On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 04:46:18AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:32 +0000, Tim Cutts wrote: > > On 30 Nov 2004, at 8:08 am, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > > > > > However, pornography causes significant legal problems in the US, and > > > probably moreso in many other countries. If I give a Debian CD > > > containing this software to a minor, am I distributing pornography? (It > > > sure looks like it, from the pictures.) This is considered a felony in > > > most parts of the US. Given the contributions made by people under 18 > > > and/or 21 to Debian, this seems to cause a major technical and legal > > > problem, regardless of any ethical one. > > > > > > I would ask, for this reason, that the software not be included in > > > Debian main. > > > > I think this is a strong argument. But it probably also applies to > > things like the bible. There are countries in the world where > > distributing the bible is illegal. It is presumably therefore also > > illegal to distribute Debian in those countries. > > > > If there's going to be a policy of this sort it should be consistent. > > Put such possibly controversial matter in contrib? Is contrib > on disk 1? If not, then at least disk 1 would be legal anywhere. Isn't this roughly what non-US is for, now that crypto laws have ceased to be such a bugbear? We could rename it to 'maynotbelegalinyourcountry' and use it for stuff where local laws may need to be checked, possibly tagging things for archive maintainers to filter on "pornography, religion, copy-protection circumvention, patented, language, etc." I'd love to help with auditing the archive, but I'm washing my hair that decade. > Should this be moved to debian-legal? What's debian-legal's opinion on possibly-patent-encumbered software? I think this is a good example of the same thing, rougly. My opinion here is that it shouldn't be disallowed, since it doesn't (after a brief thought) fail the DFSG test. As a disclaimer, I went to politicalcompass.org and got -6's on both axes, so this is hardly a balanced opinion. My God!, cried the duchess, I'm pregnant! Who's is it? tags: religion, sex, royalty, emotion, mystery. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE 7th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) Paul.Hampson@Anu.edu.au "No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder?" -- Capt. Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean" This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. -----------------------------------------------------------
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