Meryl's Notes Blog
Things wordy, geeky, and webbyPalmPowered Controversy
Wednesday, May 8th, 2002 at 1:00 PM |A PalmPower reader wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the magazine’s decision to run an advertisement for a company that advocates and sells porn materials.
The editor responded that it was a tough decision for his team and that in the spirit of free speech, they unanimously voted to run the ad.
However, PalmPower is an ezine that comes to emailboxes. No doubt, there are many readers who subscribe from the office emailbox since the newsletter pertains to their jobs. In that case, it would cause problems with the employer since many have a zero-tolerance policy for porn-related materials.
Sure, we can say that the subscribers should send it to a non-work email. However, the last issue was the first to have such an ad. It was unexpected.
I subscribe to two newsletters through my office email address because they’re purely related to my work. If this company were to approach one of those newsletters and buy an ad, then what am I supposed to do? I can’t foresee an unacceptable ad coming through my office network.
Then, there is still free speech. Yep, this is a toughie. What do you think?
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3 comments
Hrrrmmmm…that is a toughie, but I have to agree with you that it has no place going through an office network.
As someone who is in charge of monitoring employee’s use of the internet where I work, I can tell you that I don’t really monitor incoming emails all that much. You can’t control what other people send to you, but you do control how you respond to it. If you pass along the material with the ad, or encourage it in any way, we’d have a problem. If you decided that if this newsletter is going to do that you’ll move your subscription off to a non-work email address, we wouldn’t have a problem. If you did neither, and just continued reading the newsletter as it came, we’d probably have a discussion, but I couldn’t really see myself turning in that information to your boss. But that’s just me and the place I work, some places have vastly different ideas.
On another line of thought, there is no “free speech guarantee” in a business environment. Companies have every right to control the content of what is being sent across their servers. In fact, they have a legal obligation to do so. (The company can be found guilty of sexual harrassment if material is being sent across their servers and they don’t do anything to stop it, as an example.)
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