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Dmoz (aka AOL) Changing Guidelines In Sketchy Way
The Cunctator writes: "The Open Directory Project Guidelines (also known as dmoz.org, purchased by Netscape and then AOL) have recently (10/18/2000) been changed, in a few dangerous ways. The two things of interest are:
The newly censorious Illegal Sites description ('Sites with unlawful content should not be listed in the directory. Examples of unlawful content include child pornography; material that infringes any intellectual property right; material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence); and material that is libelous.') which would eliminate such categories as Culture Jamming (a category I edit) and Suicide and Hacking; And the new copyright notice, which now gives Netscape (aka AOL) full copyright, which before remained in the editors' hands." DMoz has pissed off a lot of editors in the past for screwing with their content, but so far not enough to actually hurt themselves.
I'm a 'editall+catmv' at ODP (see my editor profile) and have been an editor practically since it started, and these guidelines are currently being discussed on the internal ODP editor forums.
The copyright, at no time, remained with the editor. If it did, then ex-editors could use court rulings to remove their listings. Netscape do own the copyright (and always have) - but with an 'non-exclusive licence', meaning you grant them the right to use the data but you still have full rights to do what you want with it.
The illegal sites section has been under planning for about 9 months now - and the mud has 'flown' over certain issues (mainly drugs and warez, but some porn). What some editors fail to realise is the ODP could be sued, and Netscape lawyers are just trying to 'cover their backs'.
As far as I'm concerned, this, like many other issues, will be resolved over time in the internal forums - with assistance from Netscape lawyers where there are 'gray areas'.
Richy C.
--
Suicide is wrong
So what should the punishment be? Death?
Suppose someone came to you and said he was going to kill himself by slashing his jugular with a broken W2K CD. You could either talk him out of it altogether, which will probably lead him to ignore you totally, or you could point out the relative painfulness of this method, and suggest he investigate alternatives.
There are very few well-planned suicides. One of the reasons for this is that the act of planning to kill yourself can be a sufficiently positive experience to pull you back from the brink.
--
--
E_NOSIG
If a directory cannot point you to material which advocates currently illegal activities, then it cannot help you engage in reasonable discussions about how laws should be changed.
Ah well... another forum bites the dust. Guess we'll have to take Thomas Jefferson's advice and build another directory, just a little farther out west :-)
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Yeah, we can get rid of this "Romeo and Juliet" filth:
Act 1, Scene 2:
CAPULET
But saying o'er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PARIS
Younger than she are happy mothers made.
--
Then in Act 3, Scene 5, Romeo and the 13 year old Juliet are in bed together.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
From their About page, I find this line to be so misleading as to be a 1984ism:
/. Effect.
The Open Directory is a self-regulating republic where experts can collect their recommendations, without including noise and misinformation.
Uhhhh, yeah. With this new change, it's self-regulating except where other people regulate it, or it regulates itself to avoid controversy. And experts can't collect their recommendations in certain categories because they're deemed inappropriate.
As someone pointed out, censorship is damage, and the Internet tries to route around it.
This has given me a new metaphor for it: censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence, and tries to keep people from finding out things they would otherwise want to know.
Let's take a look at the sensitive issue of "suicide."
Blocking "suicide," for instance, keeps people from learning about ways people can kill themselves. It also keeps people from learning ways NOT to kill themselves. I once saw a Suicide FAQ that described the various means people have tried, and the circumstances under which the people were left as vegetables. If a successful suicide is painful, try an unsuccessful one.
Blocking that category also makes it harder for people to recognize suicidal impulses, or what to do to prevent suicide. They may be found under some other Mental Health category, but which I couldn't tell you because the server just bowed under the
A proper "suicide" section might also include information for people trying to recover from the suicides of others. That might also be under mental health, but "mental health" is rarely the first keyword that pops into your mind when you think "suicide," is it?
So they remove the knowledge. That won't stop people from trying it. It may keep a few from succeeding, but those people won't be any better off. And then the people they leave behind will wonder what to do about it...
...and they have the audacity to start the first chunk of the 'About' text with The Internet Brain. They view the Internet as a repository of knowledge, and then start selectively ignoring parts they don't like... I don't need to tell you what this reminds me of.
(It's not until they actively try to excise those parts they don't like that it becomes a form of lobotomy.)
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Secondly, censorship is not this great evil. Each and every one of us practices censorship every time we -don't- tell our respective bosses exactly what they can do with their latest batch of memos or policy decisions. Is that wrong? Ummm, I dunno about you, but I like being able to eat.
Sure, that's "self-censorship", rather than mandated from outside, but if a given set of thoughts are (in themselves) intelligent and what you'd probably do anyway, WHO THE HELL CARES?! Is life on this planet so miserable that we have to resort to the Not Invented Here Syndrome?
If society is grasping to the same straws that nearly destroyed companies like IBM and ICL, maybe there -should- be pages on suicide. NIHS is invariably fatal, usually slowly and often painfully.
This kind of reminds me of attitudes I've seen in America, with regards to the seatbelt laws. I've seen plenty of people who do not wear seatbelts. Not because they don't want to, not because they don't think they're a good idea, but because someone ELSE had the nerve to tell them they should.
