On 2022-11-23 at 16:16, Ansgar wrote:
> On Wed, 2022-11-23 at 12:34 -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> It is not necessary, but as I discussed in my long message about
>> removing software from Debian, removing creative content from
>> Debian has a chilling effect.
>
> I would very much prefer explicit sexual content over Nazi symbols.
> So let me make a suggestion:
>
> If we insist on keeping Nazi symbolics in Debian, let's at least
> also add explicit quotes from descriptions of Hitler + Blondi sexual
> adventures (which I'm sure must exist on the internet), various form
> of sexual abuse (there is enough fictional content to quote) and more
> in the fortune-off package or elsewhere.
>
> Or are explicit sexual references so bad that Nazi symbols are okay
> for freedom of speech, but sexual references not?
Do you have anything specific to point to as constituting "Nazi
symbolics"?
I'm not sure I can think of *anything* in the fortunes-off package which
would actually be even Nazi propaganda, much less Nazi symbology or
symbolism (I'm not sure what "symbolics" here means). Even the "Mein
Kampf" reference that were cited by count as reason to remove it, when
examined directly, don't seem to qualify; like every other Hitler-et-al.
quote in there that I remember seeing on a recent skim-through with this
sort of question in mind, they seem to be there to present and remind us
of how horrible these things are *because it was Nazis saying them*.
It seems to be being taken as a given that any quote from a Nazi is
automatically objectionable enough to exclude just because of who said
it, *even if provoking thought about how objectionable those people are
is the point of including that quote*. (Or, as with most of the "Mein
Kampf" quotes, provoking thought about how objectionable X other thing
must be because this known-objectionable person said this about it.)
If there's going to be criticism of the package for its contents, we
should make sure that the contents actually match the characteristics
being criticized, and I'm not at all sure that that's been shown.
> In a related question: should we accept packages that link to, say,
> the Stormfront web site in user-facing material or source code?
> (That's not really hypothetical: I believe we have at least one
> package referencing a page including racism and Holocaust denial.)
>
> What about software greeting the user with a friendly "Sieg Heil"
> ("not illegal in all juristictions" / "in every jurisdiction in the
> world" was used as an argument earlier in the thread...)?
I don't have the time or energy at the moment to properly engage with
those questions, but I do see sufficient reason to distinguish them from
the one(s) about fortunes-off, such that the answers to those (sets of)
questions could well be different.
> And for the "chilling effect": Debian makes it fairly easy to add
> additional software sources; it's not like ecosystems where one or few
> providers have a near monopoly like platform App stores, credit card
> companies, Twitter, Amazon, ... which use their power to remove content
> they don't like. And that is despite providers like Twitter, Github and
> so on even having legal protections for third-party content which
> Debian would not fall under, i.e., they do more control while having
> less legal risks (AFAIU).
That's true, and a good thing. It doesn't mean that removing such
content from the official repositories *doesn't* have a chilling effect,
however; at most it means that that effect is less than it otherwise
might be.
The term "chilling effect" is not about blocking access to, or ability
to get/use, a thing; it's about discouraging people from engaging in /
with that thing. (IIRC its modern usage dates back to Supreme Court
jurisprudence on the subject of freedom of speech, possibly in an
anti-war context.)
--
The Wanderer
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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