Smithers (near Vancouver) BC, in Canada, named Frank Darrow Sayre ("I was named after Clarence Darrow"). Somehow it figures his father, James Franklin Sayre, 51, would be a Legal Aid lawyer.
It's his school's Spring Break and Sayre, youngest of the four Sayre siblings, is sitting at his computer in the boot room of his home. The tiny room also contains the cat litter box (directly beside the computer desk), and shelves of political books. The front door to the house opens into the room.
Dressed in his usual "New to You" store clothes (a black t-shirt with red University of Paris logo and jeans and hiking boots), his green hair is shaved. He is the stereotypical anarcho-socialist teenager. And in his small town that kind of thing doesn't go over very well.
Sayre has been active on the net for about eight months. His favourite activities are chatting via IRC, "I spend much time in chat rooms #Politics, and #Debate on us.udernet.org" and looking for good political sites." His interest in politics was apparently genetic:
"My mother, Louise Kilby, ran in two elections for the NDP and my grandfather was a union organizer and communist, who was blacklisted from the US, my father is a legal aid lawyer. I was born into politics. It is all I have ever been interested in."
And so he set up a political web page. It contains many dozens of links to trade union, socialist, anarchist and various entertainment sites. It also contained(cq) a "serials page".
But in January things went a bit dodgy.
"I was called at school, he explains, "by my ISP (my town only has 5000 residents and one ISP). The person calling informed me that my page was offensive. He said people in this town did not like that sort of thing and that freedom of speech must have limits, and they wanted it removed. They also informed me several "large corporations" were complaining.
"I was also told that 'even if everyone did agree with your opinions in this town, if one person complained it would be removed'. I told him that I would not remove my page now, he should go look at it and then tell me what his complaints were. The next day I replaced my page, which was blacked out to protest the US Telecom act."
Sayre called his father "and we sent complaints to the Canadian Civil Liberty's association, and threatened to sue my ISP for censoring Political content. My ISP has backed off, but I have been informed that I will be removed next time I re-sign the updated contract in which case I am planning a lawsuit against my ISP."
But was it really the "political content" that was objected to by the ISP, or something else?
Although spokesman for netshop.net declined to answer any questions, Sayre, himself admits, "I have now found out that supposedly they were only concerned about a page called "serials" which contained serial numbers which I had removed over two months before they complained.
"It was stupid of me! I had serial numbers to register programs so people would not have to pay money to use the program. About a month before Christmas I received a message from an administrator at the ISP saying that my serial page was receiving some 'heat' and I should remove it. I did within two hours of receiving the message. I was not in the mood for a fight, and I know some law, and realized there was no room to push."
He also suggests the reason the ISP has backed off in its threats of cancelling his page. "I think they were scared off by some of my Internet friends sending them large amounts of e-mail (I found this out from the son of the owner) supposedly when this happened, someone called the local ISP provider and told them to 'chose there words wisely', after that I had a lot less problems. "I have also heard that someone (I do not know who) sent a 30+ megs message to netshop.net telling them not to remove me."