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Freedom of Expression in Virtual Worlds
PDHoss writes "NYTimes.com has a story on freedom of expression as it applies to virtual communities, specifically 'The Sims Online.' How should issues of free speech, community standards, and censorship be addressed in the virtual world (given that we can barely agree on those issues in meatspace)?" There's also a story in the Independent, and we've mentioned this guy before.
the bottom line is that people are still going to say whatever they please, regardless of how little jimmy will interpret it.
First of all, "Freedom of Speech" in America is a loaded phrase.
"Freedom of Speech" is a government thing. It deals with the relationship between people and their government. Likewise "Censorship". Properly used, the political term "censorship" refers to a relationship between a person or persons, and the government.
None of these have to do with the case at hand. This is not a "Freedom of Speech" issue or a "censorship" issue, but something else. This is the relationship between a services provider and a client, and the political concepts of censorship or free speech have nothing to do with it.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
The answer, or rather, question, may be simpler than expected. Should these be issues at all? The Internet has the potential to be the ultimate even ground for peoples of all race, color, and mentality to communicate and be heard just as loud as the proverbial next guy. The more regulation there is, the harder it becomes for such a vision to become reality. Yes, there are such things as t3h pr0n and abominations like goatse, but ideally a system would eventually arise that permits people to filter for themselves what they would see-this is to say that it would be automated somehow, as obviously anyone can filter what their own eyes see simply by choosing whether or not to hit Enter after typing a URL.
Censorship is something to be treated very, very carefully. And we're living in a world right now where all too many people are overeager to jump on the censorship train and start filtering everything under the sun. Be careful, or else you might wind up filtering the sun as well, and where would the light come from then?
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Consider slashdot itself. Most users browse at +1 or higher, so anything moderated below that is effectively censored (ACs have a default score of 0, but they choose to post at that level).
There's a lot of crap at the 0/-1 level, but there are also a lot of valid criticisms and opinions that the moderating community doesn't agree with.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
what is that, my refrigerator?
...in the real world, you have your government's charter/constitution which allows you rights, and hopefully, a good amount of legal interpretation to further define your rights. Your government (one hopes) doesn't revoke them.
In an online world, you have the TOS of the company that makes the game, and they are the ones that define your rights, and you have to agree, or they revoke your account, as happened in this case.
It would seem that unless a collective of people started an online world like the SIMS, that it will be the game company that decides what is acceptable speech and what is not.
libertarianswag.com
Simple -- censorship [shouldn't] exist in *either* world. Filtering for young people and such, fine, but not censorship. Virtual reality should be just that -- a representation of reality.
This is a very difficult thing to make general statements about. If virtual reality ever gets to the point(and I think it will) that it actually begins to mimic reality itself, and it is used as a replacement for normal reality, THEN the philosophies for censorship, whatever they are in the majority view, should carry over.
Until then, these online games do not constitute enough of a viable replacement for the real world to be considered in the same way in terms of censorship. The content providers who run these worlds should have complete control over their own content. For them not to have control over it would sort of be a strange form of censorship itself, would it not?
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I demand this post be removed at once! The nerve...
Users should be able to form groups and communities within those worlds and those groups and communities should put into place their own cencorship policies. Or atleast rate their groups and other groups on self cencorship.
with every group or person with a rating on their cencorship and individuals with their self set (or parent enforced) tolarance levels the world would be self cencored.
Yes things would slip past, but when it does, that person (or group) would be censored by the users
either that or use slashcode and implement moderator and meta-moderator type cencorship level
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Well, since the "virtual world" is privately owned, requires money to participate in, isn't tied to government in any way, etc...I'd say it's pretty clear cut; freedom of speech doesn't apply on private property.
Let's get real here folks- what's next, arrest for murder if I cut your Massively-Multiplayer-whatever-the-hell-it-is character's throat? Jeeeeeeezus...
Please help metamoderate.
No one in these virtual worlds should be allowed to paint their dwellings the color of the YRO pages.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Pat Cadigan wrote some stories where a major plot premise is that anything that happens in a virtual online world has no legal bearing in the outside world. No censorship, no legally binding contracts, nada. Then she explores the idea. Check out 'Tea from an Empty Cup' and 'Dervish is Digital' - both are worth a read.
