Re: FYI: debian-legal is discussing the inclusion in the Debian archive of "erotic" interactive fiction depicting the sexual abuse of children
2014-03-14 9:59 GMT+01:00 Jo Shields <directhex@apebox.org>:
> *TRIGGER WARNING* in case it wasn't painfully obvious for this thread by
> now.
Thanks for the warning. Just for the record, I can confirm that there
has been people already triggered by all this situation. We can't
forget that, as the "global prevalence of child sexual abuse has been
estimated at 19.7% for females and 7.9% for males" [1], in a mailing
list of say 100 people, there are gonna be about 12 people who have
gone through it, and the psychological consequences it has, even years
later, makes that the triggering that these situations cause can be
very hurtful. I'm not saying that there should be censorship regarding
what and how we can discuss things just because emotions play a cig
part of it, but I ask everyone involved to take it into account that
we're hurting actual people that are part of the project just by
having this debate.
I'm not commenting your post in general, just to thank you for your
thoroughful analysis, not only of the game itself but also of its
circumstances and the references it includes. I'm not familiar with
4chan nor Krautchan nor Bernds, so your mail is very enlightening and
adds more information that I was unaware of. I haven't played the game
myself, but I know that doing an analysis of this kind needs a lot of
effort and thick skin, and I really appreciate it. I'm sure that the
FTP Team will too. Thanks.
Before all this discussion gets out of hand, I'll try to summarize my
understanding of the situation as it is now:
1) It has been agreed by everyone that the game is, at least, illegal
in most of our countries, and it shouldn't be packaged in Debian. As
far as I know, no one is arguing that, or questioning that. Not even
by who initially proposed it.
2) There is currently a somehow abstract debate about whether
something can/should be saved of the game, alluding the artistic
quality of the non-sexual components of the game. I can't comment on
this, I haven't seen them far away from those in the web page. I don't
know if something should or could be saved or not. I don't know if
even the fact of saving something and knowing where it comes from can
be hurting to both the project or the people in Debian in itself.
3) Up to now, there hasn't been an actual proposal of package to even
discuss, so the whole debate is abstract and I don't think anyone can
say anything concrete about something that is not even tangible. I
repeat: No one has started packagin anything, as far as I know, no one
has tried to upload anything, no one has made anything apart of
talking. At least that is my current understanding of the situation.
4) For what I know, the game itself, up to the current moment, is not
even DFSG-free. There is the promise of opening up the source code,
but that hasn't even happened yet.
5) The FTP Masters are making an effort to publicly clarify the
situation and calm all the people that is upset about this, even
though -I repeat- there is no actual proposal of any package at the
moment, and it has already been agreed that the game itself, as it is,
cannot be included in Debian.The FTP Masters need time to talk it
through and decide if they want to preventively establish some limits
or not, and there is really no urgency, because there is not an actual
proposal of any kind to accept or reject. Lets not put more pressure
on them than needed.
6) What the FTP Masters are debating, as far as I know, is noth
whether they will allow these kind of games (for some definition of
"these kind" that ranges between everything adult-only to something
more restricted). Up to now, as far as I know, there has been no
explicit limist placed on what should be allowed in Debian (apart from
being DFSG free). What I understand of what we're expecting from FTP
Masters is not to allow anything that was forbidden, but to make a
decision about whether some limits of some kind should be added
explicitly beforehand, to avoid the problems caused by not having an
explicit policy about this.
7) I know that there has always been some concern about establishing
explicit moral limits to what gets into debian for fear that somehow
someone might be abusing these rules to censor things that were not
intended to be excluded from the beginning.
8) We trust the FTP Masters. Up to now, they have proven that they are
sensible people who work hard to make Debian the best they can, as we
all do. Thanks, guys!
9) For everyone who has an eye on this thread: Debian itself -the
community, the project- has not done anything that can supportive of
these kind of games (for some definition of "these kind"). The
discussion and arguments on both sides have been made by individual
people (DDs, Contributors or not) in the exercise of their own
individual freedom of expression, and no one has talked yet in behalf
of the whole project.
10) Fortunately, the debate has been polite and civil up to now
(meaning no insults, personal attacks and the such), and confined to
the Debian project itself. We really don't want to transform this into
a fight of external groups using Debian as a battle field for their
own political battled.
Of course, all these is just my own personal opinion.
Greetings,
Miry
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
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