If you do the opposite of what you would only do anyway, PURELY because someone else thinks it's a good idea, you are still letting those people control what you do. Resenting those people, then, is stupid and petty. But all too frequently observed.
I'm not going to tell anyone here to get a life, because you already have one. Just stop handing it over, reversed or otherwise.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I wrote [words to the effect]
AOL's legal department has forced editors to remove their content. The warez category has now been replaced by something called 'Software Piracy'. See here: http://direct ory .google.com/Top/Computers/Hacking/Software_Piracy/ (this is the Google mirror, because Dmoz has been slashdotted).
You can see the old content here http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:directory.goo gle.com/Top/Computers/Hacking/War ez/
I wrote to one of the editors (all but one have since resigned), since there wasn't any explanation on the site, and here's what he said:
To: Anonymous Coward Tue 19/09/00 07:14
it's been decided by the legal dept of dmoz that we no longer provide links to sites giving out illegal material. so they have pretty much deleted all the warez sites. anyways i'm not involved anymore as i resigned from my position as warez editor.
[name removed]
Anyway, looks like AOL have censored the so-called 'Open' Directory out of existence.
Great.
So much for freedom on the net. It looks like we are left with AOL stifling diversity again, just like it did when it censored words like 'breast' in the past.
Basically corporations like AOL will control and censor the internet to suit its own interests, and there's nothing anyone can do. No 'free' organization could afford the infrastructure for a truly Open Directory, and so we end up with the 'Censored' directory.
Even if someone did setup a true Open Directory (please), because AOL controls all the content, and because affiliates will use the AOL version, it wouldn't get the profile it deserves, and so it wouldn't get the sites - DMOZ gets most of its visitors thanks to its use on sites like Google.
Anyway, I urge you all:
And do it now!)
Free Anne Tomlinson!!
This isn't about stopping crime, it's simply about keeping themselves as free of liability as they can. I guess it's a result of the lawsuit-crazy world we live in, that organizations are driven to these sorts of decisions.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This could provoke a shitstorm, but it has to be said:
Can we have an informed discussion about the evils (or otherwise as some may argue) of child porn without access to it?
First, to cover some objections:
1. Child porn (that we all can agree is porn, ie non consenting sex with children) continues to violate the victim.
In this case, I agree. However, it may be the case that some victims of this may (for the best of reasons) wish to have this available, perhaps for research, or to prove that it did in fact take place.
2. That it legitimizes or furthers the child porn industry
If the materials were being solicited or purchased then this is almost certainly true, however, apparently the material exists, and some people must therefore have access to them (police for instance).
But, there may well be *legitimate* reasons to wish to access 'child porn'.
The first is that it may well *not* be child porn and is being misrepresented. I know that a police investigator in Australia said that a lot of the stuff they find in pederasts houses is children's clothes catalogues and the like.
The second, related in some instances to the first is for the purposes of research, journalism, discussion and counseling.
Please Note:
I am not apologising for pederasts, paedophiles or child pornographers, I find the idea abhorrent and am glad that our society shares this view. I do not advocate sex with children or support anyone who does. I do not, and never have possessed any material remotely likely to be classified as 'child porn'.
My identity is well known (and easily discoverable), and I am posting this non-anonymously to make the point that you don't have to be some sleazoid hidden away on the net to have an interest in the *topic* of child porn and all that that entails.. I wish to make the point that censorship is censorship, and a lot of the apologists for censorship use porn, and particularly kiddie porn as the excuse to clamp down on freedom. Child porn existed before the net the material was shared thru various networks. Clamping down on discussion of this problem will not make it go away, and in fact will probably make the situation worse.
The point is that people engaging in the sex, soliciting it, purchasing it, or profiting from its exploitation are the criminals.
If someone has a site dedicated to the legitimate discussion of this issue, it may well have disturbing images to get its point across, or to facilitate proper discussion of the issue. I do not believe that this, is in the absence of the above criteria, makes the site or those pictures in that context, or links to the site, illegal or immoral.
Sorry for the long citations but I think this needs to be well remarked. Besides this is directly related to my previous post.
:) US law stops governing ODP. Any law stops governing it. Now it is just unlawful/illegal. By who? The Supreme Court of Directors of AOL?
The newguidelines:
"Sites with unlawful content should not be listed in the directory. Examples of unlawful content include child pornography; material that infringes any intellectual property right; material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence); and material that is libelous.
Following these guidelines, editors should not use terms for subcategory names that would incorrectly suggest a category contains links to illegal content (e.g., Warez or Bootlegs). Similarly, ODP descriptions should not make reference to illegally obtained content (e.g., software or music), as such descriptions could incorrectly suggest an intent by an individual editor or the ODP to promote the distribution of such materials"
The old guidelines:
"Since US law governs the ODP, sites that infringe on US law should not be listed. Copyright infringement, certain kinds of pornography and death threats are illegal. The legality or illegality of a site is not based on the legality or illegality of the subject. When in doubt, just always remember - sites that clearly violate US laws or International law should not be listed."
Sincerly, a great move by AOL...