Christopher Mahan wrote:
No, not ditto for the Tiananmen stuff. Yes it's
horrible, but did you
know that a 1850 rebellion cause 50 million deaths in China? Where's
that article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_Ping_Rebellion
Yes, the US government (bombmaking, etc),
There is no law in the US which would prevent Wikipedia from
publishing detailed bomb-making instructions, despite Senator
Feinstein's (D-California) ongoing efforts.
If the US government does attempt to ban speech that properly goes
into our encyclopedia, we should disboey that law.
the UK government (a very recent letter on this very
mailing list,
or is it the other? about the academy for gifted kids),
I think that can *hardly* be classed as an attempt to censor
wikipedia, by the UK government. It was a routine complaint about a
bad article, and a request for assistance in understanding the best
way to fix it.
But to be clear: if the UK government does attempt to ban speech that
properly goes into our encycloepdia, we should disobey that law.
the French government (Nazi stuff),
Again, I have been sharply critical of French government censorship
policies, but I do not think that their laws directly impact us. But
again to be clear: if the French government does attempt to ban speech
that properly goes into our encycloepdia, we should disobey that law.
Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. And the subcategory
of speech that we call NPOV is even _moreso_ a fundamental human
right. To outlaw advocacy is deeply wrong, but to outlaw information
itself...
--Jimbo