lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (01/06/85)
The legal issues surrounding obscenity, even in such simplistic cases as word usage, are exceptionally cloudy and continually generate conflicting court cases, depending on the locale. Therefore, there are no firm guides to use in this area, other than our own senses of reason. I don't think the existence of a single "dirty" word would necessarily subject an article to oblivion. On the other hand, many messages that contain such words (these days) in the general interest newsgroups are mindless quick flames (or personal attacks) that would have no place in a quality information service in any case. I've seen responsible national news publications occasionally use some of "the" words when it was *necessary* in a particular context. But it is not necessary, or desirable, to encourage the use of such language in the course of "ordinary" discussion, especially when some facets of the audience, in many areas, would find such "gratuitous" use of language to be offensive. Such language just isn't necessary in most situations, and is best left for private conversations, and not for general interest nationwide news broadcast services. In other words, my view is that an isolated message like: "Network user Foo is a stupid cretin--I hope his boss fires him." would be rejected as surely as (assuming the stars below were filled in with the original text): "Network user Foo is a f**king idiot--I hope his boss fires him." Neither message has any useful content that is suitable for "publication" (national distribution and broadcast). On the other hand, if people are going to insist on the *gratuitous* use of words that many will find offensive, when that language is not necessary to express the idea of the message, I feel that some editing might be in order, in exactly the same manner as national news media or publications would perform. For example. Would it *really* be necessary for someone to send a message like (once again, fill in the stars with the actual text): "I think the file I/O system described in net.foo earlier is totally full of sh**. We can f**king well do better than that!" I say that this sort of wording would be totally *unnecessary* in such a message meant for general distribution, would offend a not-inconsiderable number of people, and given the cloudy nature of the obscenity laws, could potentially cause other problems as well. Please keep the following in mind. I don't care in the least how people talk amongst themselves or what sort of language they use in their person-to-person electronic mail. I certainly don't claim to have a "pristine" mouth myself in such situations. And I don't think there's anything automatically wrong with particular words when their use is really necessary. However, all things considered, I think that on Usenet they tend to be used frequently mainly to offend or for their "shock" value alone, and not for any other reason. Such usage, given the desired goals of the project, the state of the law, and other factors, would seem to be inappropriate for national broadcast, in my opinion. --Lauren--