Oh, so this comes down to whose childish insult was MORE childish and insulting. “Yeah I took the low road, but his road was arguably lower!” Childisher and childisher.
Let’s watch while QED and samclem determine who started it, followed by which one is rubber and which one is glue!
I don’t know if you are a good moderator or not, samclem. But you sure screwed the pooch with this decision. The Chicago Reader isn’t based in China. What the hell does anyone care about Chinese law if they aren’t living in that country? (With the exception of American and European businesses who compromise their values in the name of the almighty buck, already mentioned by Ponder Stibbons, post #5.)
You made a horrible decision. Your reasoning defending it is spurious. And if you are halfway intelligent, this must be clear to you by now. I think your ego is just getting in the way of admitting the mistake and remedying it.
If that’s not a sign of a doper, I don’t know what is!
Or having any embassies burned.
Ooh, yeah, the Reader embassy in Iran couldn’t withstand another attack so soon.
with all due respect, y’all might want to consider just what would happen. What if some Chinese guy does download this from the Straight Dope and decides that information will set you free…end result goes to jail for violating Chinese law.
To use a bad analogy, freedom of speech is the cornerstone of American ideals (not that we always live up to that), but that also doesn’t mean most of us think it’s a good idea teenagers have access to information about safe anal fisting.
Ya ya we’re all adults, caveat emptor, ad nauseum. That said, y’all know some parts of the world don’t have luxury to be liberal armchair democracy warriors with no unintended consequences. In there US maybe it’s black and white, but in the real wide world there is a lot of grey. I for one think it’s a good thing that mods like samclem make some value judgements. It ain’t gonna change the world but it might prevent an unintended consequence that most of us would rather not have to contemplate in the middle of the night.
Well look, that’s a coulda would scenario. If a Chinese guy downloads information like that from the Straight Dope and uses it and goes to jail, that’s on his (or her) head because they broke thier country’s law. However, it’s not a law in America. In fact, it doesn’t even approach being a law in America.
Kowtowing to foreign laws like this starts us off down a really stupid and uneccessary slippery slope. While I’ve occasionally thought the mods were a bit too harsh in shutting down threads with discussion of legal peer-to-peer appications because it’s coming close to skirting American law at least it’s understandable.
This decision goes way over the top.
After all, is the image of some Islamic girl being honor killed by a fanatical brother for being found out confessing to sex outside marriage in MPSIMS really all that more a stupid and unlikely analogy than your poor Chinese guy one?
The law of China aside,…
I don’t see what the big deal is about closing that thread.
If someone starts a thread asking how to get around their office content blocker to look up information about the humble Bushtit or Sussex High School Cheerleaders, I’d happen to guess that thread would be shut down.
Same as if a 17 year old wants to figure out how to shut off the Net Nanny software his parents have put on the family computer.
Company and family content blockers are perfectly legal in the US.
How about a thread about spoofing or anon’ing your IP to post at a Pro-Nazi messageboard that banned you for calling the locals a bunch of dumb shit fucktards? How long do you think that thread would last?
I don’t agree with the Great Firewall of China, but I agree with the SDMB not wanting to contribute to breaking rules placed on people by an entity fully within their right to place those rules.
We aren’t responsible if a Chinaman decides to use the information he gathered from a thread to view sites blocked by the Chinese government. I’m fairly certain it is already well spread anyway. The yearning for freedom is ingrained in every soul. If they can find a way to circumvent this totalitarian censorship, they will utilize it. Every Chinaman and Chinawoman should have the choice to decide if they want to censor themselves according to the government’s wishes, or if they decide to engage in legitimate social protest and refuse to censor themselves. I think this reasoning is more sound than any others presented up to this point.
The law of China not aside. All the examples you give are examples of judgement calls made using common sense. Samclem’s decision was made from the position of enforcing the laws of a country other than the US. Like I’ve said above, if nothing else this sets horrible precedent. The reader is based in the US. Legal calls RE closing threads and limiting discussion should be based on US law and none other.
Samclem ordinarily does a fine job moderating, but he really stepped in it on this one. I’m surprised he didn’t see the problem. If it were illegal to distribute birth control in Ignoristan, would it be wrong to have a thread on how to get that info to Ignoristanis? Of course not. The thread should be reopened.
