"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -first amendment to the United States Constitution
The key is the start "Congress shall make no law..." Nothing there prohibits you from regulating what people can say in your own house without you kicking them out. When you play a game, you're effectively in someone else's house, and if they don't like what you say, they can kick you out.
Being quick to ban people for random, harmless things is bad for business, of course. But where to draw the line is entirely at the discretion of the company. At most, you could try to get a refund if you get banned shortly after paying for something. But there is no broad right to play someone else's game, just as there is no right to be in someone else's house.
Exactly. Freedom of Speech is a restriction on the US government's powers to intervene in people's lives. Web sites aren't the US government, and have no legal obligation to allow people to say anything.
The thing I see frequently confused with the First Amendment is that it allows a person to say anything they wish without consequences. That's simply not the case. People can be arrested for yelling 'Fire' in a public gathering. That's one case where the law prevents people 'griefing' others by causing undue panic and alarm. If you use a racial / sexual / ethnic slur, you can be sued by an offended party. There are laws making slander, libel, plagiarism, misrepresentation, copyright infringements and other specific forms of 'speech/expression' illegal.
Being banned from a forum isn't a breech of the First Amendment. Being able to rant and rave isn't a protected form of speech, it is a privilege allowed by that forum's owner, and consequences to offensive speech may be dispensed by that owner.
Oh no, you are clearly mistaken. I have a clear "right" to rant and rave wherever I wish.
But others have a right to throw me out as well...... so you bear the consequences of your actions.
If I ran a company sponsored website, it would be heavily moderated, because there's very little business benefit to letting some folks go on all sorts of rages, so why let them.
it would do everyone a world of good if schools would do a better job of teaching why we have freedom of speech in the first place. voicing a view can be seen by some as 'ranting and raving' which is exactly why we have freedom of speech
freedom of speech != right to speech at any place.
You have the full freedom to start your own newspaper, or internet forum and print/post whatever you like. Other forum operators (or newspaper) have no obligation to accommodate your opinion. That is THEIR freedom of speech.
There is no freedom of speech, especially when you're on someone else's forums. They control what goes on and if you don't like it, you can leave. You're free to speak your mind but nobody has to provide you a place to say it.
Originally posted by Quizzical "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -first amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe key is the start "Congress shall make no law..." Nothing there prohibits you from regulating what people can say in your own house without you kicking them out. When you play a game, you're effectively in someone else's house, and if they don't like what you say, they can kick you out.Being quick to ban people for random, harmless things is bad for business, of course. But where to draw the line is entirely at the discretion of the company. At most, you could try to get a refund if you get banned shortly after paying for something. But there is no broad right to play someone else's game, just as there is no right to be in someone else's house.
The fallacy of "American" thinking. What about games/forums NOT in America? Si America now the only country ion the world? I think I missed that memo...
Freedom of speech is only the ABILITY to say what is on one's mind, NOT the acceptance or continuance of those words. It means that the speaker (writer in this instance) will NOT be thrown in jail.
A "locked thread" is NOT jailtime. A smart poster sees what is going on and reacts accordingly. Instead of raging against the machine, they seek out a forum with looser standards (like MMORPG.com) to air their woes, realizing that truth will never be found on the former forum.
Game companies (and message boards) are NOT democracies, much to many players' chagrin. They create their own rules for communication. They are NOT run by any Government, with regards to speech/communication and "freedom thereof."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
It never ceases to amaze me how poorly understood "freedom of speech" is - seems to be especially misunderstood by MMO players.
It does not mean you can say whatever you want WHEREVER you want. Games forums and other forums of any sort on the internet are private and you're there as a guest - piss-off the owners at your own risk.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Originally posted by Quizzical "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -first amendment to the United States Constitution
The key is the start "Congress shall make no law..." Nothing there prohibits you from regulating what people can say in your own house without you kicking them out. When you play a game, you're effectively in someone else's house, and if they don't like what you say, they can kick you out.
Being quick to ban people for random, harmless things is bad for business, of course. But where to draw the line is entirely at the discretion of the company. At most, you could try to get a refund if you get banned shortly after paying for something. But there is no broad right to play someone else's game, just as there is no right to be in someone else's house.
