[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Sean Barrett]

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Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
| Apparently so. Free speech, though constitutionally guaranteed,
| is not practically guaranteed - just look at the [[Dixie Chicks]]
| after they said something unfortunate.

Wow!  I hadn't heard that the Federal government punished them.  What
was their sentence?

</sarcasm>  Here's a clue for any products of the American public
education industry: the Bill of Rights is a list of things the
/government/ is not allowed to do.  It says /nothing whatsoever/ about
what individuals may or may not do.  I can tell you to shut up if I want
to, I can choose to not buy your CD if I want to, and if I am a business
owner, I can decline to do business with you.  None of those actions is
an infringement of your right to free speech.  What happened to the
Dixie Chicks was the free market in action, not government censorship.

| And if the teacher or school board nukes the whole thing? I'm thinking
| based on the axiom _someone's_ going to censor the Wikipedia.

You're right, and when they do, it will be a /good/ thing.  We can then
laugh and point and shout, "Hah hah, look at the asinine school board!
They're so stupid, they're censoring an /encyclopedia/!"

The only force observed to regularly get school boards to change what
passes for their minds is public ridicule.  I would be /delighted/ if a
school board censored the Wikipedia, and the more false positives we can
mock them for, the better.

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in
~ sean at epoptic.com | rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
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