[WikiEN-l] Press coverage listing the HD-DVD key

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 5/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Now, I'd like you to think what Wikipedia and Wikimedia could do in
> response should thugs with money really try such an odious attack on
> us for writing obviously and blatantly encyclopedic information in an
> article, such as naming the damn key in the article about the damn
> key.

You tell 'em David!

Yea! and those evil thugs at Microsoft!  We'll name the darn windows
source code in the article about windows source code leaks, and screw
them if they think they can stop us! and screw those prudes in the
federal government, we will illustrate our articles about child porn
with gosh-darn genuine freshly raped pre-teens if we damn well please!
And whats this BS about worry about spreading libel about some dude?
We're in the US-fkin-A and there ain't no one that can take away our
FREE SPEECH, heck S230 says that we're always immune from liability
for distributing material published by others, and as far as I can
tell it doesn't matter if we know it's wrong or not! So who cares if
we say that the Pope likes little boys? He's probably a jerk anyways.
Someone wrote it, it's interesting, and encyclopedic so we should
print it! Anything less would be some communist censorship bullshit!

*ahem* .. Now that .. that.. is out of my system.

David please consider that societies have long compromised freedom in
the absolute sense to make our lives livable. Some times, they get the
balance wrong... sometimes very wrong, and I strongly believe as
individuals we should fight against it when they do.  But we must
remember that for *any* rule there will be some people who believe
that ignoring it is the righteous thing to do.

I see nothing in your argument which would allow us, as a community,
to choose to ignore some of these laws but not others, other than a
roll of the dice and luck of the draw regarding the moral compass of
those who have come to the table on whatever day the matter is
discussed. I believe the logical and neutral conclusion of the
position that it is okay for our project to ignore some laws because
some member feels it is righteous is that we should ignore any law
whenever some member thinks it is righteous.

I for one am really appreciative that our actions are constrained by
law.  We have found an amazing decision making process in NPOV, one
which allows people of diverse background and beliefs to come to a
consensus.  But NPOV doesn't help us make value judgements.   Many
important things DO require value judgments, and I do not see that we
have any track record in handling such things well.  At least with the
constraints of law I can feel comfortable that at our worst our
community will not decide to do anything too awful, because the value
judgements that prevent such things have often been made for us by our
societies and codified into law.

Sometimes the law is a pain, sometimes it is wrong. But someday it
might be the law, and only the law, that is keeping us from doing
something utterly terrible ... Some days I think we're already there.
I hope you keep this in mind the next time you suggest we *should*
ignore the law because you personally think it would be righteous to
do so, and because you think we could leverage our PR might to get
away with it.