The fallacy of "American" thinking. What about games/forums NOT in America? Si America now the only country ion the world? I think I missed that memo...
Freedom of speech is only the ABILITY to say what is on one's mind, NOT the acceptance or continuance of those words. It means that the speaker (writer in this instance) will NOT be thrown in jail.
A "locked thread" is NOT jailtime. A smart poster sees what is going on and reacts accordingly. Instead of raging against the machine, they seek out a forum with looser standards (like MMORPG.com) to air their woes, realizing that truth will never be found on the former forum.
Game companies (and message boards) are NOT democracies, much to many players' chagrin. They create their own rules for communication. They are NOT run by any Government, with regards to speech/communication and "freedom thereof."
I agree that American law isn't the only relevant one, but didn't have time to expand on this before work this morning. Not all countries have free speech protections built into their constitution. For that matter, not all countries have a constitution at all. But I'm not aware of any country with a free speech protection meaningfully stronger than the US constitution's, so I used that as an example; there are a number of western countries with much weaker free speech protections.
In the US, free speech protection guarantees that the government cannot punish you for your speech alone, with only very narrow exceptions for things like death threats or libel and slander--and libel and slander are defined very narrowly in the United States. This does not guarantee you a venue to say whatever you want and get other people to listen.
If you want to create your own web page to denounce the US government as evil, the US government can't do anything to you about it. If you want to post on someone else's web page, the US government can't stop that, either, but the someone else who owns the web page could if they so choose. But if you do create your own web page to express your opinions, you don't have any intrinsic right to get people to come visit your page and read what you write. Free speech does not guarantee the right to an audience, and often disputes about the venue are people trying to say things in places where they will get an audience.
Free speech also does not guarantee the right to commit other crimes that are not limited to speech. If you want to denounce someone as evil and then punch him in the face, the government can probably arrest you for assault, though it does depend some on the circumstances.
I must admit, the meaning of the freedom of speech is quite vague for me at least when it comes to the internet xD But still, what I mean is paying customers are losing their top enchantments/mounts/other items because of game bugs and support does absolutely nothing about that and moreover the MMO I am talking about has been experiencing a huge amount of lag recently without any reply from developers (forums go down once in a while with Zero Size Object message). And all players get simply their mouths shut on forums by moderators even if one provides constructive feedback, not just whining around in outrage.
I haven't seen the post so i don't know what it contained. You got these people who think their opinion is a valid one, but when you read it, it is full of swear words and what one should do with their mother and how they have a specific sexual preference and how much dead they should be, and then there are a few words saying what the problem actually is. Is it freedom of speech to insult others? Yeah i suppose it is in your country, although i think most countries have laws for that that are just never enforced :P You would be amazed how much there is in the book of law that no one ever seems to know about including the law enforcers.
If that was the case then the mod had every right to block and ban the person who did so. Sadly what we see often is that on forums the crew doesn't really like to see bad things about their game on their forums. How often don't you see indie studios being total dictators on steam and their own forums when people post something negative. Removing those post, lock them down, ban the people who posted that etc. Even the AAA games can suffer from this as they sometimes tend to have huge fanboys working as their forum crew. People who will defend the game till their death and beyond if possible. For example when Battlefield 3 was released i couldn't play for the first 3 day's. Every time i was given some strange error message. When ever i googled that error message nothing showed up. So what did i do? I went to the tech support forums as i was told too by EA. I posted a normal message, explaining in a calm fashion that i ran into a error code that prevented me from playing the game. A friend of mine could play the game without the error so i only wanted to know if it was on my side or theirs, or perhaps had to do with my videocard as you hear it more often that certain cards tend to have errors where others don't.
5 minutes later i was banned from the forums. My topic closed. I didn't swear or curse, i wasn't rude or negative. I simply stated that i ran into a error. And some overzealous fanboy ammong the forum crew banned me. I didn't even get a warning or a mail explaining why i was banned nope....the worst thing was that if they would ban you from the forums you would also be banned from the game. Had to go trough great lenghts to have my ban being removed. I actually had to contact someone at EA netherlands (as i live there) who had helped me in the past to get it removed. That was my luck that i still had the contact information of someone without going trough the official paths.
