Re: Debian's status as a legal entity and how it could effect a potential defense.

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> writes:

> It shows that sexual harassment in the workplace is one of their big
> concerns. And rightly so. Awards have been as large as $30
> Million. And it embarasses the institution, which creates all sorts of
> havoc by driving people and even financial donors away.

Yes, but the question is what is the *environment*; it is not clear
that idle bits on a disk change the *environment*.

Good grief, this is one of the murkiest areas of American law, and you
think that anyone should be convinced of your FUD this way?

I'm hardly impressed.  If you really believe this is a concern, or
others do, you are welcome to get competent legal advice, though at
this point I would be inclined to doubt any advice from a lawyer you
selected.  Still, your amateur's guess at what would or would not run
afoul of this extremely complex area of law is no help whatsoever.

> The U. would err on the side of caution given the potential danger. 

This is hardly true; most American universities (lamentably not all)
for example have decided that censoring students is not in their job
description, and that university employees cannot claim a hostile
working environment on the basis of what students have said or done.

Likewise, if a given image, residing in the Debian archive, is nearly
unknown to members of the university, and the only people who know
about it have deliberately sought it out, then it is extremely
unlikely that anyone would find it to be creating a hostile
environment.  It is analogous to a copy of Playboy hidden in a drawer
somewhere, which is not actionable in the least.  Oh, except that
Playboy contains actual photographs, which hot-babe does not.

And this isn't even Debian's concern; each mirror must decide its own
policies, and we cannot hope to decide that Debian must conform to
whatever self-censorship private entities choose to apply to
themselves.

Nor is *any* of this relevant to debian-devel.  Please take it to an
appropriate forum.