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