So yeah it happens often. Has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. Who is gonna stop them? America? Europe? Japan? What country or union will stop forum crews/developers from being complete jerks online? The only people who can do something about it are those who own the forums. Or you as gamer by no longer going there and not playing the game if its a developer who does those things. Although that hardly helps as we all know that plenty of others will still play it or go there.
Got banned off of the WOW forums for comparing their Wrath of the Lich King expansion to Mists of Pandaria (I had a troubled record before that and this was the nail in the coffin), something about instigating passionate retort aka trolling. I was not mad at them for that, as I had accepted the terms and agreement they set in regards to posting on their forums, but needless to say I have not played WOW in awhile.
The code of the pessimistic loner: "We unpopular loners are realists, who follow the three non- popular principles: Not having any (Hope), Not making any (Gaps in your heart); And not giving into (Sweet talk)".
From time to time I have to deal with people complaining that their freedom of speech was violated.
Freedom of Speech is the right to communicate your opinion. However, having the right to communicate your opinion does not mean that you have the right to offend or harm other people. Actually the freedom of speech has strict legal constraints. When practicing freedom of speech you must not ...
1) ... offend, slander or harm the honor of a person.
2) ... pass classified information.
3) ... overly criticize a Head of State or officials.
4) ... break rules of morality and rules for the protection of young people.
5) ... risk public safety.
6) ... pass / distribute copyrighted material.
7) ... commit unfair business practices.
Unfortunately, that's something many people in MMO forums do not understand.
Originally posted by Shynarra Thank you for replies guys.I must admit, the meaning of the freedom of speech is quite vague for me at least when it comes to the internet xD But still, what I mean is paying customers are losing their top enchantments/mounts/other items because of game bugs and support does absolutely nothing about that and moreover the MMO I am talking about has been experiencing a huge amount of lag recently without any reply from developers (forums go down once in a while with Zero Size Object message). And all players get simply their mouths shut on forums by moderators even if one provides constructive feedback, not just whining around in outrage.
It is up to the players, then, to do the only speaking that can not be censored: Quit playing.
It is obvious the game does not care about their customers. It is sad how they are handling it. But as long as players keep playing, they have no incentive to fix things.
Sometimes, one has to cut their losses and move on. The players should, by now, realize who they are dealing with. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
When you are on forums or a game you are technically on someone else's property. Therefore you are not allowed to say whatever the hell you want and claim freedom of speech, it doesn't work like that.
If you were to go into a store and start yelling, swearing, and being generally obnoxious they have every right to kick you out of there.
People should actually read the amendments before trying to claim one of theirs is being violated because clearly the vast majority of people spouting that nonsense don't even know what it means and just assumes you can say anything you want wherever you want.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
When you are on forums or a game you are technically on someone else's property.
I don't think that is true.
Most forums are hosted on someone else's server, rarely do even game developers own their servers, they tend to be hired, and they tend to be housed in hired storage.
SoE for example doesn't own the European servers, they don't own the place the data is stored, and they operate on someone else's property and country, not their own.
Those servers also make use of internet exchanges, any they have rules about interfering with traffic.
Then there's there's many laws that deal with freedom of expression on the internet.
Private property itself is also not a dogma in most countries, there are laws about how you interact with your neighbours and ohters, just owning private property does not mean you are exempt from correctly dealing with people around you, there are codes about what you can plant, what you can say, what you can do. There are also laws that tell you how you should behave when a stranger walks onto your private property, just because your property is "private" doesn't mean you are exempt from laws.
From time to time I have to deal with people complaining that their freedom of speech was violated.
Freedom of Speech is the right to communicate your opinion. However, having the right to communicate your opinion does not mean that you have the right to offend or harm other people. Actually the freedom of speech has strict legal constraints. When practicing freedom of speech you must not ...
1) ... offend, slander or harm the honor of a person.
2) ... pass classified information.
3) ... overly criticize a Head of State or officials.
4) ... break rules of morality and rules for the protection of young people.
5) ... risk public safety.
6) ... pass / distribute copyrighted material.