Waw oo epo doo wa wa wa meeee hoo boo la doo pee maa naa too?
--- Ban humanity.
The Sims Online, as a subscription service, has the rights to prevent anyone from using their service. It's kind of like private property in real life: not everyone has to be let in.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
in Alphaville, I'd form an angry lynch mob, and torch my perceived enemies virtual properties.
I would then nominate myself as Alphamale and rule the city with an iron fist.
There is no issue here. He who owns the server and pays its bills makes the rules. As a user, you are subject to the servers TOS and AUP. Don't like it? You don't have to participate.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
You do not have a right to free speech on games like "The Sims Online".
These games are a privledge, and if the communities are outraged about censorship, or anything else, well they should fight with their money.
Sidenote: This may not be the case with TSO, but i've noticed in many MMORPGS (think EQ), people are so addicted to it, despite the fact they hate the company that owns it, they continue to play it.
They still piss and moan about it but they never actally cancel the game.
Maybe thats what happened here.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
A group of people gets together under the premise of starting a virtual community. They let it grow, and eventually a fully fledged society emerges. Lo and behold, that society has evolved to the point where a breed of prostitution exists. It causes no harm unlike in meatspace, where STDs, rape and other types of violence are common. Since those of us in meatspace have linked all of these together under one disreputable roof, it stands to reason that prostitution online must fit in the same category. Let's censor it.
Let's censor it in desperate hope that nobody notices that the evil notion of selling sex really has turned out to be quite a human trait, not something derived from the devil as some religions would have us believe. Let's censor it so that nobody notices that true human nature just might not be mirrored by our current society's value system.
That's censorship. It's a layor of makeup to hide our "flaws."Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
The real issue is the fact that Ludlow was pointing out the sick and bizarre things going on--prostitution, the engaging of cybersex between adults and minors, the scammers, the brothels, and more--in a game rated "Teen."
EA wants this game mass-marketed, which would be a little hard to do with some guy pointing out how sickenly adult the game has become, far above its given rating of Teen. So, he is removed from the system.
This might seem like a minor distinction to many, but it's the difference between saying "Nothing in the Constution gives you the right to do X" and "Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government the power to restrict X". Those are really, really major differences. Living under one model is vastly different than the other.
If we see government as the grantor of our rights, we have to go begging to the federal government every time we want to do something new and hope they'll take pity on us. If we see the Constitution as a contract between government and citizens where citizens grant a specific number of powers to government, no begging is required when something new comes up that government hasn't already restricted.
Specific to the /. crowd, it might be relevant that the federal government has no legal power to control personal communications, and that would apply to the internet, regardless of MIME type. The feds may think they have the power to impose restrictions, which they probably can exercize, but they have no legal authority to exercize a power like that. And they can't prevent you from becoming an ISP with a more reasonable (to you) TOS and running ISP's with silly TOS requirements out of business.
We are the collective of the people, or "We, the People", who have the rights (government only has powers), who can make this internet anything we want it to be, by becoming a part of it's infrastructure or paying to be members of this virtual community. Who's stopping you, unless you're a "subject" or citizen of a country where you've been fooled into believing that the source of your rights is some government?
The owners/company running the online Sims game can and should filter out anything they don't like.
The users forfeited their 'freedom of speech' first admendment 'rights' inside the game when they agreed to the terms of service.
The Sims owners should not be forced to tolerate anything they don't want to.
Grow up. The first admendment is not a tool to force your words to be heard in private places (e.g., the online game, a private club of dues paying members).
Your making one mistake: these virtual worlds are supposed to be escapes from reality, not substitutes. If I want reality, I'll go outdoors or to work and get the real thing. I want an escape when I go online, a place were I can escape my normal responisbilities. A place were I can act as who I am and not who I am at work. If they make these virtual worlds mirrors of this one with all the restrictions and censorship as this one, how will it be an escape? It won't be. If these games becomes political where all that has to happen is one person out of 1,000,000 complains and we get instant censorship, then were will we escape too? A video game inside one of these virtual communities? And if these virtual worlds become too restrictive, they won't be fun anymore and who will be paying to play them then?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Your[sic] making one mistake: these virtual worlds are supposed to be escapes from reality, not substitutes. If I want reality, I'll go outdoors or to work and get the real thing. I want an escape when I go online, a place were I can escape my normal responisbilities. A place were I can act as who I am and not who I am at work. If they make these virtual worlds mirrors of this one with all the restrictions and censorship as this one, how will it be an escape? It won't be. If these games becomes political where all that has to happen is one person out of 1,000,000 complains and we get instant censorship, then were will we escape too? A video game inside one of these virtual communities? And if these virtual worlds become too restrictive, they won't be fun anymore and who will be paying to play them then?
