mirror of
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
synced 2024-12-10 09:12:15 +00:00
88 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
Censoring my Software
|
|
Richard Stallman
|
|
[From Datamation, 1 March 1996]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last summer, a few clever legislators proposed a bill to "prohibit
|
|
pornography" on the Internet. Last fall, right-wing Christians made
|
|
this cause their own. Last week, President Clinton signed the bill,
|
|
and we lost the freedom of the press for the public library of the
|
|
future. This week, I'm censoring GNU Emacs.
|
|
|
|
No, GNU Emacs does not contain pornography. It is a software package,
|
|
an award-winning extensible and programmable text editor. But the law
|
|
that was passed applies to far more than pornography. It prohibits
|
|
"indecent" speech, which can include anything from famous poems, to
|
|
masterpieces hanging in the Louvre, to advice about safe sex...to
|
|
software.
|
|
|
|
Naturally, there was a lot of opposition to this bill. Not only from
|
|
people who use the Internet, and people who appreciate erotica, but
|
|
from everyone who cares about freedom of the press.
|
|
|
|
But every time we tried to tell the public what was at stake, the
|
|
forces of censorship responded with a lie: they told the public that
|
|
the issue was simply pornography. By embedding this lie as a
|
|
presupposition in their statements about the issue, they succeeded in
|
|
misinforming the public. So here I am, censoring my software.
|
|
|
|
You see, Emacs contains a version of the famous "doctor program",
|
|
a.k.a. Eliza, originally developed by Professor Weizenbaum at MIT.
|
|
This is the program that imitates a Rogerian psychotherapist. The
|
|
user talks to the program, and the program responds--by playing back
|
|
the user's own statements, and by recognizing a long list of
|
|
particular words.
|
|
|
|
The Emacs doctor program was set up to recognize many common curse
|
|
words, and respond with an appropriately cute message such as, "Would
|
|
you please watch your tongue?" or "Let's not be vulgar." In order to
|
|
do this, it had to have a list of curse words. That means the source
|
|
code for the program was indecent.
|
|
|
|
Because of the censorship law, I had to remove this feature. (I
|
|
replaced it with a message announcing that the program has been
|
|
censored for your protection.) The new version of the doctor doesn't
|
|
recognize the indecent words. If you curse at it, it curses right
|
|
back to you--for lack of knowing better.
|
|
|
|
Now that people are facing the threat of two years in prison for
|
|
indecent network postings, it would be helpful if they could access
|
|
precise rules via the Internet for how to avoid imprisonment.
|
|
However, this is impossible. The rules would have to mention the
|
|
forbidden words, so posting them on the Internet would be against the
|
|
rules.
|
|
|
|
Of course, I'm making an assumption about just what "indecent" means.
|
|
I have to do this, because nobody knows for sure. The most obvious
|
|
possible meaning is the meaning it has for television, so I'm using
|
|
that as a tentative assumption. However, there is a good chance that
|
|
our courts will reject that interpretation of the law as
|
|
unconstitutional.
|
|
|
|
We can hope that the courts will recognize the Internet as a medium of
|
|
publication like books and magazines. If they do, they will entirely
|
|
reject any law prohibiting "indecent" publications on the Internet.
|
|
|
|
What really worries me is that the courts might take a muddled
|
|
in-between escape route--by choosing another interpretation of
|
|
"indecent", one that permits the doctor program or a statement of the
|
|
decency rules, but prohibits some of the books that children can
|
|
browse through in the public library and the bookstore. Over the
|
|
years, as the Internet replaces the public library and the bookstore,
|
|
some of our freedom of the press will be lost.
|
|
|
|
Just a few weeks ago, another country imposed censorship on the
|
|
Internet. That was China. We don't think well of China in this
|
|
country--its government doesn't respect basic freedoms. But how well
|
|
does our government respect them? And do you care enough to preserve
|
|
them here?
|
|
|
|
If you care, stay in touch with the Voters Telecommunications Watch.
|
|
Look in their Web site http://www.vtw.org/ for background information
|
|
and political action recommendations. Censorship won in February, but
|
|
we can beat it in November.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman
|
|
Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium
|
|
provided this notice is preserved.
|