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Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor



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"

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