TDPL a bad idea?

Mike Parker aldacron at gmail.com
Wed Feb 3 00:37:05 PST 2010


dsimcha wrote:
> == Quote from Jeff Nowakowski (jeff at dilacero.org)'s article
>> BCS wrote:
>>> Group = citizens of china
>>> controller = government of china
>>>
>>> for the case in question (this NG)
>>>
>>> group = people posting on NG
>>> controller = people in NG wanting someone banned.
>>>
>>> I see a difference
>> The government of China are Chinese people. I see no difference. Once
>> you create a "controller" class in the newsgroup, they become the
>> government.
> 
> The difference IMHO has nothing to do with how democratic the process is.  It has
> everything to do with the intention and with how much recourse the censored person
> has.  There are two differences between government censorship in a democracy and
> censorship of a newsgroup:
> 
> 1.  The former is meant to prevent the exchange of ideas that those in power find
> disagreeable or don't want to be exchanged.  The latter isn't intended to
> **prevent** the exchange of any idea, only to improve the signal to noise ratio by
> mildly limiting **where** they can be expressed.
> 
> 2.  If the government censors you, you don't have any recourse short of picking up
> your entire life and moving to a different country.  If a newsgroup mod censors
> you, the barrier to posting whatever you want to post somewhere else is very low.
>  If noone reads it because you end up having to post it to alt.spam or something,
> well, freedom of speech doesn't mean people have to listen to you if they aren't
> interested in what you have to say.

And ultimately, Freedom of Speech is only applicable as far as it is 
enshrined in law. In the United States, it happens to be a 
constitutional amendment. But it specifically does not grant the right 
for people to say what they want, when they want, where they want. What 
it does is prohibit the federal government from placing any restrictions 
on speech, nothing more. So, in the United States at least, Freedom of 
Speech has no meaning in a newsgroup/online game/chat room, or whatever, 
other than that defined by the moderators/owners/maintainers.

And for the record, the United States is not a Democracy. It's a 
Republic. Though, it's often referred to as a Democratic Republic these 
days, since we have moved a bit closer to Democracy since the founding.



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