Re: [Bug-gne]Ideologies vs. Practicality in GNE

[Tom Chance]

alexander,

I agree that GNE is one chance to fight the terrible
restrictions we impose on our society through outdated
prejudice, and through a twisted view of the world.

I find it very ironic that many people would say
holocaust-revisionism is evil and shouldn't be hosted
because it is ignoring an event we should all learn so
much from, and yet would gladly accept articles on the
virtuous nature of US foreign policy. This is despite
the unlawful and tragic way in which the US, and most
other nation states to a lesser extent, have conducted
themselves and imposed their power on smaller states
(especially central america and the dicatorial states
like Nigeria and Burma).

Either one of these two sides to the coin could be
correct or incorrect, and I'm not inviting judgement
on those, but I am asking people to see that when it
comes to saying anything like that, we cannot be the
ones who judge who is right, wrong, moral or amoral.

When it comes to legal issues though, we get in a
tangle. We can't afford to have libel claims against
us, and there is no way we can tell if an article
submitted could be subject to libel without having a
dedicated team work for years ro research each
article. So that would suggest we cannot allow
articles that refer to contemporary people. It'd be
good if we could ask for evidence of a high level of
research, but we cannot. It would also be good if we
could somehow put the responsibility for the articles
onto the authors, and not GNE, but I'm not sure that
is possible either. 

The one thing I wonder about is the mirror solution.
If a GNE mirror in Germany hosts an article about Jeff
Hoon, and he then takes us to court for libel, could
that single mirror go down, and leave the rest of GNE
intact (apart from possible PR problems) or would the
whole of GNE suffer? Cases like Yahoo! vs. France have
showed that governments will not relent in their
censorship of every medium we use, and there is little
we can do about it.

I think the following rules are the most "open" we can
afford to follow until we get proper legal advice on
the matter:

* Must be informative, it must teach us something
useful (in practical or academic terms).

* Mustn't promote the harm of people (but can attempt
to offer differing accounts of previous sensitive
events)

* Must not make claims against any individual or
organisation that is still alive/ is likely to be
damaged by the article's claims.

We may still find a way to get around libel and I hope
we do, but for now they seem to be the most sensible
rules to me.