7) ... commit unfair business practices.
Unfortunately, that's something many people in MMO forums do not understand.
I don't know the laws where you live, but if that's an accurate description of where you live, then you don't live in a place that believes in freedom of speech. Which much of the world doesn't.
The entire point of legal protections for freedom of speech is precisely to protect offensive speech. Speech that no one would wish to censor tautologically doesn't need any particular protections. But free speech protections that prevent the government from jailing or fining you don't prevent your neighbors from shunning you.
In the United States, your exception (3) is explicitly allowed, and (1) is very, very narrow: criminal cases of slander basically don't exist, and even civil lawsuits for libel and slander are very restricted. Someone suing over libel or slander has to demonstrate that the claims were not merely false (claims that are true or are opinion rather than fact are by definition not slander), but that the slanderer should reasonably have known this. He also has to demonstrate clear harm caused by the slander in order to justify compensation, not some vague offense or dishonor. And even then, a public figure will still have a hard time winning a case. One could walk around passionately telling everyone that the president strangles and kills a kitten every morning before breakfast and the government can't do anything to you about it.
Freedom of Speech is to redress grievances to the Government. You can thank the education system of 50+ years of failure to come up with today's version of Freedom of Speech.
I am not a buff in MMOs so gonna ask it straight from those who knows it better. What if some moderator on some MMO forums closes a thread, of a player outraging about obvious and continuous game problems, and then openly tells everyone that law of freedom of speech is nothing and you can only post what pleases them? Can anything be done about that?
Nah, actually, just wanted to know if there are many other MMOs having the same problem :P
P.S Got a screenshot of that post, not going to post it here as truth may be offensive for somebody lol Just ask me via PM if you're interested
Please note that this is from the U.S. perspective, I don't know the laws in other countries. Freedom of speech only applies to government sanctions, meaning that the government won't arrest you for saying an mmo sucks, but you can be kicked out of a privately run enterprise (such as a game or forum) for saying anything they don't like.
When you are on forums or a game you are technically on someone else's property.
I don't think that is true.
Most forums are hosted on someone else's server, rarely do even game developers own their servers, they tend
This doesn't matter. Whether or not the game company owns the server or rents it you are still their guest there, you might be a paying customer but they can definitely ask you to leave if you are disruptive. In most societies the cops will arrest you if you act overly disruptive on public property or even on property you own.
Countries which guarantee freedom of speech do so specifically to allow unpopular political ideas to be voiced it's not to give people a right to be a-holes and annoy other people.
This doesn't matter. Whether or not the game company owns the server or rents it you are still their guest there, you might be a paying customer but they can definitely ask you to leave if you are disruptive. In most societies the cops will arrest you if you act overly disruptive on public property or even on property you own.
If you're being disruptive yes, but I think that is different from freedom of expression.
I took more issue with the idea that if you are a private company, you can throw people off forums or off your game, I actually don't think that's the case. Many laws protect people on private property, a company can not throw someone out because of religous, sexual, racial, or other reasons in the West.
So, it becomes a question, was the person disruptive, or was the person merely expressiong their views.
The only reason I think gaming companies and other companies get away with throwing people off forums left and right, often without reason, is because it is rarely challenged. Those forums are operating as a business, and they have to abide by laws against discrimination.
People online seem to confuse freedom of speech with the right to post their writing on someone else's forums. You may be free to express yourself... but you can only do so in venue's that you have rights too. This often includes public locations, but even that may be limited by the form.
For example, in the US, you can make a public speech on the courthouse steps.... but if you choose to spray paint it on the walls, they will likely arrest you. The issue isn't that you could not present your ideals, but rather that you chose to do so in a manner that was not approved. This is often the case on forums as well.
A game and game forum is more like a restaurant instead of private property, it's a business with customers. And those customers have rights, you can't randomly throw people out of your establishment, if you do, you'll get into legal issues. But there are times when you can, it just depends on the circumstances.
The difference with the restaurant is that people will challenge the restaurant owner, while people on forums and games, often just accept it and don't go the extra mile to challenge the company, but they operate under the same rules as the restaurant since they're a business.
