On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 15:40:06 -0800, Todd Walton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What about activelinks only for new/updated/featured sites? Those are > the ones mainly of interest, right? Like a flash banner ad versus a > Google AdWord. Some sites deserve more promotion/propagation than > others. > > -todd Well, that's certainly one possibility. :-) Although, the mere fact that a site is new or updated doesn't necessarily reflect on its "worthiness" of being promoted and/or propagated. I'm going to have to give this idea more thought before I decide on anything. I would like to include at least *some* activelinks, but then if it comes down to actually picking and choosing which sites' images to include, we begin to venture into the thorny thicket of editorializing or even outright censorship, which is not something I really care to get into at all. Yes, there are some sites I would just as soon not even exist, but I feel a certain responsibility not to allow my personal feelings to influence the content of DFI, being that its sole "raison d'être", as I see it, is to provide as complete and up-to-date an index to freenet's content as possible. It's not my place to "protect" people from questionable or potentially offensive content, or even to warn them; it should be everyone's right to choose for themselves what they care to explore, and to do so without the burden of someone else's value judgements weighing on their minds. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that if I were forced to start weeding out the objectionable content, or even to merely place warnings or other editorial commentary, I would just as soon no longer maintain an index site at all, period. The spider and it resulting index, in its current mode of operation, is as unbiased and impartial as it can possibly be, neither condemning nor recommending any particular material it provides links to. I believe this is as it should be. Also, from a legal perspective, I do think it's safer to allow the spider to simply do its thing and find what it will, and to auto-generate the index with no intervention on my part, for exactly the same reason many Usenet news service providers choose to follow a "hands off" policy regarding the content of their servers. Once you adopt a policy of "filtering on content", you abandon all semblance of plausible deniability and do, in effect, assume responsibility for *knowing* about any questionable material you may be providing. At that point, you may as well just hang it up, as it is simply not humanly possible to ensure that no objectionable or illegal content can possibly "leak" out from your server or site or whatever. IANAL, and I could be mistaken on some of the finer points relating to the above, but I am reasonably certain that, should I ever find myself in the position of having to defend myself in the legal arena, I would fare much better as the operator of a completely uncensored index site than if I were actively engaged in "editing for content". Let's just hope I never need to find out, or at least that, if I do, I don't discover too late that I was dreadfully, horribly wrong. :-) -- Conrad J. Sabatier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- "In Unix veritas" _______________________________________________ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