/..
Interesting perspective. I'd long held views similar to yours, until I ran across systems that had an immense amount of freedom for the users. Inevitably, flamebait and spammers pollute the virtual atmosphere enough to warrant, and in fact *demand* some form of censorship. If you don't think that's the case, simply look at
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Raph Koster, overseer of Ultima Online, and previously of Star Wars Galaxies, has had some very specific thoughts on this topic.
Read on if you're interested.
--I hate big sigs.
What makes anyone think that virtual space will be any different from meat-space? My point is: History is repeating itself. Not because of technological failure or societal collapse, but because of simple human nature . Flame away. Then call me back in 10 years, after you've changed your mind.
C|N>K
Thats the whole point. Its an escape from the flawed reality. Why should there be ANY rules? Why should there be a government if we don't want one? People should have the right to roleplay anything they want, its their imagination, their mind, their thoughts. It's not real life, its a game. The only reason the game is fun is because theres no rules. When you make the game into "sim-world" its no longer a game. The content producers should not be the controllers of the environment. The communities will form and decide what they want.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Well let's see. Freedom of expression can only lead to two things, it can either display the author's acumen or expose his stupidity. If it results in the former, then we must congratulate the author for his brilliance. But if it results in the latter then we can either rebuke him or simply ignore him. And hopefully he'll learn from his mistake(s).
I say that both outcomes can only benefit the author and his audience. So I must conclude that freedom of expression is good, not whacked.
I've devised a perfect system that lets the general public decide what they hear/read:
1. Everyone reads the questionable material.
2. Who ever reads it and regrets it votes "I wish I hadn't read this."
3. Once all votes are in, they are tallied.
4. If a certain percentage of the votes were "I wish I hadn't read this," the material is censored.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
"... then were will we escape too? A video game inside one of these virtual communities? And if these virtual worlds become too restrictive, they won't be fun anymore and who will be paying to play them then?"
Yes. I think the future of these online systems is to become so general purpose that you do indeed have activities embedded in them. While there is as yet no standard for immersive 3D-VR I think in the long run being in such an environment should be akin to "browsing the web", that is, not a specific activity at all but just a "mode" of travel.
Second Life, for example started out with a rather complex mechanism for scoring points and turning those points into virtual cash. That economy quickly got so complex and lopsided that I don't think anyone knew how to correct the balance. Fortunately a major simplification of the system has made the accumulation of virtual dollars less important, which means you can still "play monopoly" if you choose, but opting out doesn't have any dire consequences.
If you read "Snow Crash" you will remember that "going online" (I think they called it "goggling-in") was simply the only way to use the network. If you needed to send or receive written text you simply did that on virtual I/O devices. I see 3D-VR eventually evolving away from these special purpose shoot-em-ups and into something much more generic, with shooot-em-ups, chess, cards, socializing all as coexisting activities in that space.
Well, for those that understand the law, and rights, it's simple. When you are on someone elses property, wether it be their house, or their server.. you have no right to free anything. I can't walk into a store and start marching around with abortion protest signs. I will first be asked to leave, and then arrested for trespass. That's the way America works, for better or for worse. A lot of people think they should be given rights to so many things, but don't realize they forfeited those rights when they failed to read the small print on the "TOS."
You have to realize that every provider of goods, either real or electronic has rights of their own. In this case one really stands out: the right to refuse service.
Unfortunately, drug deals are solicited and arranged in chat rooms. Prostitution is solicitied (in both directions) and arranged in chatrooms. Sex is solicited in chat rooms and often is of a less-than-legal variety (read: paedophilia). Stolen property from the real world is sold on Ebay with no way of tracing it.
