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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.77 -->
+<title>Censoring My Software
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/censoring-emacs.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>Censoring My Software</h2>
+
+<p>
+by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/"><strong>Richard Stallman</strong></a>
+<br />
+[From Datamation, March 1 1996]</p>
+
+<p>
+Last summer, a few clever legislators proposed a bill to
+&ldquo;prohibit pornography&rdquo; on the Internet. Last fall, the
+right-wing Christians made this cause their own. Last week, President
+Clinton signed the bill. This week, I'm censoring GNU Emacs.</p>
+<p>
+No, GNU Emacs does not contain pornography. It's a software package,
+an award-winning extensible and programmable text editor. But the law
+that was passed applies to far more than pornography. It prohibits
+&ldquo;indecent&rdquo; speech, which can include anything from famous
+poems, to masterpieces hanging in the Louvre, to advice about safe sex
+&hellip; to software.</p>
+<p>
+Naturally, there was a lot of opposition to this bill. Not only from
+people who use the Internet and people who appreciate erotica, but
+from everyone who cares about freedom of the press.</p>
+<p>
+But every time we tried to tell the public what was at stake, the
+forces of censorship responded with a lie: They told the public that
+the issue was simply pornography. By embedding this lie as a
+presupposition in their other statements about the issue, they
+succeeded in misinforming the public. So now I am censoring my
+software.</p>
+<p>
+You see, Emacs contains a version of the famous &ldquo;doctor
+program,&rdquo; a.k.a. Eliza, originally developed by Professor
+Weizenbaum at <abbr title="Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology">MIT</abbr>. This is the program that imitates a Rogerian
+psychotherapist. The user talks to the program, and the program
+responds&mdash;by playing back the user's own statements, and by
+recognizing a long list of particular words.</p>
+<p>
+The Emacs doctor program was set up to recognize many common curse
+words and respond with an appropriately cute message such as,
+&ldquo;Would you please watch your tongue?&rdquo; or &ldquo;Let's not
+be vulgar.&rdquo; In order to do this, it had to have a list of curse
+words. That means the source code for the program was indecent.</p>
+<p>
+So this week I removed that feature. The new version of the doctor
+doesn't recognize the indecent words; if you curse at it, it replays
+the curse back to you&mdash;for lack of knowing better. (When the new
+version starts up, it announces that it has been censored for your
+protection.)</p>
+<p>
+Now that Americans face the threat of two years in prison for indecent
+network postings, it would be helpful if they could access precise
+rules for avoiding imprisonment via the Internet. However, this is
+impossible. The rules would have to mention the forbidden words, so
+posting them on the Internet would violate those same rules.</p>
+<p>
+Of course, I'm making an assumption about just what
+&ldquo;indecent&rdquo; means. I have to do this, because nobody knows
+for sure. The most obvious possible meaning is the meaning it has for
+television, so I'm using that as a tentative assumption. However,
+there is a good chance that our courts will reject that interpretation
+of the law as unconstitutional.</p>
+<p>
+We can hope that the courts will recognize the Internet as a medium of
+publication like books and magazines. If they do, they will entirely
+reject any law prohibiting &ldquo;indecent&rdquo; publications on the
+Internet.</p>
+<p>
+What really worries me is that the courts might choose a muddled
+half-measure&mdash;by approving an interpretation of
+&ldquo;indecent&rdquo; that permits the doctor program or a statement
+of the decency rules, but prohibits some of the books that any child
+can browse through in the public library. Over the years, as the
+Internet replaces the public library, some of our freedom of speech
+will be lost.</p>
+<p>
+Just a few weeks ago, another country imposed censorship on the
+Internet. That was China. We don't think well of China in this
+country&mdash;its government doesn't respect basic freedoms. But how
+well does our government respect them? And do you care enough to
+preserve them here?</p>
+
+<p>
+[This paragraph is obsolete:]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you care, stay in touch with the Voters Telecommunications Watch.
+Look in their Web site http://www.vtw.org/ for background information
+and political action recommendations. Censorship won in February, but
+we can beat it in November.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+ replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+ We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+ translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+ Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+ to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">
+ &lt;web-translators@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+ files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+ be under CC BY-ND 3.0 US. Please do NOT change or remove this
+ without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
+ document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
+ document was modified, or published.
+
+ If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
+ Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
+ years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
+ year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
+ being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+
+ There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+ Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 1996, 2014 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/">Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2014/04/12 12:39:58 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>