dsimcha wrote:
== Quote from Jeff Nowakowski (j...@dilacero.org)'s article
BCS wrote:
Group = citizens of china
controller = government of china
for the case in question (this NG)
group = people posting on NG
controller = people in NG wanting someone banned.
I see a difference
The government of China are Chinese people. I see no difference. Once
you create a "controller" class in the newsgroup, they become the
government.
The difference IMHO has nothing to do with how democratic the process is. It
has
everything to do with the intention and with how much recourse the censored
person
has. There are two differences between government censorship in a democracy and
censorship of a newsgroup:
1. The former is meant to prevent the exchange of ideas that those in power
find
disagreeable or don't want to be exchanged. The latter isn't intended to
**prevent** the exchange of any idea, only to improve the signal to noise ratio
by
mildly limiting **where** they can be expressed.
2. If the government censors you, you don't have any recourse short of picking
up
your entire life and moving to a different country. If a newsgroup mod censors
you, the barrier to posting whatever you want to post somewhere else is very
low.
If noone reads it because you end up having to post it to alt.spam or
something,
well, freedom of speech doesn't mean people have to listen to you if they aren't
interested in what you have to say.
And ultimately, Freedom of Speech is only applicable as far as it is
enshrined in law. In the United States, it happens to be a
constitutional amendment. But it specifically does not grant the right
for people to say what they want, when they want, where they want. What
it does is prohibit the federal government from placing any restrictions
on speech, nothing more. So, in the United States at least, Freedom of
Speech has no meaning in a newsgroup/online game/chat room, or whatever,
other than that defined by the moderators/owners/maintainers.
And for the record, the United States is not a Democracy. It's a
Republic. Though, it's often referred to as a Democratic Republic these
days, since we have moved a bit closer to Democracy since the founding.
