Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material
On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 10:56:13AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 11:16:19PM -0700, user list wrote:
>
> > I'm posting this here and will cross post this on the project list because
> > I think that the program lead should really look at this issue carefully
> > and the developers should have a policy along the lines that I give below.
>
> > I'm going to break my comments into pracital and principle issues.
>
> > Practical:
>
> > Let's just say that this is a free-speech issue. The point is that free-speech
> > does not reach into institutions. If a racist statement were part of a program
> > that communicated with other programs, it would not be allowed on any
> > US government machines. It would not be allowed on many corporate machines.
> > This is because these institutions hold that the sense of security of its
> > members is more important than the First Ammendment. Just as you cannot claim
> > First ammendment rights in yelling fire in a theater, you also cannot claim
> > those rights if you use racist or offensive language to intimidate others.
> > So, if Debian knowingly kept a piece of software that were racist, it would
> > be relegating itself to a very minor role in desk-top and work station compu-
> > tation. As I said in my first post, I would remove it from all of my machines.
> > It would be a very easy decision. I think it would be a real shame if this
> > happened because Debian is a real accomplishment.
>
> You would remove Debian from your machines, or you would remove the
> package from your machines?
If Debian were to make a good faith effort in the form I outlined I would not remove the
distribution. For a while I won't anyway because my guess is that there are very few, if any,
actual racists in the developers pool and that if there were they would not choose to do
something this devious. However, neglecting for the moment my own personal revulsion for
racist content, and neglecting deep hurt this sort of thing can cause other people,
you have to understand that at a government facility all of our traffic can be monitored and we
can be held responsible for its content. I like the Debian distribution alot but without a policy
statement it simply won't be worth the risk when I can use another distribution that is more
careful about its content. I also don't have the time to look at every message that comes out
of every package. As I said, the practical solution is that I will rely on the social contract.
I would think this would be a no-brainer for Debian. Whether Debian sees itself this way or not,
the distribution is seen as a whole by many users. I would be very surprised (though I will make
a point to find out) if Red Hat, for example, hasn't thought about this. I'll also point out that
this is a public forum and that other distributions, not to mention Darth Vader (AKA MS) probably listen
to this. If ever Debian would be so lucky as to be an economic threat, the outcome of this thread could
be very useful. I'm not advocating either institutional or personal censorship on this list because
the frank debate IS what Debian is about. However, in the end, whether Debian comes to grips with
the proper place for personal politics and for personal free speech will effect decisions on its use
as well as strategies other software vendors will take in the future.
So, I await the end of the debate.
>
> It seems to me that the former is a gross overreaction, whereas the
> latter is one of Debian's greatest strengths. There are lots of
> packages in Debian which are not suitable for one type of installation
> or another. Personally (to bring up another favorite flamewar ;), I
> think all packages providing vi-style editors are inappropriate for
> installation on my machines. I have machines where GNOME and KDE are
> inappropriate because they're too bloated for the hardware; I have
> machines where X is not installed because it's superfluous. And the
> great thing about Debian is that, with the exception of vi ;), these are
> all optional packages that the admin /chooses/ to install. I don't see
> any reason why it's necessary to apply a different standard to packages
> whose content is offensive (whether or not the majority agrees that it
> is so), when those packages are also optional.
>
> Don't get me wrong; if I were the maintainer of the package in question,
> I would have likewise removed the line from the package. Whether or not
> the statement in question should be considered racist, it's not a brand
> of humor I've ever been particularly impressed with, and it's not
> something I'm concerned about users "missing out on" if I remove it.
>
> But you'll notice that I don't maintain any IRC-related packages at all,
> for the same reason that, if I were an admin at a stuffy corporation
> with a strict employee AUP instead of at a laid-back ISP, I wouldn't
> allow any IRC clients on the network at all. IRC is Internet /Relay/
> Chat; it's designed for servers to be linked together, it's designed to
> be resistant to attempts at control, and unless you're using IRC in
> models much different than what it was effectively designed for,
> prolonged usage means almost certain exposure to the kinds of people who
> get a kick out of 'yo mamma' jokes. There are plenty of other chat-like
> interfaces which I would venture to say are much more appropriate for
> use on corporate networks. But that doesn't mean we should purge
> IRC-related packages from our archive; being a "Universal Operating
> System", as Bdale argues we should be, means meeting the needs of both
> suits and IRC users (though I wouldn't go so far as to say script
> kiddies ;).
>
> Steve Langasek
> postmodern programmer
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