None of which has anything to do with the people who insist that all observed climate change is anthropogenic, or even bad, as far as that goes. It also doesn't help when they run temp tests near urban heat islands that didn't used to exist.
We are in a non-equilibrium state
Just for fun, please mention the last time we were in one.
You're so cute. Do you mean, say, using military force to stop Gadhafi from following through on his promise to slaughter people in a city not friendly to him? Do you mean, perhaps, using force to deal with Saddam after he invaded Kuwait? Or do you mean something more like pushing back against the communist invasion of Korea? Let's make this easy: name your pre-emptive war (not counting the US Civil War, of course - a different thing entirely).
WW1 and WW2 were fundamentally capitalist wars
By which you mean "territorial wars," just like Europe had been having within itself for centuries, right? I suppose you're going to say that the US started those conflicts, rather than playing a crucial role in ending them, right?
I get it. You hate businesses. You don't think people should make money. You think that everyone is entitled to services (like, say, a visit to a podiatrist) paid for by someone else. Just say it, and quit BSing about history.
Really? You think that because you can't help who your parents are, that therefore you should be born being entitled to someone else's work? You think that is what Jefferson was all about? Wow.
In theory elected officials are supposed to protect the people from this influence
No. That's what parents are supposed to do. Do you really think it's the job of government to somehow protect people from their own ignorance about the fact that a business has to charge more for what they sell than it costs them to buy it in order to avoid going out of business? If I understand you, your complaint is that some people buy things in larger quantities, keep an inventory, and make them available at a higher price and with much greater convenience when people actually want them. You think the government is supposed to prevent this from happening?
And yes: some wars are indeed fought over idealogy. Because the wrong idealogy can result in tyranny. For example, Stalin's idealogy, or Hitler's, resulted in untold millions of unnecessary deaths. The only way to stop those idealogies from impacting more people was to physically stop those who were acting under them.
Because he isn't insisting on it, but is rather throwing it out there as an option.
He's not putting it out there as something not to do - he's suggested it as superior to the writer and the writer's customer striking a deal, with or without the involvement of publishers, retailers, and other possible middle-people. He's floating it as a good thing. His endorsement is a value judgement, by him, based on his moral framework. People need to understand what makes this guy tick.
RMS is worried because the more information we concentrate into the hands of few the more power we ourselves lose.
Ah, I see. So his plan is to keep doing what we're doing, but to use a large new government bureaucracy to keep track of who is writing what, and how often it's read, so that the government can carefully allocate forcibly collected taxes in order to fund each meticulously tracked writer according to just how downloaded each of their works is. You do actually understand the irony in what you're saying, right? Right?
You'd spend a tiny part of every day laboring on behalf of all writers.
Ah. So everybody has to work part of their day for this one special class of people. Just the writers. Not photographers, musical composers, political cartoonists, poodle grooming designers, poets, sidewalk chalk artists, sandcastle sculptors, mimes, painters, landscape artists, textile weave pattern programmers, software developers, or any of those other pretenders. We'll just have to work a tiny part of our day for one special group, or go to jail if we refuse to. Check. Got it. Special people called writers have a claim on part of your day, but millions of other creative people do not.
It's good to know that you wouldn't want the centrally managed government labor assignment scheme to get out of control, to the point where your principles might matter as much as the percentage of your day that other people are entitled to, simply because they choose to identify themselves as "writers." Sounds like you've got it pretty well defined. No need to worry about watercolorists, sax players, recording engineers, lighting directors, cinematographers, set designers, tattoo artists, or anybody else. Just those entitled demigods, the Writers. Out of curiosity, what's my share of your day? I'm writing, right now.
if you can't stomach the thought of any part of your hard work benefiting others in your society for any reason
Stop right there. A great deal of my hard work gets spent in all sorts of ways I don't particularly like. But I can vote for the people who make those policy decisions, and if I'm persuasive enough, get other people to vote with me, thus changing such policies if they get out of line.
But Stallman's suggesting a situation where I have to support people (for example, some religious wingnut who thinks women shouldn't be allowed to read and write, and he writes a book on that subject) whether I like it or not, because he prefers that over a private company entering into a private contract with a private person over the nature of the mutually agreed upon licensing of some content to a device and system they've both chosen to support. Don't pretend you don't see the difference, or Stallman's hypocrisy on this topic.
Ah. So, because we have government programs and tax incentive decisions that don't sit well with you, you're all set to get behind centrally managed, government-employed artists being paid for by the labor of people who have no interest in their work? Do you even hear yourself?
