Caaviation is analagous to a newspaper or magazine. It purports to publish news. On its web page there is button for news and also a column on the left hand side for news. It matters little that news rarely appears there. It solicits advertising and seeks out clients for web site hosting and design. The essential purpose of the forum is to draw traffic to the web site which is then exposed to the advertising.
But the forum has become a soapbox for the expression of ideas. Caaviation has gone to some lengths to facilitate this. They have provided forum users with a little bit of cover because users can at least be superficially anonymous when they post. Caaviation is apparently of the belief that ideas can be more easily disseminated and opinions more freely expressed if posters are protected against the potential rage that ideas and opinions often engender. This is rather sad comment on the democratic doctrine of free speech but is a realistic approach to encouraging debate.
Caaviation makes it clear in the General Rules that it can and will remove any messages that it deems inappropriate for any reason or for no reason. However, it does not examine every message before it is posted and will only do so afterwards and then probably only if objections are raised.
Caaviation has created a medium for the free expression of ideas and opinions. It has encouraged this by providing anonymity for its users. Its users express themselves freely and it does not actively examine posts before they are made publicly available. Having said all this, it seems clear that to delete posts because Caaviation or another party finds them to be objectionable is censorship.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states the following:
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
-freedom of conscience and religion;
-freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
-freedom of peaceful assembly;
-freedom of association.
To what extent, if any, Caaviation, or any other agent acting through Caaviation, has deprived Canadian citizens of their right to these fundamental freedoms remains to be seen. Perhaps an organization such as the BC Civil Liberties Union would be interested in the case.
No one who posts on Caaviation can really expect their anonymity to be preserved. Posters who think so are naive. The helicopter establishment in Canada is a powerful and perhaps somewhat brutish force. If they want to know who is threatening the shaky pillars of their little empire, they will find out. And then what will happen to these names? They will be whispered amongst the operators and will spread like wildfire. And do you know what that is? It is a blacklist.
While honest and sincere expressions of opinion are occasionally obliterated by Caaviation, some infantile instances of name calling are not. A personal favorite is the replacement of 'Sisyphus' with 'Sissypuss'. The perceptive reader will recognize this for what it is, an inane attempt to disparage by one who lacks sufficient intellectual capacity to compose a decent insult.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
