Of course not. I don’t believe anyone is arguing that it does. By the same token, just because a post may be controversial does not mean it must be suppressed. So, where should the line be drawn? Hell if I know. But, I sure don’t think that thread crossed it. So far you haven’t said anything that convinces me otherwise, but I’m willing to listen.
Well, I stand corrected then.
Why not start a thread in GQ with the subject “How do I get around a firewall/Proxy or content/IP blocking up the pipe from my ISP?”
Then people can talk about various ways of doing this without upsetting the People’s Replublic.
Where have I asked you for your support? And where have I insisted that the Reader do anything? Is there any chance of you posting anything remotely relevant in this thread, or am I just wasting my time, here?
Are you not taking the position that the admins of the SDMB should allow information to be posted on how to circumvent the laws of another country, are is this a semantic jerk-off?
You also just finished frothing about how, in state of moral ecstasy, you would “facilitate their efforts to speak freely by circulating information about how to circumvent their government censors.” You either have some big plans for your little old self, or you are putting yourself in the place of the SDMB administration. Which is it? That is a rhetorical question, I don’t expect an honest answer.
You are wasting someone’s time, to be sure.
No, but there’s nothing inherently wrong about the thread you closed, except in China. Closing it just because it was illegal in another country opens you up to all sorts of sillyness. Should any thread dealing with homosexuality be closed and gay posters banned because homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe? Being openly gay isn’t an inherent right either.
First, let me voice my appreciation to two individuals who have earned my respect in this thread:
samclem and Q.E.D.
You both exemplify my reasons to pony up the bucks and join this community. You both recognize that each of you is human, capable of making mistakes, vulnerable to emotions, and most important, admitting to these human weaknesses and apologizing for stepping over the line and returning to a civil debate and treating other with the respect deserved. Encore!
Now, back to our regularly scheduled debate:
samclem, I find myself agreeing with Q.E.D. and many posters here. To wit: I think you stepped in it.
Maybe I’m missing some subtle nuance in your decision making process. I fail to see why transmitting information (any information) by any means into an oppressed country could even be morally questionable.
Admittedly, they are not openly advocating anything illegal, but the purpose is clear: disseminate information in the sincere hope that if enough information gets into the hands of the people, perhaps the oppressive government will fall. It took 40+ years, but history shows that this tactic does, eventually have an effect. The Soviet Union spent an estimated $35 million trying to censor Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It didn’t work. At no time, as far as I can tell, did anyone suggest in any of those broadcasts that citizens should run out and start ripping down the Berlin Wall. And yet, eventually, that is exactly what happened.
The Chinese Government appears to be trying the same thing with their “firewall”. The clock of history is ticking away and they can feel that. They’re starting to run scared.
I guess what I’m asking you is this: Has our society changed so much in the last decade or so that doing what we can to help oppressed people walk toward the light of freedom that it has at last come down to whether or not some corporation in the Midwest may get sued? (wow, is that a run-on sentence, or what?!?)
Or is it still morally correct to take the high ground, and wave that light for all to see?
Perhaps, in some higher plane of reality, our centuries old fight as a species to throw off the chains of oppression through any means at hand, including (ultimately) violence, might be viewed as wrong. But to shut down a thread that is simply trying to disseminate information to an oppressed people looking for a way out? No.
As long as the act is not in clear violation of United States Law, or even U. S. policy, I sincerely believe we not only have the right, but, in fact a duty to provide the information. The aforementioned entities have been trying to get information into the hands of these people for more than 50 years. I believe it is only right that we do what we can to help.
Your opinion may vary.
Lucy
No, I’m taking the position that there is nothing morally, ethically, or legally wrong with distributing information on how to circumvent China’s firewall, and that efforts to undermine that firewall constitute an unalloyed moral positive. The Reader is, of course, under no such obligation to participate in any such effort. It would be nice if they would, but I’m hardly insisting that they do so. I had not planned on even participaing in this thread, if it hadn’t been for your singularly loopy participation in it. I mean, good Lord, look at what you’ve posted here: someone says they don’t care if this particular Chinese law gets broken, and you ask a leading question implying that they’re a hypocrite. When Ludovic sensibly points out that it really depends on what the law being broken is about, you post this. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, although since you seem to be employing some species of sarcasm, I assume you’re in disagreement with what Ludovic was saying. In other words, it doesn’t matter what sort of law is being broken, it’s always wrong to break it, no matter what, even when it doesn’t apply to the country in which you live. Then there’s your bizzare assertion that, if I were to help someone fight for their civil rights, and they suffered from it as a result, somehow I’m morally culpable for it. I don’t even want to know what train of logic you took to end up at that station. I’ll skip over your wonderously inane tangents about copyright law and the subjective nature of morality, which pulled off the neat trick of being both blindingly obvious and totally immaterial to anything I’d posted, to get to the part where you say that you’d support me if I started my own website detailing how to circumvent Chinese law. Which is what you’d been arguing against for the first half of this thread. So apparently, you just don’t want the SDMB in particular to break this law, but you don’t care if anyone else does. Heck, you’d even help! So much for that poor guy in Shenzhen, huh? And all the while, your posts are dripping with enough condescension to choke a water buffalo. Quite charming, believe me.
Anyway, I hope I’ve sufficiently explained precisely what position I’m arguing in this thread, and where I’ve disagreed with what you’ve posted, as nearly as I could decipher it. I look forward to your reply, which, if your posts to date are any indication, will likely concern the mating rituals of the Thompson’s Gazelle, or something similarly on-topic to what’s actually being discussed in this thread.