I'm glad to see that you've been following what I do for 80 hours a week, and can arrive at that value judgement.
Stallman, of course, is very visible. And his inane ramblings and Purity Tests do more harm than good when it comes to the credibility of FOSS, etc. He comes across more like some sort of Hippie Taliban Fire and Brimstone bundle of obnoxious contradictions (such as the case in question here... where the best cure for what he considers to be a minor loss of freedom is a huge new program of indentured servitude where we all are slaves to writers, whether we like 'em or not). When that stuff comes out of someone's mouth, it's perfectly reaonable to point out the sinister implications and the bag of contradictions that it represents.
A rather large amount of blank media is taxed already
Which is just as morally poisonous, and for all the same reasons.
it'd probably end up being more accurate than our current system
"Accurate?" What does that even mean? I only care about one form of accuracy. If I don't want to buy a book, I want that to cost me $0. Stallman, on the other hand, is talking about charging me money anyway, and then laundering it through a gigantic new government bureaucracy that cannot help but involve untold thousands of new government workers, overhead costs, and the involvement of that government in choosing which writers get rewarded how, with other people's money. And in the current state of affairs, that would be with money borrowed from already bankrupted future generations.
it's just a suggestion
Which makes it less morally repugnant... how? All it does is reinforce the twisted notion that the best way to pay people for their creative work is through a centrally managed government bureaucracy, with government policies (always subject to politics) deciding who the winners are. Who cares if the market makes bad calls about the visibility or rewards of one writer vs. another? I much prefer that over the Ministry Of Books And Artist Standards Of Living deciding such things.
There is little difference today between giant corporations and government except the name by which one calls them.
Yeah, that and the fact that they aren't the same thing at all. Other than that part. You do understand that Stallman's advocating a financial relationship that carries with it the use of force if you don't play ball, right? I can choose not to buy from Amazon. But I can't refuse to pay taxes when my government goes with the Stallman Plan and uses taxes (or wage garnishment, if you aren't cooperative, or seizure of your assets if that doesn't do it, or jail time, if that's what it takes) to deprive you of choice so that your money can be distributed to other people as Stallman sees fit. Because, Stallman's all about Freedom, except when he's not.
Stallman is talking about DRM and such, not that everything should be free.
No. He's suggesting that because DRM is (to him) an intolerable offense against him, that everyone should be taxed so that government bureaucrats can then be paid to distribute that money to people who write books (and who align themselves correctly, of course, with the way those government people require them to, if they want other people's money). He's not saying things should be free. He's saying that you should be forced to pay for them, whether or not you want them or think the writer deserves your financial support. He's not advocating for "free," he's advocating for "we should all be slaves to everyone who calls themselves a writer because I don't like Amazon's business model, even though hundreds of millions of other people do and freely choose to use it."
I suppose that when he spends as much time as he does twisting himself into knots to explain some of his positions, that it's possible he doesn't actually mean to sound as Orwellian as he does. But really... force people to spend part of each day (on pain of imprisonment, if they refuse) working to provide food, rent, and iTunes accounts for writers that they'd never in a million years otherwise choose to support? I don't want to spend part of every day laboring on behalf of a guy writing a book about alien abduction and its impact on the arrival date of the antichrist, or about the personal triumphs of Hugo Chavez, or some pedofilic manifesto.
And of course Stallman will have to expand on the details a bit... because how shall we compensate that guy writing a book in a coffee shop in Brussels? Should US tax dollars pay his way through life, too? Or would Amazon have to work with the government in Belgium to tax the people of that country so that people in the US can read the bad Neal Stephenson rip-off the guy's working on? Do US taxpayers also get to pay "writers" who happen to be false personas representing propoganda committees in China, producing books extolling the virtues of censorship in a healthy society?
Ah. Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group. Not that said government would play favorites or use any sort of capricious policy in deciding which writers get money. Not that anyone would jack up download numbers to skew the how-much-money-should-they-get stats, of course. And if that was a problem, well, all we'd need would be more government monitoring of who's downloading what, right, Richard?
Why do people even listen to this clown? The fact that he'd even mention such an idea shows what a bunch of toxic and mixed/contradictory premises make up the foundation of his world view.
