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To: bob who wrote (5436)	5/29/1999 11:44:00 AM
From: AlienTech	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32921

In the wake of the Littleton massacre, it's understandable that Internet service providers would seek to clamp down on messages they consider violent or threatening. But according to a letter FamilyPC recently received, America Online may have gone a bit overboard in responding to a message posted in jest by a 12-year-old girl. Writes Lucy S. McDermott, "Our 12-year-old daughter recently received an unexpected instant message from a boy in her class. Another classmate had circulated a list of everyone's screen names. My daughter had just created a new screen name. She wanted to keep it private to avoid receiving IM's from boys while she was chatting with her girlfriends. This boy had discovered my daughter's new screen name and sent her an IM. My daughter sent him a joking response which included something along the lines of 'Now that you know, I'll just have to kill you so that you can't tell anyone else.' "AOL terminated our account. Granted, the choice of words was unfortunate given the recent events in Littleton and elsewhere. However, this was not a deliberate threat. This was an off-the-cuff joking remark made to a friend. "The mother of the boy involved called AOL. She told them that her child was not threatened, and that, in fact, he considered it a joke. The AOL representative told her that the company seldom reversed its decisions. My daughter is heartbroken because she's unable to chat with her friends online. Her classmates are all furious at the boy involved. They do not understand that the problem does not lie with him, but with AOL." zdnet.com