The moment you put banners on your site or are linked to a game or monetize your forum, you're a business, and businesses have rules, one of them is that they can't discriminate.
Originally posted by CalmOceansA game and game forum is more like a restaurant instead of private property, it's a business with customers. And those customers have rights, you can't randomly throw people out of your establishment, if you do, you'll get into legal issues. But there are times when you can, it just depends on the circumstances.The difference with the restaurant is that people will challenge the restaurant owner, while people on forums and games, often just accept it and don't go the extra mile to challenge the company, but they operate under the same rules as the restaurant since they're a business.The moment you put banners on your site or are linked to a game or monetize your forum, you're a business, and businesses have rules, one of them is that they can't discriminate.
Actually, you can randomly throw people out of your business, and not get in trouble. You WILL get in trouble if you selectively choose who is asked to leave, if it is done in a discriminating manner. i.e. it is ok to say that every third person has to leave, but not ok to say that people have to leave because the color of their skin.
When companies post their Terms of Service, it means that they have put in writing how they plan to do business or in this case deny service. This gives them every right to act on these terms, but does not necessarily make the terms themselves legal. Discrimination in most forms is actually legal. It is only illegal in a few, specific, protected cases. Speech, in the context of posting on someone else's forum, is not one of these.
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it would do everyone a world of good if schools would do a better job of teaching why we have freedom of speech in the first place. voicing a view can be seen by some as 'ranting and raving' which is exactly why we have freedom of speech
one more point ...
freedom of speech != right to speech at any place.
You have the full freedom to start your own newspaper, or internet forum and print/post whatever you like. Other forum operators (or newspaper) have no obligation to accommodate your opinion. That is THEIR freedom of speech.
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Freedom of speech is only the ABILITY to say what is on one's mind, NOT the acceptance or continuance of those words. It means that the speaker (writer in this instance) will NOT be thrown in jail.
A "locked thread" is NOT jailtime. A smart poster sees what is going on and reacts accordingly. Instead of raging against the machine, they seek out a forum with looser standards (like MMORPG.com) to air their woes, realizing that truth will never be found on the former forum.
Game companies (and message boards) are NOT democracies, much to many players' chagrin. They create their own rules for communication. They are NOT run by any Government, with regards to speech/communication and "freedom thereof."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
It never ceases to amaze me how poorly understood "freedom of speech" is - seems to be especially misunderstood by MMO players.
It does not mean you can say whatever you want WHEREVER you want. Games forums and other forums of any sort on the internet are private and you're there as a guest - piss-off the owners at your own risk.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I agree that American law isn't the only relevant one, but didn't have time to expand on this before work this morning. Not all countries have free speech protections built into their constitution. For that matter, not all countries have a constitution at all. But I'm not aware of any country with a free speech protection meaningfully stronger than the US constitution's, so I used that as an example; there are a number of western countries with much weaker free speech protections.
In the US, free speech protection guarantees that the government cannot punish you for your speech alone, with only very narrow exceptions for things like death threats or libel and slander--and libel and slander are defined very narrowly in the United States. This does not guarantee you a venue to say whatever you want and get other people to listen.
If you want to create your own web page to denounce the US government as evil, the US government can't do anything to you about it. If you want to post on someone else's web page, the US government can't stop that, either, but the someone else who owns the web page could if they so choose. But if you do create your own web page to express your opinions, you don't have any intrinsic right to get people to come visit your page and read what you write. Free speech does not guarantee the right to an audience, and often disputes about the venue are people trying to say things in places where they will get an audience.
Free speech also does not guarantee the right to commit other crimes that are not limited to speech. If you want to denounce someone as evil and then punch him in the face, the government can probably arrest you for assault, though it does depend some on the circumstances.
Thank you for replies guys.
I must admit, the meaning of the freedom of speech is quite vague for me at least when it comes to the internet xD But still, what I mean is paying customers are losing their top enchantments/mounts/other items because of game bugs and support does absolutely nothing about that and moreover the MMO I am talking about has been experiencing a huge amount of lag recently without any reply from developers (forums go down once in a while with Zero Size Object message). And all players get simply their mouths shut on forums by moderators even if one provides constructive feedback, not just whining around in outrage.