Please define that, specifically. For example, many people may consider the fact that you personally take home more money at the end of the week than you need to cover the costs of two meager meals per day, two sets of clothes, and a cot in a tent to be... completely unreasonable profit-seeking on your part. Do you seek to make enough money to set some aside? To improve what you can do with your existence? To handle new projects of one sort or another? How many dollars is reasonable for that purpose, and by which standards? What would you say to someone who told you that you're wrong in your personal choice of those standards, and so they're going to trash your belongings until you agree with them?
the city is partially to blame for not having a backup plan to begin with
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with his criminal culpability.
He'd be just as guilty of arson if he attempted to burn a city building with good sprinklers as he'd be if he chose to burn down a building without them.
In what way? He said what he said in the (real!) context of Terry Childs being actually guilty of exactly what they said he was guilty of doing. Despite being caught betraying the public (for whom he chose to work) with his ridiculous, delusional power play, he continued to obstruct the people trying to make sure that the city could have control over the taxpayer-owned infrastructure he was treating like his own. As the GP said, if he chose to continue to fight against his employers and the taxpayers of the city, despite being shown to be a total jerk, then yes: he should have expected and understood that he was going to come down a lot harder than he otherwise would have. The only moral offense in this case was his.
but we should instead discuss whether he did the right thing.
He did not do the right thing. He chose to bypass many options available for whistleblowing on his direct knowledge of actual illegality. Of course, all he did was have a big tantrum, and blindly steal hundreds of thousands of documents to demonstrate the "bad place" he was in, emotionally (his words).
He did more good than harm
So, you're willing to cut him some slack because you think he was well-meaning, if clumsy. But you aren't willing to stipulate the same thing about, say, people trying to run a US embassy and delicate relations in Yemen? Or people trying to make the most of having Al Queda captives who know things like the identity of one of Bin Laden's gophers?
The only life they seem to have endangered to date is Ossama Bin Laden's.
You have that exactly backwards, but of course you know that. It's two dozen special forces people that were put more at risk. Do you really dislike them that much? What's your point, exactly?
I want to see a module that would let us know how much money/. gets anytime it publishes one of these Drupal articles, can you do that?
This information should be easy enough to come by. The huge business service corporations that, because of the billions of dollars that trade hands as they set up CMS platforms for dog clubs, fanboi clubs, and utterly unread blogs for obscure non-profit organizations, make up the cartel we refer to as "Big Drupal" - those companies are mostly publicly traded, and their advertising expenses should be detailed in their shareholder reports. When you're dealing with a huge thing like Drupal, with millions of users and tons of revenue involved, it's no mystery.
Oh, wait. That's total BS because your entire premise is, too. People talk about it because it's powerful and appears to actually solve a lot of problems for people who actually have a clue about complexity. Don't worry, you can keep on using Blogger from Google.
When we argue about semantics, we're arguing about how a word is used, and the meaning that it brings with its use. Debating whether or not censorship includes deciding (personally) not to say something (or to un-say something) absolutely is semantics. But when people say "just semantics," they're being dismissive about the differences between word choices or about the appropriateness of a word's use.
As for the definition you've cited, you're ignoring the only part that makes it meaninful: "to avoid castigation" - meaning, the phrase, as used, is meaningful only in the sense that one values continued participation in whatever group you fear will castigate you. If you want to hang out with Mac fanboys, you self-apply the group's censorship rules about praising Bill Gates. The group has the censorship rule (or has established the expectation of the penality of castigation) and the only "self" part about it is the personal decision to continue to share the group's values/rules. Don't like a university's censorship of some sort of religious wacko speech made by roving wannabe prophets on doorsteps of every fraternity and dorm? Leave the school. Don't like Castro's censorship of your speech praising free enterprise? Leave Cuba. Oops, can't do that! Now we're talking real censorship, in the way that it really matters... and in the way that whiny people frequently invoke the word while shrilly complaining about something that makes them mad, but which really isn't censorship at all.
From the Collins 10th Unabridged World English Dictionairy, on the phrase "self-censorship:"
the regulation of a group's actions and statements by its own members rather than an external agency
The term is used in reference to the individual only in a more poetic way, to paint the image of two layers of one's mind fighting over whether or not to say something, and weighing the consequences of doing so (as in, one having no choice but to bite one's tongue, because the phrase that's being checked is simply an ill-advised thing to say... you, yourself, aren't going to send you to jail or kick you out of your club of one if you say it anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
We are in a non-equilibrium state
Just for fun, please mention the last time we were in one.
there is NO justification for pro-active war
You're so cute. Do you mean, say, using military force to stop Gadhafi from following through on his promise to slaughter people in a city not friendly to him? Do you mean, perhaps, using force to deal with Saddam after he invaded Kuwait? Or do you mean something more like pushing back against the communist invasion of Korea? Let's make this easy: name your pre-emptive war (not counting the US Civil War, of course - a different thing entirely).
