Re: Voluntary Mandatory Self-Ratings and Limits on Speech
On Thursday, August 16, 2001, at 10:38 AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Tim May wrote:
Given the notion that a local community may ban certain items because they violate the "community standards" of the community, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that a local community could also ban Mormonism, or Catholicism, or any religious practice they deemed to be violative of their community standards.
Not really. Most of the anti-porn crusaders base their rhetoric on some vague idea of harm caused by the material. With most religions, you cannot easily draw the conclusion that they are harmful to the community. And where some people think you can, as is the case with Satanism and the lot, one can see that the public opinion already (mistakenly) sides with regulating them.
You're missing my general point. If you prefer that I not use "religion," I could just as easily use an example where certainly people of some community think that some otherwise-constitutional practice is "harmful." I shant spend my time here constructing examples. My point was the issue of "community standards" vs. a constitution which stipulates rights and places limits on government, not the issue of whether in fact Judaism is or is not more dangerous than "Debbie Does Dallas." (I know folks who think Judaism is in fact far worse, and who hope and pray for the day when 4 million Jews in Occupied Palestine are rounded up and liquidated. I take no position on this, except to think it deeply ironic that Jews frrom America, Ireland, Denmark, Argentina, etc. all decided to go to Palestine and kick Arabs out of land they have lived on for more than a thousand years, on the bizarre grounds that a) some desert mystic claimed that YHWH gave this piece of land to some tribe, b) that Jews in Argentina whose ancestors were mainly Spanish, European, etc. need their own space to do their thing, and c) that the "collective guilt" of Americans for somehow being mostly Aryans as Hitler was means that some "sand niggers" in Palestine should be kicked off their land in favor of some yentas from Brooklyn. It will serve the Jew right if he is again liquidated, at least the ones in Occupied Palestine.)
We talk a lot here about the Constitution. Strange for two reasons: first, this is an international list, second, many of us are not exactly supporters of government in general.
I dunno. Constitutions are meant to legislate the state where the rest of the law legislates the state's subjects.
Not sure what you mean, but if I understand you, I strongly disagree. The U.S. Constitution is in fact a series of limitations on what government may do...including what it may due to its "subjects." The notion that the U.S. is a "majority rules" state is incorrect, at least in terms of what the Framers and the Constitution say.
None of the proposals for "voluntary self-labelling" are actually about any kind of voluntarism except in the Orwellian meaning of the term.
Naturally, but why not embrace and extend? The fact is, one of the reasons a good part of the CDA was struck down in the SC is the existence of self-labelling technology. The next time around, it'll probably still be a good idea to have true, voluntary self-labellers around, if not else, then to show off that "self-labelling works".
As Declan noted pithily, a slippery slope. We don't need a proposal for "voluntary self-labelling"...if it's voluntary, people can already do it. In fact, they already do. Of course, what people are now doing is not at all what the proponents of "voluntary self-labelling" apparently intend to be the voluntary labels. We all know where the slide down the slippery slope will take us.
As we discussed several years ago when the CDA was being debated, there are profound problems with self-labelling. Some people will self-label "incorrectly" for various reasons. Much debated several years ago.
Yes, I've gone through the archives on that, and plenty of other sources as well. Still, most of the critique is about why self-labelling will never be perfect. It does not render the idea completely useless -- I think of labels as metadata, some of which can be useful even if not perfect for any given use, filtering or finding hardcore S&M.
Truly voluntary self-labelling, without imposed standards, is IPSO FACTO what we already have, right? If someone voluntary says their site is "hot" or chooses to say nothing, this is "voluntary." Right?
As for misrating, that's a problem of reputation. If you can solve it in an anonymous economy, you can certainly solve it in a non-anonymous rating context.
