I stumbled upon an article on Tech Crunch regarding my favorite soapbox topic: free speech.

You can read the article by clicking HERE or my summary of it. Essentially, some guy posted a Photoshop-ed picture of President Obama, making him look like Heath Ledger’s Joker in "The Dark Knight." The image was on a Time magazine cover. Flickr claimed that because the image involved the Time template, it violated copyright law and had to be taken off the site.

The writer is angry because satirical images of President Brush involving fake magazine covers were allowed to remain on Flickr. Additionally, there have been allegations that Flickr users critical of Obama were blacklisted from the site.

If these allegations are true, they amount to nothing more than partisan censorship.

The Internet is the information superhighway, and social networking sites are becoming more and more important to the spread of information. So when sites like Flickr limit the free flow of information, we all suffer.

This story may represent an isolated incident on Flickr, but certainly not for the Web alone. The more people who control the dissemination, the less likely we are to have information from all points of the opinion spectrum.

Imagine briefly that you could only get your news from sites like Huffington Post or the Drudge Report. If Flickr and other sites like it continue to act this way, we’re headed toward that reality.

Anyway, it’s just something to think about.

I also found a blog written by Alison Buckholtz. Buckholtz wrote "Standing By," a memoir of her time while her husband was deployed in Iraq. I read her memoir over the summer and found it poignant, moving and at times incredibly funny. She’s a fabulous writer, and I highly recommend the book.

Buckholtz’s husband was just deployed for a second tour of duty, and she’s writing a blog detailing her experiences at home with her two children. You can read it HERE.

Like I said, she’s a great writer and her subject matter is fascinating. You should check it out.