WW1 and WW2 were fundamentally capitalist wars
By which you mean "territorial wars," just like Europe had been having within itself for centuries, right? I suppose you're going to say that the US started those conflicts, rather than playing a crucial role in ending them, right?
I get it. You hate businesses. You don't think people should make money. You think that everyone is entitled to services (like, say, a visit to a podiatrist) paid for by someone else. Just say it, and quit BSing about history.
Really? You think that because you can't help who your parents are, that therefore you should be born being entitled to someone else's work? You think that is what Jefferson was all about? Wow.
In theory elected officials are supposed to protect the people from this influence
No. That's what parents are supposed to do. Do you really think it's the job of government to somehow protect people from their own ignorance about the fact that a business has to charge more for what they sell than it costs them to buy it in order to avoid going out of business? If I understand you, your complaint is that some people buy things in larger quantities, keep an inventory, and make them available at a higher price and with much greater convenience when people actually want them. You think the government is supposed to prevent this from happening?
And yes: some wars are indeed fought over idealogy. Because the wrong idealogy can result in tyranny. For example, Stalin's idealogy, or Hitler's, resulted in untold millions of unnecessary deaths. The only way to stop those idealogies from impacting more people was to physically stop those who were acting under them.
Because he isn't insisting on it, but is rather throwing it out there as an option.
He's not putting it out there as something not to do - he's suggested it as superior to the writer and the writer's customer striking a deal, with or without the involvement of publishers, retailers, and other possible middle-people. He's floating it as a good thing. His endorsement is a value judgement, by him, based on his moral framework. People need to understand what makes this guy tick.
RMS is worried because the more information we concentrate into the hands of few the more power we ourselves lose.
Ah, I see. So his plan is to keep doing what we're doing, but to use a large new government bureaucracy to keep track of who is writing what, and how often it's read, so that the government can carefully allocate forcibly collected taxes in order to fund each meticulously tracked writer according to just how downloaded each of their works is. You do actually understand the irony in what you're saying, right? Right?
You'd spend a tiny part of every day laboring on behalf of all writers.
Ah. So everybody has to work part of their day for this one special class of people. Just the writers. Not photographers, musical composers, political cartoonists, poodle grooming designers, poets, sidewalk chalk artists, sandcastle sculptors, mimes, painters, landscape artists, textile weave pattern programmers, software developers, or any of those other pretenders. We'll just have to work a tiny part of our day for one special group, or go to jail if we refuse to. Check. Got it. Special people called writers have a claim on part of your day, but millions of other creative people do not.
It's good to know that you wouldn't want the centrally managed government labor assignment scheme to get out of control, to the point where your principles might matter as much as the percentage of your day that other people are entitled to, simply because they choose to identify themselves as "writers." Sounds like you've got it pretty well defined. No need to worry about watercolorists, sax players, recording engineers, lighting directors, cinematographers, set designers, tattoo artists, or anybody else. Just those entitled demigods, the Writers. Out of curiosity, what's my share of your day? I'm writing, right now.
if you can't stomach the thought of any part of your hard work benefiting others in your society for any reason
Stop right there. A great deal of my hard work gets spent in all sorts of ways I don't particularly like. But I can vote for the people who make those policy decisions, and if I'm persuasive enough, get other people to vote with me, thus changing such policies if they get out of line.
But Stallman's suggesting a situation where I have to support people (for example, some religious wingnut who thinks women shouldn't be allowed to read and write, and he writes a book on that subject) whether I like it or not, because he prefers that over a private company entering into a private contract with a private person over the nature of the mutually agreed upon licensing of some content to a device and system they've both chosen to support. Don't pretend you don't see the difference, or Stallman's hypocrisy on this topic.
Ah. So, because we have government programs and tax incentive decisions that don't sit well with you, you're all set to get behind centrally managed, government-employed artists being paid for by the labor of people who have no interest in their work? Do you even hear yourself?
I'm glad to see that you've been following what I do for 80 hours a week, and can arrive at that value judgement.
... where the best cure for what he considers to be a minor loss of freedom is a huge new program of indentured servitude where we all are slaves to writers, whether we like 'em or not). When that stuff comes out of someone's mouth, it's perfectly reaonable to point out the sinister implications and the bag of contradictions that it represents.
