Re: [Bug-gne]the problem of illegal content vs. freedom

[Bob Dodd]

> I dislike the idea of "acceptable taste", corresponding to your
> "Level 
> III"
> editorship as I understand it. There *may* well be right and wrong,
> but
> I don't think anyone is capable of deciding which is which.

We could have a deep philosophical argument on that one :-)) But I do
understand what you mean. My argument is that GNE is not value-free: it
can't be as we start from the premise of the right to free speech,
which implies that denial of free speech to be a wrong... So we _do_
know what is right and wrong, and it's not difficult to move on from
that particular right to other rights we also hold to strongly as a
group. 

> 
> I doubt that we will be overwhelmed with borderline article
> submissions
> (hopefully we won't!), but if we ever receive questionable material
> which
> seems to be legal and not plain rubbish, let us be liberal. If we
> choose
> to reject certain articles because we don't share their ideas or we
> find
> them morally offensive, say, it will INDEED be a problem to draw the
> line.

Yes, I know, that's why I was able only to work at the extremes in
level III. And that's why I picked something as extreme as child
pornography to make the point. But the extremes are real enough,
however much (or little) of it we receive, and we need a clear policy
to deal with them.

In fact, as I understand it, RMS holds an even stronger view of what is
extreme, and intends to ban not only extremes like child pornography
from the GNU servers that will host GNE, but also material that
promotes certain political ideas e.g. holocaust denial, which is way
beyond what I'm proposing.


> What I hate about that is not so much the fact that a line is drawn--
> it
> is *somebody* drawing the line. If someone else less permissive
> comes,
> you can drop the cherished word "Free" in Free Learning Resource.

> OK, one can always fork and build another GNE. 

Exactly. And thanks to the GPL, we can take all the submissions with
us. I don't think it's possible to get better protection than that:
it's what protects the project from takeover by extreme elements
anyway.

> Provided they have
> adequate
> means to do that. The same is true with most media. In our
> "democratic"
> western countries, anyone can theoretically set up a newspaper and a
> TV
> channel.
> 
> Really, I'm sure you scare less people away if you keep the
> repository
> open. 

I can't see how a rule of "no child porn" is going to scare away
anyone. How many submissions would such a rule lose?

[snip}

/Bob Dodd



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