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.

Comments

PC Directory

[devnullkac]

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 :-)

Internet Epilepsy

[Crash Culligan]

From their About page, I find this line to be so misleading as to be a 1984ism:

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 /. Effect.

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.)
---