Stallman, of course, is very visible. And his inane ramblings and Purity Tests do more harm than good when it comes to the credibility of FOSS, etc. He comes across more like some sort of Hippie Taliban Fire and Brimstone bundle of obnoxious contradictions (such as the case in question here
A rather large amount of blank media is taxed already
Which is just as morally poisonous, and for all the same reasons.
it'd probably end up being more accurate than our current system
"Accurate?" What does that even mean? I only care about one form of accuracy. If I don't want to buy a book, I want that to cost me $0. Stallman, on the other hand, is talking about charging me money anyway, and then laundering it through a gigantic new government bureaucracy that cannot help but involve untold thousands of new government workers, overhead costs, and the involvement of that government in choosing which writers get rewarded how, with other people's money. And in the current state of affairs, that would be with money borrowed from already bankrupted future generations.
it's just a suggestion
Which makes it less morally repugnant ... how? All it does is reinforce the twisted notion that the best way to pay people for their creative work is through a centrally managed government bureaucracy, with government policies (always subject to politics) deciding who the winners are. Who cares if the market makes bad calls about the visibility or rewards of one writer vs. another? I much prefer that over the Ministry Of Books And Artist Standards Of Living deciding such things.
There is little difference today between giant corporations and government except the name by which one calls them.
Yeah, that and the fact that they aren't the same thing at all. Other than that part. You do understand that Stallman's advocating a financial relationship that carries with it the use of force if you don't play ball, right? I can choose not to buy from Amazon. But I can't refuse to pay taxes when my government goes with the Stallman Plan and uses taxes (or wage garnishment, if you aren't cooperative, or seizure of your assets if that doesn't do it, or jail time, if that's what it takes) to deprive you of choice so that your money can be distributed to other people as Stallman sees fit. Because, Stallman's all about Freedom, except when he's not.
Stallman is talking about DRM and such, not that everything should be free.
No. He's suggesting that because DRM is (to him) an intolerable offense against him, that everyone should be taxed so that government bureaucrats can then be paid to distribute that money to people who write books (and who align themselves correctly, of course, with the way those government people require them to, if they want other people's money). He's not saying things should be free. He's saying that you should be forced to pay for them, whether or not you want them or think the writer deserves your financial support. He's not advocating for "free," he's advocating for "we should all be slaves to everyone who calls themselves a writer because I don't like Amazon's business model, even though hundreds of millions of other people do and freely choose to use it."
I suppose that when he spends as much time as he does twisting himself into knots to explain some of his positions, that it's possible he doesn't actually mean to sound as Orwellian as he does. But really ... force people to spend part of each day (on pain of imprisonment, if they refuse) working to provide food, rent, and iTunes accounts for writers that they'd never in a million years otherwise choose to support? I don't want to spend part of every day laboring on behalf of a guy writing a book about alien abduction and its impact on the arrival date of the antichrist, or about the personal triumphs of Hugo Chavez, or some pedofilic manifesto.
... because how shall we compensate that guy writing a book in a coffee shop in Brussels? Should US tax dollars pay his way through life, too? Or would Amazon have to work with the government in Belgium to tax the people of that country so that people in the US can read the bad Neal Stephenson rip-off the guy's working on? Do US taxpayers also get to pay "writers" who happen to be false personas representing propoganda committees in China, producing books extolling the virtues of censorship in a healthy society?
And of course Stallman will have to expand on the details a bit
Ah. Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group. Not that said government would play favorites or use any sort of capricious policy in deciding which writers get money. Not that anyone would jack up download numbers to skew the how-much-money-should-they-get stats, of course. And if that was a problem, well, all we'd need would be more government monitoring of who's downloading what, right, Richard?
Why do people even listen to this clown? The fact that he'd even mention such an idea shows what a bunch of toxic and mixed/contradictory premises make up the foundation of his world view.
a reasonable profit
Please define that, specifically. For example, many people may consider the fact that you personally take home more money at the end of the week than you need to cover the costs of two meager meals per day, two sets of clothes, and a cot in a tent to be ... completely unreasonable profit-seeking on your part. Do you seek to make enough money to set some aside? To improve what you can do with your existence? To handle new projects of one sort or another? How many dollars is reasonable for that purpose, and by which standards? What would you say to someone who told you that you're wrong in your personal choice of those standards, and so they're going to trash your belongings until you agree with them?
the city is partially to blame for not having a backup plan to begin with
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with his criminal culpability.