Unfortunately, the negative effects of allowing a virtual no-man's land of legal scrutiny in online social systems are far too vast to ignore. I've seen both sides of all of the above for as long as the personal computer and modem have existed. Make no mistake, there is PLENTY of reality going on online and it has been going on for more than twenty years.
The simplest answer is "my house, my rules". There is a clear separation between government censorship and private censorship.
In a sense, the People own the United States (irony, I know) and as such, the government (because it is owned by The People) cannot impose rules that prevent The People from speaking their mind. Now, certain allowances have been made for community standards and what not (and probably not wisely or justly), but all-in-all, very few compromises can be made to that rule without chucking it altogether. Since it is in writing, in principle, the People have the right to say what's on their minds, no matter how offensive or inane or stupid it is.
It's an entirely different matter when it's free speech on private property. The People don't own my house (or my server) and as such, I can freely tell others who speech I disagree with to go somewhere else. That is allowable censorship (although, to be honest, I don't think it's "censorship" in the sense that most people seem to). For the same reason that you can't walk into my house, take a dump on the rug, and leave, you can't just come onto a forum I've established and say whatever you like. Even if I imply that you can say whatever you like, unless you have a written guarantee, you are subject to my arbitrary whims about the content of your speech when posted on a forum I'm established.
The same holds true no matter the size of the forum as long as it is ostensibly private property. The publisher has every right (even a duty under their contract with their shareholders due to potential lawsuits) to monitor speech with they may deem harmful to the "community" and to remove such speech as they may deem necessary. They are not a government - they are not suppressing The People, just some people who use their services. Yes, it probably is censorship, but it is not Censorship, and they should have every right to do it as they see fit with their own property.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
The censorship in The Sims, however, reminds me of malls. Laws vary from state to state regarding whether malls (almost always private property) have the right to censor speech by preventing public demonstrations, speeches, leafletting, etc... I think the point to remember is that as public spaces become enclosed and property rights are extended to more areas the public gathers, it is important that free speech rights allow democratic dialogue to continue.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I agree with censorship when it is to protect someone, such as the president, or even to protect you or I from harm.
This is the ambiguity that causes the struggle surrounding censorship. What constitutes harm? Are you talking about yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater? Or are you talking about some kid reading a book called "365 ways to cook human flesh" when he's a kid and turning into a cannibal when he's older? What is "harm" exactly when you're talking about speech?
The issue is further complicated when you think that here in the US, most kids learn that "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." Censorship is the exact opposite of that statement that we all grow up with.
There are those who would prevent you from reading any material on any religion other than Christianity, because they fear for your soul. In their eyes, it is harmful to consider other religions as valid representations of reality because to do so could bar you from Jesus's august presence in your afterlife! So for them, using your statement, it's perfectly OK to ban the Torah, the Koran, the Satanic Bible, the Compleat Witch, anything on astrology, and anything that even remotely represents any of those books and any others in a positive light. Is that a world you want to live in?
As far as this whole online censorship deal in role-playing games, I don't think the government should get involved. If they really feel the need, then just rate them periodically, just like we have with movies, and let the parents decide. Or let the kids decide for themselves, if you must. If the government gets involved and starts telling us what we can and can't say in an online role-playing game, then we've got big trouble. But what about the corporations?
Consider this: Some Disney dude goes into Pixar and says "You can't use the word feces in this stupid cartoon, find a better word." Is that censorship? Or is it quality control? So Disney sets up an online gaming world. They tell the gamers "You can't use the word feces in this stupid online game, find a better word." Is that censorship? Disney tries to appeal to stupid kids (not smart kids) and stupid parents (not smart parents). If a bunch of h4xx0rs show up in their game and start saying "Fuck you!" to everyone they meet, then Disney can't sell their game to their target demographic anymore. So I say those h4xx0rz should go pick a different game, or a different server, or something.
The only time this becomes a real problem is when there's only one online gaming setup. And we deal with that through regular free market tactics, right? ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
There comes a time when private property starts to act like public property, and where free speech should start to apply because the public interest should ethically outweigh that of a large corporate landholder (and even the very existence of private large corporations in general is morally suspect). Clear examples are shopping malls and convention centers. In the virtual world, free speech should apply to a newspaper's discussion forum. Less clear is an entertainment venue -- normally I would say "no", but with a phenomenon as large as The Sims, I'm not so sure.
