kay@flame.UUCP (Kay Dekker) (01/07/85)
[[][]] >......... You may write about anything you please, >but you know that any article that might conceivably >be libellous or illegal will be scanned by a human >moderator. Your artcile will be screened by a >computer program to determine whether moderation >is necessary. For the sake of this discussion >I assume that a moderator never edits your text, >but simply determines whether it is legally safe to >broadcast it. Excuse me, but I think there may be a problem here. Both obscenity and libellousness are rather difficult to screen for. 1) According to English law, 'obscene' is defined as 'having a tendency to deprave and corrupt'. This is extremely knotty: the 'Lady Chatterley' and 'OZ' cases illustrate this. 2) There are cases where seemingly-libellous material may in fact not be so. For example, of the publication is 'in the public interest', or is 'fair comment'. I cannot see software (or even moderators) being able to screen articles for 'obscenity' or 'libellousness': it has taken juries many days to argue over these points. Furthermore, I gather that the laws which govern permissible public utterances vary wildly between countries. The screening rules must then have knowledge of the different regulations that apply over the various countries into which net-contents enter. For example, in England, we have a law which makes illegal 'Blasphemous Libel'. Prosecutions for this offence are extremely rare: it was last trundled out in 197[67] by our protector of public propriety, Mrs. Mary Whitehouse. She was offended by a poem by James Kirkup, "The love that dares to speak its name", which appeared in the British gay newspaper, "Gay News". The prosecution was successful, and the editor and the paper were fined heavily and the editor given a suspended prison sentence. How many other archaic laws and regulations would this screening software have to know about? Kay. -- "But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?" ... mcvax!ukc!flame!kay
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/10/85)
Screened by a computer program to decide if a human moderator (=censor) is required? Either the prudes are lightyears ahead of us in AI, else they'll simply force us to use euphemisms to frustrate searches for "keywords" (locutions like "the love that dare not speak its name" for homosexuality); or will they dump The Quean's Vernacular into their database, accelerating the creation of new slanguage. The only way to defeat such a counterreaction is to proscribe entire classes of nouns, verbs, etc. (OED goes into the database). This is precisely what happens in Orwell's 1984. Nicefeels doublegood, Ron Rizzo (This ISN'T my real name!)
pgp@hou2h.UUCP (P.PALMER) (01/11/85)
I think this discussion should be moved IMMEDIATELY to something like net.security. The whole idea of "moderating", which is a gross euphemism for censoring, is obnoxious (and unlikely to be accepted) anyway.
smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich) (01/12/85)
Have I missed something? The ongoing discussion on detecting `libelous' postings addresses only certain kinds of libel -- scurrilous or obscene descriptions of persons with defamatory intent -- but misses entirely kinds of libel rather more likely in this environment. Suppose I were to write: In his recent posting, Toby Robinson (not Robison!) wrote: I feel the future of AI programming lies in assembly language, since only by using assembly language can the careful programmer attain those important last few percent of available machine performance, so important to successful AI applications. I would not work for any company that insisted on my writing code in inefficient languages like Lisp or Prolog. I cannot agree with Toby on this point. ... Note that my `posting' is about a valid technical subject and is written in neutral terms of the technical field. Unless the fictional Robinson had actually made such a statement, such a posting would (I believe) be libel. With flagrant disregard for the truth, it clearly damages Robinson's reputation and presumably could also damage his employment opportunities. It is *not* necessary for me to claim someone practices nonconsentual sex with laser printers in order to libel him. He would have legal recourse against me and my employer. It might be possible, I suppose, for the automatic censor to verify quoted inclusions against the article database, but what about: At the recent SIGAI meeting in Nepal Toby Robinson (not Robison!) told me he felt the future of AI ... ... ... I cannot agree with Toby on this point. ... There is no way for a machine to verify this one. If the automatic censor must kick out any quoted or paraphrased citation for review by a human, almost *everything* will have to be reviewed! So why bother? Steve Haflich, MIT
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (01/13/85)
Please remove the newsgroup reference to net.motss on any subsequent
discussion of this topic. It's hard to imagine a less appropriate
newsgroup.
--
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA