Voluntary Mandatory Self-Ratings and Limits on Speech

[georgemw at speakeasy.net]

On 21 Aug 2001, at 14:10, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> 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?
> 

Harm does,  but "harm" doesn't.  It's pretty easy to claim that
books and movies etc which "glorify" "bad" behavior lead to
viewers being more likely to engage in the bad behavior glorified,
or bad behavior in general,  without even trying to claim that
a particular "bad book" was responsible for a particular crime.

I have two differnet reponses to this kind of accusation:
1) Bullshit, I'm not responsible for other people's actions.
2) If I agreed about it being "bad behavior" I wouldn't be
"glorifying" it in the first place.

> 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.

The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the crucial point 
that the people calling for labelling ("voluntary" or otherwise)
are not your customers, they're people trying to protect their
own or their children's virgin eyes from content they find
offensive or blasphemous or whatever.  You have an economic
incentive to please your customers, but you have no incentive to 
please people who aren't your customers.

George  

> Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
> student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front