I haven't seen the post so i don't know what it contained. You got these people who think their opinion is a valid one, but when you read it, it is full of swear words and what one should do with their mother and how they have a specific sexual preference and how much dead they should be, and then there are a few words saying what the problem actually is. Is it freedom of speech to insult others? Yeah i suppose it is in your country, although i think most countries have laws for that that are just never enforced :P You would be amazed how much there is in the book of law that no one ever seems to know about including the law enforcers.
If that was the case then the mod had every right to block and ban the person who did so. Sadly what we see often is that on forums the crew doesn't really like to see bad things about their game on their forums. How often don't you see indie studios being total dictators on steam and their own forums when people post something negative. Removing those post, lock them down, ban the people who posted that etc. Even the AAA games can suffer from this as they sometimes tend to have huge fanboys working as their forum crew. People who will defend the game till their death and beyond if possible. For example when Battlefield 3 was released i couldn't play for the first 3 day's. Every time i was given some strange error message. When ever i googled that error message nothing showed up. So what did i do? I went to the tech support forums as i was told too by EA. I posted a normal message, explaining in a calm fashion that i ran into a error code that prevented me from playing the game. A friend of mine could play the game without the error so i only wanted to know if it was on my side or theirs, or perhaps had to do with my videocard as you hear it more often that certain cards tend to have errors where others don't.
5 minutes later i was banned from the forums. My topic closed. I didn't swear or curse, i wasn't rude or negative. I simply stated that i ran into a error. And some overzealous fanboy ammong the forum crew banned me. I didn't even get a warning or a mail explaining why i was banned nope....the worst thing was that if they would ban you from the forums you would also be banned from the game. Had to go trough great lenghts to have my ban being removed. I actually had to contact someone at EA netherlands (as i live there) who had helped me in the past to get it removed. That was my luck that i still had the contact information of someone without going trough the official paths.
So yeah it happens often. Has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. Who is gonna stop them? America? Europe? Japan? What country or union will stop forum crews/developers from being complete jerks online? The only people who can do something about it are those who own the forums. Or you as gamer by no longer going there and not playing the game if its a developer who does those things. Although that hardly helps as we all know that plenty of others will still play it or go there.
The code of the pessimistic loner: "We unpopular loners are realists, who follow the three non- popular principles: Not having any (Hope), Not making any (Gaps in your heart); And not giving into (Sweet talk)".
From time to time I have to deal with people complaining that their freedom of speech was violated.
Freedom of Speech is the right to communicate your opinion. However, having the right to communicate your opinion does not mean that you have the right to offend or harm other people. Actually the freedom of speech has strict legal constraints. When practicing freedom of speech you must not ...
1) ... offend, slander or harm the honor of a person.
2) ... pass classified information.
3) ... overly criticize a Head of State or officials.
4) ... break rules of morality and rules for the protection of young people.
5) ... risk public safety.
6) ... pass / distribute copyrighted material.
7) ... commit unfair business practices.
Unfortunately, that's something many people in MMO forums do not understand.
It is obvious the game does not care about their customers. It is sad how they are handling it. But as long as players keep playing, they have no incentive to fix things.
Sometimes, one has to cut their losses and move on. The players should, by now, realize who they are dealing with. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
When you are on forums or a game you are technically on someone else's property. Therefore you are not allowed to say whatever the hell you want and claim freedom of speech, it doesn't work like that.
If you were to go into a store and start yelling, swearing, and being generally obnoxious they have every right to kick you out of there.
People should actually read the amendments before trying to claim one of theirs is being violated because clearly the vast majority of people spouting that nonsense don't even know what it means and just assumes you can say anything you want wherever you want.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I don't think that is true.
Most forums are hosted on someone else's server, rarely do even game developers own their servers, they tend to be hired, and they tend to be housed in hired storage.
SoE for example doesn't own the European servers, they don't own the place the data is stored, and they operate on someone else's property and country, not their own.
Those servers also make use of internet exchanges, any they have rules about interfering with traffic.
Then there's there's many laws that deal with freedom of expression on the internet.