I never fail to derive humour from how often you accuse other people of being guilty of that which you are so obviously guilty of yourself. You’re consistent, I’ll give you that.
I live only to amuse you, Boo Boo Foo.
Miller, honestly, would it surprise you if I said I’ve lost interest in this thread, and especially your participation therein? I’d like to be polite and respond to your carefully constructed quasi pitting of me, but I can’t be arsed to even wade through it, let alone figure out what it means and reply.
Just for grins, I’ll boil my point down to single a haiku for you.
Break bad law; feels good
Could there be a cost? Yoke is…
Assumed, not assigned
Apparently someone didn’t bother to check the facts before shooting his mouth off in yet another administrative hissy-fit:
Your understanding is flawed. If you’ll kindly point me the US law which that thread violated, well, I’ll eat my words. Samclem didn’t say anything about violating US law; quite the contrary, in fact. I suggest you read over this thread, at least skim it before you answer.
And while we’re here, could your reply to C_M have possibly been more condescending? This thread has been here for the better part of a week, with absolutely NO official response from you people and when someone asks for one (albeit, somewhat snarkily, I’ll give you that) you throw a fit over it? Seriously, if tending to the basic day-to-day operations of this place is so stressful for you, then don’t you think it’s time to go find someone else to do it? Or at least take a break? I’m not trying to get rid of anyone–go, stay; what do I care? But, if you’re going to go nailing yourselves to a cross everytime someone complains about something, I think it’s time to re-evaluate a few things. Enough with the “poor put-upon us” routine, already. Sheesh.
You can put me down as yet another person who thinks it was morally right to provide the link, morally wrong and not legally necessary to remove it and lock the thread, and strategically a mistake to set the precedent that the SDMB is going to concern itself with obeying laws in external jurisdictions.
Oh, and also that it was a bad mod call and should be reversed by an Administrator.
Put me down as follows: it WAS morally right to provide the link. It was NOT legally necessary to remove the link.
As to obeying laws of other countries–I don’t think you can give a blanket statement about that. There are instances that I wouldn’t care a whit about violating a law of another country by posting something on our board. There are instances that I would. This was one, but of course only in my opinion.
At your leisure, I’d greatly appreciate an expansion of your reasoning here. Morally right to provide the link. Check. Not legally necessary to remove it. Check. You removed it anyway. WTF?
Up to now, your responses have mostly been some variant or other of “because I said so”. Fine, I realize you don’t owe us any explanation whatsoever, but I appeal to your sense of fairness and ask that you take some time and try to give me at least some sense of your reasoning here because, quite frankly, I don’t get it. I’m not one to beat a dead horse, but I do like to be sure the horse is really dead before I give up. So to speak.
I must say, sam, that i too am a little puzzled by this.
Also, you said earlier in the thread when i asked about the issue of civility that you had referred the thread to other Mods/Admins for their input. I’m curious to know what the response was. Did your fellow mods and admins agree with your decision to close the thread in question? Does your decision reflect board policy in any broad sense at all, or is it merely your own subjective judgment? And can we, as members, generally expect that decisions to close threads be made with some sort of consistent set of rules or guidelines in mind, or are we subject to the whims of individual moderators?
fwiw -I’d be interested in your answer, too.
I would say that(from memory) I got responses from 3-5 people. Not an overwhelming majority! Some said that they would not have done what I did but understood why I did it. Whatever that means. Others said they would have done what I did. So I’m afraid that’s not very clear in giving the TM’s any help as to what to expect in any other instance of such a thread.
I would like to say that I think it only reflects MY judgement on this one occasion. I don’t think anyone should expect this to be a board policy. It was my judgement, and no one in my peer group(does that sound weird?) told me to change my decision. As to whether you can expect mods and Admins to react to things in an individual way–yes. We can all agree on probably 90% of the things that happen on this board. But that last 10% sure makes it a fun ride.
Again, I’m only upset that some members seem to think that I’m taking a position favoring China and their repressive state. I certainly abhor their policies, but I wouldn’t try to infer from this one incident that I or the other mods/Admins or the Reader or the board approve of China’s stance on totalitarian government.
I’ll gladly try to answer questions as I can.
Great, let’s start with the ones that are already on the table:
You said repeatedly that your decision doesn’t necessarily reflect policy. You’ve also said that you agree that there was no legal necessity for your decision. Some of us have asked why, then, did you make the decision you did? Thus far, your responses to these requests have been dressed-up versions of “because I said so”, including your last post. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask, given the points outlined above.
Ditto.
Lucy
I am OK with “It was my responsibility to make a call, and this is the call I made”. I think it was the wrong call, but I’m not likely to agree with every decision that any given moderator makes. And were I serving as moderator, samclem would probably consider some of my choices to be on the boneheaded side.
So, in the penumbra of “sam had the right to make that call and it was his call to make”: sam, are you open to reconsidering, insofar as it’s an issue of concern to many of us? I think we’re very much open to listening to your reasoning, and beyond that, will respect statements along the line of “It was a gut-level feeling that the thread was a Bad Idea, rather than a decision based on linear logic and specific principles and hierarchies of priorities” — but meanwhile I’m wondering what you think of our points and perspectives so far, and the extent to which you are open to reversing your decision.