Tom Chance



--- address@hidden wrote: > On Sat, Feb
17, 2001 at 09:50:05AM -0800, Tom Chance
> wrote:
> > I was just wondering where everybody stands on
> this
> > issue of being idelogically sound whilst still
> being
> > in line with laws and societal "expectations".
> > Personally, I would love to see GNE try to make a
> > precedent by rising above petty differences and
> try to
> > host as much as is possible in the best way
> possible.
> > If in the future we find we a forced to back down,
> we
> > do so, but I don't think we should be shutting too
> > many doors now when we don't yet have any _need_
> (only
> > in some people's eyes a want). What do others
> think?
> > 
> 
> well, in the last week I wrote about four emails to
> this list and you
> could not read one, because I cast them away, seeing
> they were
> rubbish. The reason is, that it gets really, really
> difficult. To
> create an encyclopedia, which is really free
> requires absolute freedom
> for submitting articles and no censorship at all.
> The direct result of
> so much freedom might be, that it might be abused by
> parties, I'm
> convinced no one reading this list really wants to
> see here.
> 
> On the other hand this legal stuff can't be a way to
> solve the
> problem. The last week I realized, that taking care
> of illegal stuff
> would result in a combined censorship for all
> countries. Besides it
> would be lots of work only aiming at people closing
> out. 
> 
> The issue gets more and more interesting every day.
> The problem GNE is
> facing now is one of the fundamental problems of
> mankind: how can we
> apply rules (the rule of freedom in this case) in a
> partly anarchic
> field without rules?
> 
> I think Tom is right - there is no sense in taking
> care of governments
> and laws across the globe. I don't even can accept
> every law in
> my country as right. I can accept laws which cut
> freedom of speech
> even less. One of the reasons for GNE is to fight
> the slavery of
> thoughts-control. So why should we surrender?
> On the other hand I see lots of groups searching for
> places to publish
> extreme material, racist's paroles, or simply sexual
> aberrations
> which do definitely harm to somebody. 
> 
> I don't agree on the discussion as far as the
> guilt-question araised:
> Everybody who helps somebody to suppression or
> violence in any way, of
> course is guilty. We are guilty of destroying nature
> if we buy
> mahagony, we are guilty if we continue buying books
> at amazon as long
> as they are on their "patent"-trip. So why should we
> not be guilty
> providing a forum for hate, intollerance and
> violence?
> I would be very unhappy if GNE would be overwhelmed
> by a racist front
> using the ideology of freedom for their ideology of
> intollerance.
> 
> I also don't agree, that reading cannot kill. I
> suppose the exact
> contrary statement would be correct. Every
> dictatorship started by
> extinguishing free thoughts, culture and literature.
> The only reason
> why everybody of us is acting is that we have
> thoughts. Without
> thoughts we would be sitting dumb on a rocking chair
> not even beeing
> able to rock. Everything we're doing - scratching
> our head, buying
> vegetables, writing to this mailing-list - is a
> direct action
> corresponding to a previous thought. So the mere
> thought might lead to
> paradise or to hell. I would prefer thoughts leading
> to paradise.
> 
> And yet the next contradiction arises - how could I
> fight
> manipultaion, by manipulating (or censoring)? In
> fact I couldn't.
> 
> I discussed this issue every day now during the last
> week, with
> friends, with my family, with my wife, with
> literally anybody who was
> unlucky enough to get near me.
> And the main difficulty is simply that the more we
> face freedom the
> more we have to face intollerance. 
> 
> So what I think would be a good idea is to set
> rules. In fact to set
> one rule and formulating which consequences it
> implies. The rule yet
> exists, and it is written by RMS, saying freedom is
> the main target. 
> On the one hand this implies not setting links to
> non-free pages. But
> I think this is a minor issue compared to the abuse
> intollerance.
> 
> I think something like a constitution, a GNU/GNE
> constitution would be
> a good idea. Something containing the following
> topics:
> 
> * everybody has the right to think and write
> whatever he likes to, as
>   long as he does not harm the freedom of others to
> think and talk what
>   they like to.
> * violence is the most radical manifest of
> suppression, because it
>   will prevent others physically of thinking,
> talking and writing
>   freely. Therefore any violence has to be accused.
> * Accusations must not be personalized. I.e. not
> people should be
>   accused, but thoughts which propagate
> intollerance. This would mean
>   that someone is not allowed to demand the
> extinction of a minority,
>   but though he tried to he may be well allowed to
> publish anything
>   else, because GNE is not a courtyard. 
> * it should not be allowed to discriminate against
> any person, ethic
>   group, company or government in general. (To stay
> on
>   software-issues: Microsoft is only a company. It
> is neither bad nor
>   the incarnation of the devil:) It is only a
> company: if it attacks
>   freedom, everybody has to fight to keep the
> freedom. But nobody has
>   the right to discriminate against anybody, only
> because he works at
>   this company, nor has he the right to disciminate
> the company
>   itself) 
> 
> This is just a very raw collection of thoughts I
> accumulated over the last
> days.  And it is everything I can think of, which
> would make it to
> keep freedom as long as this freedom does not result
> in taking the
> freedom of another person and therefore the ability
> to exclude
> intollerance. This would exclude child-pornography,
> because it is the
> direct result of violence, it would exclude articles
> proposing
> antisemitic or rasistic views, because they propose
> to cut the freedom
> of other people, on the other hand it would allow
> articles on the
> chinese opposition. It would definitely allow lots
> of illegal
> material, but as Tom said - we should not bow before
> every government
> on this earth (in fact we even could not).
> 
> I don't know yet if this is a good idea to help
> freedom. But I think
> it's a better idea than watching intolerance
> swallowing freedom.
> 
> 
> alexander
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bug-gne mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gne


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/