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

[Tom Chance]

There was talk of where to "draw the line". I think we
can all agree that it is a dangerous topic, but I
think everyone will also agree we mustn't allow child
pornography or date rape tips to crop up on GNE. I
think the only line we should draw should be a very
liberal one, which is this:

If it is in the least bit informative and educational,
even if it may be factually incorrect or distasteful,
it must be allowed on.

If it isn't teaching us anything even remotely useful,
like pictures of children being raped, we don't allow
it on.

Now it is really very easy to draw this line with the
voting system I proposed. You see, if there is a pool
of "moderators" who are the people from this list, and
those who have submitted a couple of articles (i.e.
those committed in some way to the projecy). These
moderators can login and see a list of articles
submitted. At the bottom of each one is a giant
"Submit" button. If the moderator thinks it is worhty
of some attention, he/she clicks on submit. That way
I'm sure that every article that is in some way
informative will get in; there will always be a
liberal around to let the extremists in. But, nobody
will vote in child porn, so after 8 or so days that
article will drop off the list and be deleted.
To deal with storage of contraversial articles, I
would simply say that when a moderator submits an
article, if he/she thinks it is going to contravene
the rules of the central server in GNU, then he/she
can tick a "contraversial" box and it will be sent to
another server that can host such material, if one
exists. There could also be an "illegal" box, which
could be sent to a pool of people who know about
international and national laws, so they can tell us
for certain if it can be hosted. I'm sure we could
find a couple of people with such knowledge willing to
help us out on the occasional article (we wouldn't
exactly be flooded by articles on illegal subjects
would we!).

So if we can secure a sever outside of GNU that will
host contraversial material, and possibly an "illegal"
one, then we will have no problem with accepting any
articles and our policy will really be very clear.

Tom Chance 


--- Bob Dodd <address@hidden> wrote: > > 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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