Private property itself is also not a dogma in most countries, there are laws about how you interact with your neighbours and ohters, just owning private property does not mean you are exempt from correctly dealing with people around you, there are codes about what you can plant, what you can say, what you can do. There are also laws that tell you how you should behave when a stranger walks onto your private property, just because your property is "private" doesn't mean you are exempt from laws.
I don't know the laws where you live, but if that's an accurate description of where you live, then you don't live in a place that believes in freedom of speech. Which much of the world doesn't.
The entire point of legal protections for freedom of speech is precisely to protect offensive speech. Speech that no one would wish to censor tautologically doesn't need any particular protections. But free speech protections that prevent the government from jailing or fining you don't prevent your neighbors from shunning you.
In the United States, your exception (3) is explicitly allowed, and (1) is very, very narrow: criminal cases of slander basically don't exist, and even civil lawsuits for libel and slander are very restricted. Someone suing over libel or slander has to demonstrate that the claims were not merely false (claims that are true or are opinion rather than fact are by definition not slander), but that the slanderer should reasonably have known this. He also has to demonstrate clear harm caused by the slander in order to justify compensation, not some vague offense or dishonor. And even then, a public figure will still have a hard time winning a case. One could walk around passionately telling everyone that the president strangles and kills a kitten every morning before breakfast and the government can't do anything to you about it.
Any rights to free speech are left at the login screen. Your speech is only protected in public areas, not private ones like forums and games.
Please note that this is from the U.S. perspective, I don't know the laws in other countries. Freedom of speech only applies to government sanctions, meaning that the government won't arrest you for saying an mmo sucks, but you can be kicked out of a privately run enterprise (such as a game or forum) for saying anything they don't like.
This doesn't matter. Whether or not the game company owns the server or rents it you are still their guest there, you might be a paying customer but they can definitely ask you to leave if you are disruptive. In most societies the cops will arrest you if you act overly disruptive on public property or even on property you own.
Countries which guarantee freedom of speech do so specifically to allow unpopular political ideas to be voiced it's not to give people a right to be a-holes and annoy other people.
If you're being disruptive yes, but I think that is different from freedom of expression.
I took more issue with the idea that if you are a private company, you can throw people off forums or off your game, I actually don't think that's the case. Many laws protect people on private property, a company can not throw someone out because of religous, sexual, racial, or other reasons in the West.
So, it becomes a question, was the person disruptive, or was the person merely expressiong their views.
The only reason I think gaming companies and other companies get away with throwing people off forums left and right, often without reason, is because it is rarely challenged. Those forums are operating as a business, and they have to abide by laws against discrimination.
People online seem to confuse freedom of speech with the right to post their writing on someone else's forums. You may be free to express yourself... but you can only do so in venue's that you have rights too. This often includes public locations, but even that may be limited by the form.
For example, in the US, you can make a public speech on the courthouse steps.... but if you choose to spray paint it on the walls, they will likely arrest you. The issue isn't that you could not present your ideals, but rather that you chose to do so in a manner that was not approved. This is often the case on forums as well.
A game and game forum is more like a restaurant instead of private property, it's a business with customers. And those customers have rights, you can't randomly throw people out of your establishment, if you do, you'll get into legal issues. But there are times when you can, it just depends on the circumstances.
The difference with the restaurant is that people will challenge the restaurant owner, while people on forums and games, often just accept it and don't go the extra mile to challenge the company, but they operate under the same rules as the restaurant since they're a business.
The moment you put banners on your site or are linked to a game or monetize your forum, you're a business, and businesses have rules, one of them is that they can't discriminate.
Actually, you can randomly throw people out of your business, and not get in trouble. You WILL get in trouble if you selectively choose who is asked to leave, if it is done in a discriminating manner. i.e. it is ok to say that every third person has to leave, but not ok to say that people have to leave because the color of their skin.
When companies post their Terms of Service, it means that they have put in writing how they plan to do business or in this case deny service. This gives them every right to act on these terms, but does not necessarily make the terms themselves legal. Discrimination in most forms is actually legal. It is only illegal in a few, specific, protected cases. Speech, in the context of posting on someone else's forum, is not one of these.