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1 | Censoring my Software |
2 | Richard Stallman | |
3 | [From Datamation, 1 March 1996] | |
4 | ||
5 | ||
6 | Last summer, a few clever legislators proposed a bill to "prohibit | |
7 | pornography" on the Internet. Last fall, right-wing Christians made | |
8 | this cause their own. Last week, President Clinton signed the bill, | |
9 | and we lost the freedom of the press for the public library of the | |
10 | future. This week, I'm censoring GNU Emacs. | |
11 | ||
12 | No, GNU Emacs does not contain pornography. It is a software package, | |
13 | an award-winning extensible and programmable text editor. But the law | |
14 | that was passed applies to far more than pornography. It prohibits | |
15 | "indecent" speech, which can include anything from famous poems, to | |
16 | masterpieces hanging in the Louvre, to advice about safe sex...to | |
17 | software. | |
18 | ||
19 | Naturally, there was a lot of opposition to this bill. Not only from | |
20 | people who use the Internet, and people who appreciate erotica, but | |
21 | from everyone who cares about freedom of the press. | |
22 | ||
23 | But every time we tried to tell the public what was at stake, the | |
24 | forces of censorship responded with a lie: they told the public that | |
25 | the issue was simply pornography. By embedding this lie as a | |
26 | presupposition in their statements about the issue, they succeeded in | |
27 | misinforming the public. So here I am, censoring my software. | |
28 | ||
29 | You see, Emacs contains a version of the famous "doctor program", | |
30 | a.k.a. Eliza, originally developed by Professor Weizenbaum at MIT. | |
31 | This is the program that imitates a Rogerian psychotherapist. The | |
32 | user talks to the program, and the program responds--by playing back | |
33 | the user's own statements, and by recognizing a long list of | |
34 | particular words. | |
35 | ||
36 | The Emacs doctor program was set up to recognize many common curse | |
37 | words, and respond with an appropriately cute message such as, "Would | |
38 | you please watch your tongue?" or "Let's not be vulgar." In order to | |
39 | do this, it had to have a list of curse words. That means the source | |
40 | code for the program was indecent. | |
41 | ||
42 | Because of the censorship law, I had to remove this feature. (I | |
43 | replaced it with a message announcing that the program has been | |
44 | censored for your protection.) The new version of the doctor doesn't | |
45 | recognize the indecent words. If you curse at it, it curses right | |
46 | back to you--for lack of knowing better. | |
47 | ||
48 | Now that people are facing the threat of two years in prison for | |
49 | indecent network postings, it would be helpful if they could access | |
50 | precise rules via the Internet for how to avoid imprisonment. | |
51 | However, this is impossible. The rules would have to mention the | |
52 | forbidden words, so posting them on the Internet would be against the | |
53 | rules. | |
54 | ||
55 | Of course, I'm making an assumption about just what "indecent" means. | |
56 | I have to do this, because nobody knows for sure. The most obvious | |
25c42a30 | 57 | possible meaning is the meaning it has for television, so I'm using |
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58 | that as a tentative assumption. However, there is a good chance that |
59 | our courts will reject that interpretation of the law as | |
60 | unconstitutional. | |
61 | ||
62 | We can hope that the courts will recognize the Internet as a medium of | |
63 | publication like books and magazines. If they do, they will entirely | |
64 | reject any law prohibiting "indecent" publications on the Internet. | |
65 | ||
66 | What really worries me is that the courts might take a muddled | |
67 | in-between escape route--by choosing another interpretation of | |
68 | "indecent", one that permits the doctor program or a statement of the | |
69 | decency rules, but prohibits some of the books that children can | |
70 | browse through in the public library and the bookstore. Over the | |
71 | years, as the Internet replaces the public library and the bookstore, | |
72 | some of our freedom of the press will be lost. | |
73 | ||
74 | Just a few weeks ago, another country imposed censorship on the | |
75 | Internet. That was China. We don't think well of China in this | |
76 | country--its government doesn't respect basic freedoms. But how well | |
77 | does our government respect them? And do you care enough to preserve | |
78 | them here? | |
79 | ||
80 | If you care, stay in touch with the Voters Telecommunications Watch. | |
81 | Look in their Web site http://www.vtw.org/ for background information | |
82 | and political action recommendations. Censorship won in February, but | |
83 | we can beat it in November. | |
84 | ||
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85 | Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman |
86 | Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium | |
87 | provided this notice is preserved. |