1) Not all online games have a monthly fee. Some are free.
2) Some online games have set-ups which allow something other then credit card payments. I can't think of any right off-hand that will take cash if mailed to them, but I have heard of ones that will accept checks or money orders. For the former, it's unusual but not uncommon for teenagers to have checking accounts, but practically anyone can get a money order.
3) Some kids do have credit cards.
4) Some kids use mommy or daddy's card without letting them know. Sure, if they get caught, the game (ha-ha) is over, but for upper-class/rich parents, who could conceivably have hundreds to thousands of dollars of credit card purchases per month, it could go unnoticed for quite some time.
5) Filters work both ways. On many MMOPRGs, it not only keeps "impressionable young minds" from seeing some other character swearing like a sailor, but given the ToS on many (if not all) of these games, it also keeps the offending player from losing his or her account. (And lost accounts mean lost cash for the company running the game.)
6) Most online games do not fall under the "I paid my monthly fee, now I get to do whatever the heck I want!" setting. There are responsibilities and rules to follow, aka the Terms of Service. The company running the game can (and in many cases) and has changed these to reflect changes in the way the game is played, or to stop new cheating programs, or to deal with existing problems.
It may not be perfect, but hardly anything is.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
EA owns this game. If they think that banning a particular individual from their game will enhance gaming experience of other players, they should do it. If they thought wrong, they will lose players, and, with them, lose money. Similarly, if EA thinks that this player is "high-maintenance" and costs more money than he and those who might get upset by the ban bring, it's fine for EA to ban him.
Now, I could sue my employer for unfair termination, particularly if they had not detailed or educated me on their sexual harrassment policy.
But legislation has provided that operators of online forums have extensive safe harbor protections. For a while there, this was sketchy (see Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy , where an investment firm successfully sued Prodigy over a defamatory post and Prodigy lost because it was ruled they took such an active hand in controlling board content that they became lost Safe Harbor protection), but later legislation broadened safe harbor provisions to such an extent that EA/Maxis can boot anyone, clean things up as they see fit, or leave them messy, and they have little or no legal liability to the people who got booted or the people harmed/offended by content that stays. IANAL, but AFAIK, they've got a pretty free hand and the only thing to govern their actions is the free market.
Of course, it's quite possible they were just getting in over their heads when they created the online world they did.
A friend of mine was talking at work Friday about a friend of hers who would create new Sims Online characters just to bring them back to his primary character's residence, kill them, and bury them in the living room.
When the world devolves to a place where a man can find a willing victim for cannibalization online, it's hard for weirdness not to filter into online worlds. When a search for "grief players" on Google turns up 1,800 results, you know that this is no limited phenomenon.
Perhaps the question is not whether there should be freedom within alternate worlds (or as absolute as you can get within the bounds of the program), but how you have to balance freedom against other needs and wants.
How much freedom is necessary to not only complete the objectives of the game, but make the game a fun place to hang out? Should you limit interaction between avatars to only that which is needed to complete game objectives and otherwise phase out community aspects? Can you take out the elements that grief players exploit and yet leave the game with enough oomph to make it popular with a big enough mass of people for it to be profitable?
It's too easy to just lash out at EA and Maxis for booting this guy. Given, it may be a knee-jerk reaction and probably wrong on a moral or ethical level, but virtual worlds are pretty new and the optimal construction and management of them for maximum player enjoyment with minimum grief player exploitation is not a set formula by any stretch of the imagination.
Honestly, a smart move would be to create a virtual world based on that "Manhunt" game they've been advertising on TV or based on GTA. Make a world of pimps, whores, seedy strip joints, dominatrixes, S&M clubs... Make a world where giving grief to others without getting grief is the challenge, and throw in a bunch of sex and sleaze to boot.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a big commercial draw (though it probably would be), but it would probably be a great way to siphon away grief players from other games.
No city ever completely cleans up its red light district or skid row necause they need them. People are going to sell and buy drugs. People are going to sell and buy sex. People are going to fall into the gutter and be more interested in staying there than getting out. These districts serve a purpose... keeping that stuff out of the suburbs and better urban neighborhoods.
