| 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 |
| 57 | possible meaning is the meaning it has for television, so I'm using |
| 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 | |
| 85 | Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman |
| 86 | Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium |
| 87 | provided this notice is preserved. |