Re: [MUD-Dev] Censorship, Virtual v Artificial Worlds, Python

[Dan <scatter#thevortex,com>]

Matthew Mihaly <diablo#best,com> wrote:

>You think censorship is a positive thing? It's always struck me as being
>one of the bad things. Another of the bad things are uptight people who
>freak out at hearing a combination of sounds strung together.

I think you are missing the main point about censorship. Censorship is
about restricting freedom of information. This is bad because decisions
depend on accurate information in order for them to be correctly reasoned
out, so that the correct decision can be made.

Saying "you cannot use the word 'fuck' on a chat channel on
my mud" may be censorship by the technical dictionary definition but 
it's hardly a problem. Big Bad Censorship is "you may not criticise the 
government" or "you may not reveal the truth about UFOs" or "you may not 
reveal how to build a nuclear device."

Preventing people using a few offensive (to some) words does not prevent
them passing on any information they wish, assuming of course they are
sufficiently intelligent to be able to rephrase their sentence, and that
there is some semantic content to the sentence beyond a desire to offend
and/or harass.

-- 
Scatter ///\oo/\\\


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