Samclem ordinarily does a fine job moderating, but he really stepped in it on this one. I’m surprised he didn’t see the problem. If it were illegal to distribute birth control information in Ignoristan, would it be wrong to have a thread on how to get that info to Ignoristanis? Of course not. The thread should be reopened.
And you’d be wrong. We get GQ’s all the time asking how to cover one’s tracks on an office computer after one has been surfing potentially against office policy. Never seen one shut down.
While I disagree with samclem’s decision, I have to say that there’s an innate problem with the view.
See, we’re in the Reader’s living room, as it were. This is a privately owned board. We can say anything we want in here just as long as it doesn’t peeve the ownership, just as I can go to my granny’s house and talk about football all day and she’s perfectly happy. If I started talking about methods of safe fisting, I think she’d be rather shocked and ask me to stop or leave. :eek:
The Dope saying “Hey, we’d rather you not post stuff that’s illegal on here” does not prevent you from making your own website and posting the stuff indiscriminately, though. Better yet, learn Chinese and do it on a Chinese forum and get into some really INTERESTING trouble*. 
That said? I find this growing practice of corporations surrenduring to the Chinese government disgusting and disturbing. I never liked the fact that those corps outsourced to China for cheap labor, I never liked the fact that we have Most Favored Nation status with a country known globally for its human rights abuses. And as has been pointed out, we’re not bowing to Sharia law in Muslim countries. The Dope’s all about fighting ignorance. You don’t want to get sued or smacked by the government, that’s fine. But to say you want to promote knowledge and learning while simultaneously saying “okay, but not in China” is inconsistent.
*Note: By saying this I am not advocating that you do so. IANAL but I think a reasonably entertaining argument could be made that because you are violating Chinese law on a server based in China, you are committing the act on Chinese soil and are therefore enjoined to return to China for trial. I wonder if the U.S. would extradite you. Our servicemen and women aren’t worth the billions that we could make in Iraq; are you by yourself worth the trillions we make in China? I wonder if there’s been a case quite like this. But I digress in this Pratchettian footnote…
IT’S NOT ILLEGAL. That’s the whole problem. The question is a perfectly legal one when asked in America, like it was here.
It is in China, but the Dope isn’t located in China and has stated many times in threads and in the user agreement that it’s US law that is used when making decisions.
How utterly and delightfully ironic.
Aaaaand I think I may have made that point. Or forgotten it. Regardless, it’s been said so many times so much better than I have in posts on this thread older than mine, but I think the horse isn’t quite dead yet, so go to town. 
In short – yes, that’s another reason I DO disagree with this ruling. I can understand it, but please guys, don’t take this as saying you can’t inform the people of China as to the rights we think they should have. Remember? That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights? I think it’s a lovely image of what I always thought us Murricans were supposed to be that we’re outraged about this.
Start a movement. Start a protest. Start some civil disobedience. The Dope is just asking that you not do it here. Whether or not I agree with that is irrelevant to the fact that the Net is a very big place where you can’t really be shut down, not for long.
But they weren’t doing that in the original OP. They were asking a perfectly legal (in America) question. And that’s all.
See? You’re still utterly incapable of discussing a topic based on the actual merits of the actual topic: you can only discuss it in personal terms of the participants. Your argument is “right” because you think yourself less of a jerk than me or samclem. You are one of the most immature “debaters” around here, and are totally obliviously shameless in your total reliance on ad hominem. You feel like you’ve won an argument if you can “prove” that the other guy’s tone was more insulting.
How you got that SDSAB tag I’ll never know, but I’m kinda glad to see you working, day by day, to prove how far you have to go before you’re worthy of it.
Well, for me the issue was what sort of conduct we should expect of moderators in this situation, especially as it was recently made very clear that we should not insult the Mods while they were carrying out their official duties, and that they would also try to carry out those duties with a modicum of civility and respect for the paying members.
Yes, the Mods have decisions to make, and yes, some members can be jerks to them at times. But being a moderator means that, when acting in that capacity, you should be held to a standard of civility that reflects the position. If some member is a jerk to a mod, and is in violation of the rules, then take appropriate action. But appropriate action is not, in my view, telling them that you don’t care what they think, telling them to fuck off, and calling them an asshole. Especially when it’s already been clearly stated by the powers that be that this sort of thing isn’t acceptable.
Personally, i think sam is generally a fine moderator, and is also a valuable member of the boards. I just think that he made the wrong decision on that particular thread, and compounded it with poor moderating etiquette in his response to Q.E.D..