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In the past week several more news outlets wrote stories about Lycos dropping Envirolink, host of many animal rights web sites, after an article written by Norm Lenhart, senior editor at Off-Road.Com. In general the subsequent articles have only reconfirmed the suspicions expressed here last week about Lycos' move.
An article at Wired's web site quoted EnviroLink founder Josh Knauer as confirming that EnviroLink's contract did not have any minimum hit requirements, leaving out EnviroLink's apparently low click through rate as an explanation. Wired also quoted Knauer as saying he believes Lycos is in breach of its contract with EnviroLink.
The articles, unfortunately, also demonstrated how willing the media are to let animal rights extremism slide. In Wired’s story, for example, writer Steve Silberman characterized Lenhart's article as a "flame job" and spent two paragraphs describing EnviroLink's content by focusing on the allegedly satirical Church of Euthanasia, completely ignoring Lenhart's documentation of the Animal Liberation Front Information Site articles on how to commit arson located on EnviroLink's servers -- which was the real flame job as far as this writer is concerned. Post-Gazette writer Michael Newman didn't even see fit to mention that EnviroLink hosts the ALFIS site in his piece on the controversy.
The on-line animal rights community continues to whine about Lycos' decision. A message on a mailing list maintained by the Humane Society of the United States said that, "EnviroLink is experiencing severe funding problems due to what may be described as a disinformation campaign." Of course the author of this message, like authors of several similar ones, never bothers to point out any factual errors in Lenhart's article.
An email posted on the animal rights terrorist list "Frontline" summed up the controversy this way:
10 short days after Off-Road.Com published a scathing slanderous attack on the server Envirolink.org and several of it's hosted environmental and animal rights web sites, Lyco's [sic] decided to drop its corporate sponsorship of EnviroLink.
The issue is not whether you care about the environment or animal rights but about Internet censorship and and [sic] free expression on the Internet. What is next to be attacked?
Got that? When ALF members firebomb a warehouse, that is peaceful, nonviolent protest. When Off-Road.Com persuades Lycos to drop its sponsorship of EnviroLink, that's censorship.