Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material

[user list <debian-user@icantbelieveimdoingthis.com>]

This will be a bit of a long message to bear with me. To keep your interest
I will tell you straight off that this is not, I repeat NOT, a free speech
issue. I will explain why below. 

I first want to point out that the package maintainer is a whole lot more
reasonable than most people on this thread.

First, the inclusion of the racist joke was a mistake! The maintainer
of the package admitted so and apologized saying that it was not his intention 
to offend anyone. He has removed it from the code and will not download it
on request. This should, in principle, stop the issue. However, because
of the knee-jerk assignment of this to free-speech, and because many of
the names I associate closely with Debian have been, to put it mildly,
completely off the mark, I want to put this forward as a social contract
policy issue.

I'm posting this here and will cross post this on the project list because
I think that the program lead should really look at this issue carefully
and the developers should have a policy along the lines that I give below.

I'm going to break my comments into pracital and principle issues.

Practical:

Let's just say that this is a free-speech issue. The point is that free-speech
does not reach into institutions. If a racist statement were part of a program
that communicated with other programs, it would not be allowed on any 
US government machines. It would not be allowed on many corporate machines.
This is because these institutions hold that the sense of security of its
members is more important than the First Ammendment. Just as you cannot claim
First ammendment rights in yelling fire in a theater, you also cannot claim 
those rights if you use racist or offensive language to intimidate others.
So, if Debian knowingly kept a piece of software that were racist, it would
be relegating itself to a very minor role in desk-top and work station compu-
tation. As I said in my first post, I would remove it from all of my machines.
It would be a very easy decision. I think it would be a real shame if this
happened because Debian is a real accomplishment. 

Principle:

This email is an example of excercise of free speech. It is clear who is 
addressing you. This is really my speech. The case of a program that
ends its run with a statement, any statement, is not free speech. To the
contrary, it is constraining me to issue a statement that I don't necessarily
agree with. The free speech of the maintainer would masquerade as my speech.
This hypothetical situation would be, to my mind a devious and cowardly way
for a maintainer to promulgate his or her views.

I suppose one could say that I could peruse every line of source code that 
is downloaded onto my machine to assure that I catch every one of these 
instances, but, of course I won't. I rely on the social contract of the 
Distribution to take care of this.

Proposed Policy:

If Debian wants a place in the standard workplaces (Corporate Offices, Govern-
ment Laboratories, etc.) then I think they should have a stated policy
that the distribution will not contain any known instances of racist or
offensive language. Note that the word known is very important because I don't
think that anyone wold expect a gate keeper. It simply would not be practical.
However, if a known bug is found then it should be dealt with. One would hope
that it would be dealt with in the way it was here. It would be an inadvertent
mistake and it would be corrected rapidly. If the maintainer were truly racist,
then it should be a policy that that package be dropped until the offending
language is removed or until a new maintainer can be found. 


Art Edwards

On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 09:49:56AM +1100, John Griffiths wrote:
> 
> >b.s.!  making fun of someone else's skin color is patently wrong, and i
> >don't care how you want to slice it or garnish it with "red herring":
> 
> No! bullshit to you
> 
> free speech is free.
> 
> 
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