Article 52463 of news.admin.net-abuse.misc: Path: matra.meer.net!news.spies.com!sgiblab!sgigate.sgi.com!swrinde!gatech!news.mathworks.com!satisfied.apocalypse.org!news2.near.net!ceylon!genesis.nred.ma.us!neutopia From: neutopia@genesis.nred.ma.us (Doctress Neutopia) Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.misc,alt.net.personalities Subject: Stallman and Eliza Date: 14 Apr 1996 01:40:34 GMT Organization: Genesis Public Access Unix Lines: 189 Message-ID: <4kpl2i$re8@ceylon.gte.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.180.76.1 X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: matra.meer.net news.admin.net-abuse.misc:52463 alt.net.personalities:607 Below you will find an email I am posting all over Usenet about whether or not self-censorship is the action thoughful people should take to combat the CDA. Even though I believe Stallman's goal in censoring Emacs is to educate the public, I feel that without my attached response, his purpose is defeated. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 14:24:46 -0400 From: Richard Stallman To: neutopia@genesis.nred.ma.us Subject: Re: (fwd) The USENET Site of Virtue FAQ Censoring my Software Richard Stallman [From Datamation, 1 March 1966] 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. This week 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 repeats the curses 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 possibile 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------- >From neutopia@asylum.org Tue Apr 9 10:09:55 1996 Subject: self Richard Stallman, how could you lower yourself to the self-censorship of the "doctor program" of Emacs? What is wrong with you? I thought you were a man of principle, the principle of FREEDOM. Why are you obeying the Big Brother Establishment by following the oppressive law of self-censorship? Don't you know that obeying them makes you their mental slave, and thus, renders you impotent? Is it because deep down inside of you is a reformist and not a revolutionary as you have said about yourself in previous email? Or is it because you have no desire to take part in building a truly socialistic world of love, peace, ecological sustainability and true FREEDOM for everyone? I seriously wonder if you know the meaning of FREEDOM because you don't act like a free man or a man who is capable to having deep love for *any* woman whose quest is that of planetary emancipation. Can't you get it through your skull that we are living in revolutionary times and that if we want to save ourselves we have to co-create a world-wide revolution/evolution/lovolution against the nation-state capitalist system? The Clinton Administration is not going to do it for us. But there is a resistance group forming on the Net who are dedicated to using the means necessary to keep free speech as the rule of the Net. I feel our hope lies not with who will win in November's election, but that hackers will organize to overthrow the corrupt system. You have the potential to play a major role in the liberation movement if you were willing to *be* a man of the FREEDOM principle, but you are still sucking red, white, and blue lolipops. When you were late to John Gilmore's dinner party where you were the guest of honor after the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference, I got a chance to talk with your friends and co-workers about your problems. One of them thought that what you needed was something extreme to happen to you to make you change like to be kicked out of MIT. Someone else thought that you needed a parent to teach you such things like how not be be afraid to take a shower. Others thought your memory was impaired which is why you forget such things like what FREEDOM is all about. These people all care for you, but only you can change you behavior so that you will find the courage to really stand up for the concept of building a free economy based on the principle of a free uncensored cyberspace. I realize that your curiously about my mental output is practically zero, but if you ever get off your ass and dance over to a computer which you can access the World Wide Web, search my page at: http://genesis.tiac.net/neutopia/ then click on the Greco-Christian hypertext so that you can read my poem SUCK MARY. In that poem you will find some of the forbidden words being used to desecrate Mother Mary and Jesus. I do this not for the purpose of using pornographic language for the sake of entertaining pornographic minds, but to show how Christian mythology is based on a mother/son incest which is the foundation of patriarchal society. I have been warned that I should eliminate it from my web site because it violates the CDA law, however I have decided that it is against my religion to do so. If it means possibly being imprison or having to go underground to escape the unjust laws, it will not be the first time free thinkers have been persecuted. The point is to resist the persecution by joining forces so that we will find the strength and wisdom to transform global consciousness. I really wish you had it in your heart and soul to join the freedom movement but I have met many men like you don't have the inner power to live by your convictions. I am tired of trying to take the lolipop from privileged white boys mouths when all I get is hatred from them for my efforts at trying to help them grow to be great-hearted spirits. At the dinner party, one of your statements profoundly affected me. It was when you said that even if you had become as rich as Bill Gates on your software, you knew that you could never make enough money to buy the things you really wanted. Richard, what is it that money can not buy? Is it your freedom? Is it communal love or love for the other? Well, these are the things we are struggling to keep alive and it will not happen if people like you practice the debasing act of self-censorship for no other reason but to protect your own cowardly ass. Listen man, can you hear that the doctor program is still talking back to you? And there is no way you are going to be able to censor her? most sincerely yours, Eliza