Is "Yahoo answers" in direct violation of our constitutional right of freedom of speech?

Only a govt agency can violate constitutional protections. You'll learn that when you take Constitutional Law at lawschool.

Yahoo is a private company. They allow individuals to use their private services, on the condition that those individuals follow Yahoo policies and procedures. As a private company, Yahoo is completely within its rights to terminate access to any free service whenever it wants.

No they are not violating any ones free speech.

1)This is a private enterprise owned by Yahoo. They set up the rules and people who use this site are guests of Yahoo to participate on this site.

For example: if you were in my house and I asked you not to do something offensive in front of my wife and kids. But yet you did...I can remove you from my house. This is basically the same principle.

2) Free speech was established so that the government could not repress our freedom to say what we feel or believe in. And this was between the government and its citizens. So far as we know Yahoo is not affiliated with the US government, so again they are not violating anyone's freedoms.

3) Yahoo's rules are very clear as to what is allowable and what is not. I believe that the amount of complaints made about a user to Yahoo also influences whether or not they get the boot.

First of all, your dad's contstitutional rights were not violated. Yahoo has full power to deem what is and is not permitted on their website. That goes for any website. MySpace has regulations on what kind of pictures you can post, spamming and what not.

Now, if your dad had his own website that he created, maintained, and owned an it was shut down by the *government*, then he'd have a case (that's of course if the content didn't fall into the treason category).

Futhermore, Yahoo doesn't spend it's day searching through posts to delete and people to kick off. Your dad had to have been brought to their attention, most likely from abuse reports, meaning that people in the community were bothered by his questions and/or answers.

Bottomline, your dad obviously violated Yahoo's guidelines and Yahoo did not violate his rights or any laws by booting him off.

I think you're confusing Freedom of Speech with forcing someone else to pay for you to speak.

Yahoo Answers is a FREE service provided by a business using THEIR servers and technology. They ALLOW us to use this service.

What you are looking at is akin to you coming over to my house, violating my rules and being asked to leave - and then claiming that I somehow violated your freedom of speech.

This is a similar confusion to the Dixie Chicks' incident - They felt that people no longer wishing to purchase their records after their Anti-American comments was somehow infringing their freedom of speech. You have freedom of Speech- not freedom of CONSEQUENCES from that speech. And Even that Freedom does not in any way force others to have to PAY for your speech.

Orion

What right does anyone have to post comments on yahoo servers?

Yahoo owns the servers and makes rules for those wishing to add post.

Yahoo is well within their rights to remove anyone who violates the rules.

Just as newspapers have the right to publish or not publish letters to the editors, any enity has the right to control their property.

No. You're dad did not suffer any damages. Levels are nothing in RL. He must have offended somebody pretty bad. You need to remember that with freedom of speech goes implied responsibility to use it correctly. I'm sure that you'll get around to that in your studies.

Good luck to you, we certainly need more lawyers in this country.

I suppose you mean that Yahoo sometimes deletes i.e. censor ship.

The First Amendment only applies to censorship by the government--not by a stupid Internet company.

if a person agrees to a set of rules he or she should be held to them even if he or she doesn't agree with its rules further down the line. The person can always go somewhere else for freedom of speech.

no, the first ammendment protects us against the GOVERNMENT, not a company. since you are using yahoo's computers, brand, etc. they have the right to control what you say.

Well now since they own the web site, I'd be willing to bet they can do what they want. But, I'm no lawyer.