Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material
On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 11:29:45PM +0000, Alan James wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 02:36:28PM -0500, Chris wrote:
>
> > You are kidding right? IRC is extremely inappropriate for a child to
> > use, period. You are way off base, your perspective is badly skewed
> > and I fear for the safety of your daughter online. I wish her the
> > best of luck with such poor guidance to grow with.
>
> Actually its perfectly possible to restrict irc access to only one channel
> say #debian, through a local dircproxy and firewall rules. but thats not
> the point.
>From what I gathered (missed some the the thread myself), the problem
was text included in BitchX (quit message?), not where the child was
going on IRC, which is (as stated) a completely different topic.
> Any package maintainer should be responsible enough to remove any material
> from a package that its users, or those exposed to it, found offensive.
> Now I'm not suggesting that we put a "you must be 18 or older to install
> this package" disclaimer on such packages but at least that maintainers be
> reasonable and also consider what type of material and behavior they wish
> to be associated with.
On one hand I agree, and on the other my little censorship alarm in my
head is going off.
> In the case of BitchX (and I'm asuming it's BitchX we're talking about here,
> I missed some of this thread) it could potentially offend not just the user
> but other members of the channel that user is leaving. When I used BitchX I
> had to clean up the quit messages to comply with the (partly self inflicted)
> rules of my local LUG's IRC channel.
Interesting. Of course at the same time you didn't have to use BitchX,
there are plenty of other IRC clients in Debian and for Linux/*NIX as
well. Since you actually took the time to remove the offending bits
yourself, I would say that was a personal decision instead of just using
a different client.
> Do debian developers not have a duty to honor the wishes of Our Users and Free
> Software ? Is it not a reasonable request that this statement be removed from
> the debian release of BitchX ?
I have always felt that Debian is about Free Software, and depending on
your stance that has some linkage to free speech. I don't think BitchX
or any other package's source should be modified before packaging for
Debian to remove bit that may offend. However, something like a BitchX
package and maybe a BitchX-pc (politically correct) package were both in
Debian, than maybe. Then you could either 1) use a different client, or
2) install the -pc version.
> There's no need to CC the list with the flames, but I will accept criticism.
>
> Alan.
Adam
--
Adam VanderHook
acidos@users.sourceforge.net
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