14 DAY TRIAL // Fed up with the defamatory content found on one website on the Internet, Bordentown Mayor James E. Lynch Jr. convinced City Council members to pass a law forcing the hosting service of that website to take down its pages.
The website BordentownMayorReallySucks.com greets visitors with a raunchy dose of criticism against city's mayor. While normal people would file a simple lawsuit for defamatory content against the site's owners, Mayor Lynch abused his position and passed a law alongside the City Council that borders between censorship and poor technical research.
The mayor pushed a resolution “demanding the immediate termination of a 'malicious' website called BordentownMayorReallySucks.com and [to] the identity of its creators."
According to an article in The Trentonian the mayor was cited as saying: “This website has to be removed […] I’m not going to go down the freedom of speech road. But some of the stuff that’s on there is fraudulent. You want to put information out? Fine. Say you don’t like me? Fine. But attacks on my wife, my daughter? I won’t stand for that.”
While the website currently doesn't contain any remarks about the mayor's wife or daughter, no technical records at this moment prove that the website did or didn't host them in the past.
Even before the decision was approved, many Freedom of Speech agencies rose against it, accusing the town's Council of breaking the US Constitution's First Amendment. Nevertheless, the Council's decision passed by two votes against one.
At this moment, the website is still active, but BlueHost Inc. received a take down notice from Bordentown officials to “dismantle [the website] on grounds the domain violates New Jersey’s consumer affairs law and possibly other state and federal laws.”
The notice fails to mention those “possibly other state and federal laws” and maybe this is why the hosting company is still waiting for further details from the mayor's office.
After all the hype around the disgraceful and ill-advised “I’m not going to go down the freedom of speech road” remark from Mayor Lynch passes, maybe city officials will void their previous decision and try a more logical approach in taking down the website.
The more logical legal approach can be easily grounded on the fact the website contains the “BordentownMayor” phrase in its name, and alongside the City Phone Directory section it hosts, can easily fool visitors into thinking that they are on the mayor's official website.