Post by Jack SkagNetti on Apr 23, 2004 16:01:56 GMT -5
For six years, California's Santa Clara County paid a 53-year-old webmaster named Douglas Dailey to post government documents on his Web site, the Domestic Violence Project of Santa Clara County. But in early September, says Dailey, county officials told him, without giving an explanation, that they would no longer fund his operation. Then, on Sept. 13, Kristin Baker, an attorney for the county, sent him a curt two-line e-mail message ordering him to shut down the entire site.
"The content on the [Web site] has not been authorized by the Domestic Violence Council or the County of Santa Clara," the note said. "The content must be removed immediately or legal action may follow."
Dailey balked. The domain name, Growing.com, is registered in his name, and he created the site before he began receiving a government salary to maintain it. He changed the name of the site to the Domestic Violence Project of Silicon Valley California, and he says the county has no right to tell him what he can put online, especially since they're no longer paying him. But he also says he thinks he knows why the county is going after his content -- he believes the county's new director of social services is upset that the site, which offers a compendium of local and national resources to help women stuck in abusive relationships, also criticizes local policies. Dailey maintains that Santa Clara County often has children removed from their parents as a way to get more federal funds; the county, he says, is scared that he'll reveal this information on his site. He calls the attempt to shut down his site government censorship.
Baker dismisses Dailey's claims. She says that Dailey was initially dismissed for budgetary reasons, and the county later decided it wanted him to take down his site because it is "widely perceived" to be run by the county. In fact, she noted, the county has already been threatened with a lawsuit from the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County because of content hosted on Dailey's site.
The Santa Clara Girl Scouts, it turns out, are claiming that Dailey's site infringes on their intellectual property and that pictures of scouts on the site endangered the girls.
Dailey says the Girl Scouts were upset only because he posted pictures of African-American scouts on his site, not white girls. Some people in the Santa Clara Girl Scouts, Dailey says, are racist, and they don't want the black girls honored on the site. The Scouts deny this claim.
Girls Scouts, domestic violence, and charges of racism and government censorship -- if this domain-name squabble sounds more confusing than most, that's because it is. As an example of what can happen when well-meaning local governments let private citizens take on sensitive projects, the brouhaha over Growing.com is a cautionary tale suggesting that some topics should probably be handled in a more formal manner. At this point none of the parties involved in the case agree on even the basic facts. Everyone wants to take credit for anything positive that may have come out of the site, but no one will shoulder any blame for the current animosity -- and lost in all this is the point of the whole endeavor, which was to do some good in the world.
"The content on the [Web site] has not been authorized by the Domestic Violence Council or the County of Santa Clara," the note said. "The content must be removed immediately or legal action may follow."
Dailey balked. The domain name, Growing.com, is registered in his name, and he created the site before he began receiving a government salary to maintain it. He changed the name of the site to the Domestic Violence Project of Silicon Valley California, and he says the county has no right to tell him what he can put online, especially since they're no longer paying him. But he also says he thinks he knows why the county is going after his content -- he believes the county's new director of social services is upset that the site, which offers a compendium of local and national resources to help women stuck in abusive relationships, also criticizes local policies. Dailey maintains that Santa Clara County often has children removed from their parents as a way to get more federal funds; the county, he says, is scared that he'll reveal this information on his site. He calls the attempt to shut down his site government censorship.
Baker dismisses Dailey's claims. She says that Dailey was initially dismissed for budgetary reasons, and the county later decided it wanted him to take down his site because it is "widely perceived" to be run by the county. In fact, she noted, the county has already been threatened with a lawsuit from the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County because of content hosted on Dailey's site.
The Santa Clara Girl Scouts, it turns out, are claiming that Dailey's site infringes on their intellectual property and that pictures of scouts on the site endangered the girls.
Dailey says the Girl Scouts were upset only because he posted pictures of African-American scouts on his site, not white girls. Some people in the Santa Clara Girl Scouts, Dailey says, are racist, and they don't want the black girls honored on the site. The Scouts deny this claim.
Girls Scouts, domestic violence, and charges of racism and government censorship -- if this domain-name squabble sounds more confusing than most, that's because it is. As an example of what can happen when well-meaning local governments let private citizens take on sensitive projects, the brouhaha over Growing.com is a cautionary tale suggesting that some topics should probably be handled in a more formal manner. At this point none of the parties involved in the case agree on even the basic facts. Everyone wants to take credit for anything positive that may have come out of the site, but no one will shoulder any blame for the current animosity -- and lost in all this is the point of the whole endeavor, which was to do some good in the world.