> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Erik Reuter
...
> Baloney. The Dad has reduced the number of viewpoints, nothing else
> has. Again, you can rationalize all you want, but it won't make it
> true. Censorship is censorship.
It's not censorship if *we* decide what is appropriate to this list. If I'm
a radical about anything, it's that an Internet-based community is owned by
its membership. I'd reserve the term "censorship" for situations in which a
few with special powers make such decisions for the majority, primarily when
it's done by a government.
Every community like this one, set up by volunteers, having no real
existence as a legal entity, with no rights inherent to itself, easily
transferable to a new hosting facility, is self-deterministic.
In my opinion, our first reaction to a suggestion that something isn't
appropriate to the list should be to ask if the community wants to consider
such a decision. Calling it censorship is abrogating ownership, making
ourselves into victims of whoever we imagine owns the list. If there's an
enemy, we've met him and he is us, to paraphrase Pogo.
Less often quoted, the next panel of that Pogo strip was, "We are surrounded
by insurmountable opportunity." But it is only insurmountable if we imagine
that we don't have any control of our destiny.
I suspect that Internet-based communities will have to come up with systems
of decision-making about such matters, or they'll fade (or flame) away.
Nick