That's the sociology of the games. If you conside
Start a happiness pandemic
When I was beta testing TSO, I started to get a few ideas about what might be possible with this sort of game. Obviously, the sexual deviance mentioned in the article occured to me (not in any vivid detail, I assure you). I thought the more interesting possibilities lied in more normal, healthy human relationships, however. For example, I was then (and am still now) involved in a long-distance romantic relationship. I began to contemplate the idea of a virtual date with my girlfriend. We could eat out, go see a show, take a romantic walk in the park. Of course, it doesn't compare to any of these activities in real life, but a virtual date, or "proxy intimacy", as I'll call it, is light-years beyond AIM as a communication medium for lovers. Of course, for single sims, nothing says you can't meet someone actractive at the club and begin a whole online relationship (once again, much more interesting than the lurid creepiness of singles chatrooms).
Unfortunately, my dreams for this sort of interaction never panned out. TSO, while trumpeted as being freeform and open-ended in the extreme, wound up digging itself into a rut pretty quickly. Some of its problems lie in the fact that it ranks users on ladders, and introduces systems of competition which are entirely artificial to a game which attempts to emulate "real life". Case in point: statistics on the richest and most popular sims. In the former case, you have a bunch of hyper-capitalists trying to outpace eachother in the generation of a hyperinflating virtual currency (more on the economic problems in TSO later). In the latter, you see an even more bizarre and surreal sort of competition, wherein online characters do whatever they can to get a "friend" designation from other players and then, for the most part, ignore those characters (what an odd definition of friendship).
Another difficulty is introduced in the zoning system used for property. On a basic level, there is none. This sounds good enough, as it should theoretically enable the construction of any sort of enterprise. The unfortunate result of this, however, is that most places just look more or less like houses. There's no concept of shared or leased property, either, as every property has a distinct owner or owners (thus, there are no apartment buildings, no malls, no office parks, nothing). And, although the game lays out properties with physical locations on a map of your chosen city, these locations have no real meaning whatsoever. Properties are not connected to adjacent properties in any special way, and thus the concept of a neighborhood is utterly nonexistent (the lack of anything approximating geography in-game is a very significant barrier to the formation of actual communities). Travelling anywhere in the game is a point-and-click affair, so there's nothing like walking down the street to the drugstore, or taking the subway cross-town to the nightclub. Similarly, you can't walk over to Bob's for the barbeque.
To be sure, people do hold many social events in the game world, but conducting them with friends (in the traditional sense, no the wierd in-game definition) can be difficult. There is very little consistency to online relationships, as the only people you're likely to run into with any frequency in a particular establishment (without having made prior plans) are the owners. Locations are no help, due to the fact that each is a node unto itself (I actually never met any of my neighbors in Alphaville. I doubt many people have). The chance of repeatedly encountering someone by chance then becomes exceedingly small. This, I think, contributes to some of the romantic and sexual wierdness of the game. In TSO, you can't see that cute girl at the Deli a few times during lunch and then work up the nerve to strike up a conversation with her. Better ask if she wants to do the make out action now while you can! Now, if TSO behaved like a more realistic analogue of life, there wouldn't be such a market for prostitution in the gameworld, as people would probably be dating and even
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I first noticed these about a year ago, with my favourite MMORPG. Its about swearing. The company has a "don't swear in public"-policy in place. If you do, you might end up being thrown out of the game. banned.
Maybe this makes it a friendlier place for some, it definitly makes it a more hostile place for non-US inhabitants.
Why is that? Apart from the US and some very rigid religious countries, the whole world swears. Europe swears, from spain to turkey, from italy to norway. Everybody swears, and not just in his mother-tongue, but also in foreign languages. Even university-professors will say "fuck". Not only in private, but in the auditorium.
Given this culture of swearing, a ban of swearwords in online-games amounts to having the whole rest of the world to have something like scissors in your head, constantly censoring yourself (I suspect, however, that US-inhabitants do actually the same, maybe even without noticing). It's not funny. It's hostile.
Name things by its name. It's "fuck", and its not spelled "f*ck" or any other atrocity you do to the language in the name of bigotry and hipocrisy.
