Reading Buzz Canuck’s experience with being temporarily banned from Facebook, I am struck by the similarity between this kind of experience in Cyberspace, and something in the physical world that I have been concerned about for a number of years. Reading this account, it appears that Buzz Canuck’s “sin” was to use the service enthusiastically, but the main issue I want to address is that fact that in the virtual world Facebook is private property, even though in the minds of its community of users, it functions as a public meeting space.
This mirrors what I see happening in the real world. The concept of “Shopping on Main Street,” where at least the sidewalks are public property, and to some degree can still in theory at least be used for peaceful protest, meeting people, taking pictures etc., has been replaced by going to the mall. Large malls like the Eaton Centre in Toronto may appear to function like a modern day Main Street, but they are entirely private property; public property rights do not apply. If the owners don’t want you there, for whatever reason, you can be forced to leave, or be charged with trespassing. Protesting, congregating (even peacefully for benign purposes) etc. can get you tossed out rather quickly, and there is little you can do in return.
As cyberspace more and more resembles the physical world, I am concerned that the meeting space will resemble less and less the Main Street of yore (to say nothing of the now sadly quaint concept of the village Common), and will become instead a series of privately-owned malls, where user activities can be as tightly and arbitrarily controlled as the owners of those properties wish them to be.
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