He'd be just as guilty of arson if he attempted to burn a city building with good sprinklers as he'd be if he chose to burn down a building without them.
your reasoning there is morally offensive
In what way? He said what he said in the (real!) context of Terry Childs being actually guilty of exactly what they said he was guilty of doing. Despite being caught betraying the public (for whom he chose to work) with his ridiculous, delusional power play, he continued to obstruct the people trying to make sure that the city could have control over the taxpayer-owned infrastructure he was treating like his own. As the GP said, if he chose to continue to fight against his employers and the taxpayers of the city, despite being shown to be a total jerk, then yes: he should have expected and understood that he was going to come down a lot harder than he otherwise would have. The only moral offense in this case was his.
Yes, That's correct. And it's perfectly fine because nobody is forcing you to use that service to share pictures of your cat with your Aunt Sukey.
but we should instead discuss whether he did the right thing.
He did not do the right thing. He chose to bypass many options available for whistleblowing on his direct knowledge of actual illegality. Of course, all he did was have a big tantrum, and blindly steal hundreds of thousands of documents to demonstrate the "bad place" he was in, emotionally (his words).
He did more good than harm
So, you're willing to cut him some slack because you think he was well-meaning, if clumsy. But you aren't willing to stipulate the same thing about, say, people trying to run a US embassy and delicate relations in Yemen? Or people trying to make the most of having Al Queda captives who know things like the identity of one of Bin Laden's gophers?
Sounds to me like Wikileaks kept us from sitting on our ass and doing nothing
And instead, just raiding every house in that large, primarily military-populated city, but doing it sooner to make you feel better?
The only life they seem to have endangered to date is Ossama Bin Laden's.
You have that exactly backwards, but of course you know that. It's two dozen special forces people that were put more at risk. Do you really dislike them that much? What's your point, exactly?
Damage by who?
Damage by people who thought it was inappropriate for the NSA to be tracking satellite phone communications to find these guys.
Didn't we learn anything from the whole "we tracked him by his cell phone" braggadocio fiasco?
That wasn't bragging. That was leaking, meant to do political damage to the Bush administration.
I want to see a module that would let us know how much money /. gets anytime it publishes one of these Drupal articles, can you do that?
This information should be easy enough to come by. The huge business service corporations that, because of the billions of dollars that trade hands as they set up CMS platforms for dog clubs, fanboi clubs, and utterly unread blogs for obscure non-profit organizations, make up the cartel we refer to as "Big Drupal" - those companies are mostly publicly traded, and their advertising expenses should be detailed in their shareholder reports. When you're dealing with a huge thing like Drupal, with millions of users and tons of revenue involved, it's no mystery.
Oh, wait. That's total BS because your entire premise is, too. People talk about it because it's powerful and appears to actually solve a lot of problems for people who actually have a clue about complexity. Don't worry, you can keep on using Blogger from Google.
When we argue about semantics, we're arguing about how a word is used, and the meaning that it brings with its use. Debating whether or not censorship includes deciding (personally) not to say something (or to un-say something) absolutely is semantics. But when people say "just semantics," they're being dismissive about the differences between word choices or about the appropriateness of a word's use.
... and in the way that whiny people frequently invoke the word while shrilly complaining about something that makes them mad, but which really isn't censorship at all.
... you, yourself, aren't going to send you to jail or kick you out of your club of one if you say it anyway).
As for the definition you've cited, you're ignoring the only part that makes it meaninful: "to avoid castigation" - meaning, the phrase, as used, is meaningful only in the sense that one values continued participation in whatever group you fear will castigate you. If you want to hang out with Mac fanboys, you self-apply the group's censorship rules about praising Bill Gates. The group has the censorship rule (or has established the expectation of the penality of castigation) and the only "self" part about it is the personal decision to continue to share the group's values/rules. Don't like a university's censorship of some sort of religious wacko speech made by roving wannabe prophets on doorsteps of every fraternity and dorm? Leave the school. Don't like Castro's censorship of your speech praising free enterprise? Leave Cuba. Oops, can't do that! Now we're talking real censorship, in the way that it really matters
From the Collins 10th Unabridged World English Dictionairy, on the phrase "self-censorship:"
the regulation of a group's actions and statements by its own members rather than an external agency
The term is used in reference to the individual only in a more poetic way, to paint the image of two layers of one's mind fighting over whether or not to say something, and weighing the consequences of doing so (as in, one having no choice but to bite one's tongue, because the phrase that's being checked is simply an ill-advised thing to say