Actually, this is a separate topic worthy of more discussion that simply saying "you can certain solve it in a non-anonymous rating context." By the way, what does anonymous vs. non-anonymous have to do with truly voluntary self-ratings, that is, whatever anonymous or non-anonymous agents _say_? A voluntary system means an uncoerced system...this point explodes in too many obvious directions for me to even try to write about here, given the low level of interest in the discussion the two of us have been having. --Tim May
On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 10:05:45PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
We don't need a proposal for "voluntary self-labelling"...if it's voluntary, people can already do it. In fact, they already do. Of course, what people are now doing is not at all what the proponents of "voluntary self-labelling" apparently intend to be the voluntary labels.
In fact, we do have voluntary self-labeling already. Any responsible webmaster will include meta tags, and adult sites generally want to be found, so they'll lard up with XXX HOT SEXY ASIAN BABES etc. On my own site, I use meta tags to denote nude photos, so properly-configured browsers can stay away (http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/nudes-abstract.html). That is what the market has come to decide on. There is demand for keywords, even these inexact ones. XML will speed this process. Other systems, such as RSACi, have their birth in government pressure and there is no evidence the market would move to adopt them in the absence of government pressure. Born in sin and bereft of virtue, they should be opposed. -Declan
On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Tim May wrote:
You're missing my general point. If you prefer that I not use "religion," I could just as easily use an example where certainly people of some community think that some otherwise-constitutional practice is "harmful."
True. Yet harm gives you cause for Common Law action, no?
The U.S. Constitution is in fact a series of limitations on what government may do...including what it may due to its "subjects."
That's also precisely what I meant, even if I expressed it a bit differently.
We don't need a proposal for "voluntary self-labelling"...if it's voluntary, people can already do it. In fact, they already do. Of course, what people are now doing is not at all what the proponents of "voluntary self-labelling" apparently intend to be the voluntary labels.
That is precisely why I said labelling is a "nice gesture". The Code must not concern itself with labelling, but you *can* do it, some people want labelled content, and there are political advantages in both rating your content and having truly voluntary raters around. Why not be one of them, then? If you don't want to, it's always a valid reason. I just think there are valid gains in rating, and so e.g. to a degree rate my own site.
Truly voluntary self-labelling, without imposed standards, is IPSO FACTO what we already have, right? If someone voluntary says their site is "hot" or chooses to say nothing, this is "voluntary."
Right?
Quite. My argument was about what is "nice", no more.
As for misrating, that's a problem of reputation. If you can solve it in an anonymous economy, you can certainly solve it in a non-anonymous rating context.
Actually, this is a separate topic worthy of more discussion that simply saying "you can certain solve it in a non-anonymous rating context."
How? Maybe we should limit discussion to this as it's more cypherpunkish than rating/labelling per se.
By the way, what does anonymous vs. non-anonymous have to do with truly voluntary self-ratings, that is, whatever anonymous or non-anonymous agents _say_?
A voluntary system means an uncoerced system...
It's a question of where you draw the line between coerced and uncoerced. If many enough of your peers think it's good behavior to label your communications, and failure to do so leads to an amount of badwill, does that constitute coercion? If not, we have a voluntary system where social pressures encourage you to rate, but where the gain is not a direct economic advantage, but rather the avoidance of the badwill of others. One might argue that such "bad behavior" should be tolerated, and that rating is no longer properly "voluntary" if rating only means you avoid an extra-legal social sanction. Nevertheless, there is a definite incentive for a non-anonymous person to rate correctly (to maintain his reputation), sometimes an incentive to misrate regardless (like when you're advocating a politically incorrect opinion), and the extra possibilities afforded by anonymity in these situations (using a disposable tentacle to communicate and/or misrate). This way, anonymity does make a difference even in an uncoerced situation.
this point explodes in too many obvious directions for me to even try to write about here, given the low level of interest in the discussion the two of us have been having.
Agreed. If the topic of rating once again surfaces, for whatever reason, we can always pick it up then. For now it does seem interest is minimal. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
participants (3)
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Declan McCullagh -
Sampo Syreeni -
Tim May