To be frank, such a ban friggin sucks and is a sure sign of some screwed-up state of mind, forcing the very same bigotry you're guilty of upon the rest of us. This is orwellian newspeak at its best. Congratulations, you're already half-way there.
Fuck you.
--
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Not to nit-pick, but the actual lines from the US Constitution are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It's article I, otherwise known as "the first amendment in the Bill of Rights" and it's quite a bit different from your line of "Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of speech" Your paraphrasing couldn't be much more in opposition to what the Constitution intended. This is what we get for making the study of the Constitution a two week interlude in the middle of American History in 9th grade, and the silent masses stay silent as freedom after freedom is abridged because it is too easy to pretend that these freedoms were never ours in the first place.
A privately-owned-and-operated virtual reality is no different from a privately-held TV station: the owner can restrict the content. That's probably not a Good Thing, but the same thing is happening in actual communities, with public spaces disappearing. The solution is to create more public spaces (virtual or actual, same difference) where public rules still apply.
I think a far more interesting question applies to conduct in virtual reality, because what we "do" in a simulated environment is not something we're doing in actual reality. If I beat up someone in The Sims Online, that's not actual assault and battery. And it sounds to me like what's becoming a problem in this situation is what people are doing, not what they're saying. Even free-speech absolutists will usually support restrictions on conduct (killing, theft, etc.) in actual reality. But what about virutal reality?
Virtual worlds and new media are confusing derivatives of the material world of precedent which conditions our expectations. So we can clarify the issues by looking at the acts we execute in the material world, which are actually governed by known laws, before we consider what virtual laws govern virtual actions in virtual worlds.
When I post a message in Slashdot, the Slashdot rules are considered *after* the rules that apply to me in the room where I sit with my keyboard and monitor. If I'm not inciting a riot, or lying about a clear and present danger, or slandering or libeling someone, or any of the other prohibitions we recognize on expression where other rights are protected from damage by that expression, then I'm free to express myself. The legal jurisdiction over private property like Slashdot's servers might be in question, but I am free to act, and it is up to those around me to cope with the ramifications (within the constraints against damage that I just mentioned).
If anything, virtual worlds offer *more* freedom, because the damage I can cause is less than in the material world, and remedies to any damage confined to the virtual world are much cheaper and easier to apply. Many opportunistic lawyers will be making lots of money by fooling technophobe judges into believing that virtual spaces are the jurisdiction in which virtual acts are to be judged. As geeks, we are experts in the overlap of the material and the virtual - we must remain cognizant of our rights in the material world, and not let the rise of virtual worlds eclipse them. When we talk with other people about what's "virtually right", either online, privately, in public or in the media, we will help everyone understand that the brave new virtual world offers *more* freedom, and we will not accept less.
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make install -not war
No, I don't have any moral or ethical issues with drug use. I truly do not care. What I _DO_ care about is that by nature of being illegal, people are forced to get their drugs from god knows who, who in turn probably got it from whomever and on and on. Sure, there's a sense of "but I _know_ MY dealer" and "I know my limit," but come on, EVERYONE says that and still people end up with bad [speed|pot|acid|extacy|whatever] and then they end up in the hospital. I spent a decade of my life working in Medicaid and social services so I know the costs and I saw the cases every friggen day for ten years.
Fundamentally, all I am stating is that A) the laws are there, like it or not and B) there IS a public health component to them and C) the cost is enormous. How hard is that to grasp? Should be hard at all because it's all FACT. You want to tell me that the 17yo kid who did too much crank and ended up with his chest sawed open for open-heart surgery didn't "have a public health component" to his drug use? PLEASE.
Personally, I think drug use SHOULD be legalized so that the public health issues can be dealt with in a more reasonable way (not the least of which is ensuring you're snorting methamphetamines and not DRAIN-O for godssake) than is so in the criminal system we have in place now. The current situation with drugs is like abortions in the fifties. People will still do it, but it would be nice if they didn't have to go down under the docks to a complete stranger and end up dead in the process. However, I get the impression that for many people, the underground nature of it all is half the thrill, so they'd really prefer that it stay illegal and stay dangerous while they harp about the evils of government conspiracies to control their lives.