[Clipart] Nazi flag

[Kevin Wixson]

I hate the use of the word censorship. The word is almost always used 
incorrectly. OCAL is a product, albeit a non-commercial one. As a 
product we, as the product's creators/managers/developers, have a 
legitimate right to set certain quality and other standards, including 
those that impact the image of the product, and the image of the 
community. Think of "community" as a stand-in for the word "company" and 
you see my meaning more clearly.

Now, I don't want to download anything with child porn in it. Not just 
not see it, but not have it on my computer, period. I have a right to 
protect myself from legal prosecution for possession of child porn, in 
addition to not wanting to see it. If I can't be assured that child porn 
will not be in what I'm downloading, then I'm not going to download it. 
The guy who wrote the message about the Nazi flag isn't going to 
download the library if it has the Nazi flag in it. If he's in France, 
he has a legal concern. We are not alone, and I would even go so far as 
to say that if it became known that there was child porn  in the 
library, who do you think is going to download it? It's not censorship 
to protect the legal interests of the community. There is NOT any child 
porn in there now, I know, but people's concern about keeping that clear 
is telling. If you're afraid of saying it, you're REALLY going to hate 
defending it if it happens.

As a contributor (however minor,) don't I have some say into whether or 
not the project is poisoned, such that nobody will dare download it and 
use it for fear of what it might contain? I certainly think so. I want 
people to use my contributions. I want OCAL to succeed, and not become 
an irrelevant vanity project with exactly five contributors.

Where do we draw the line? We draw the line where we, as a community, 
decide to draw it. We weigh the appeal, importance and usefulness of the 
image (categorically) against the potential hit to downloads and 
usefulness of the library -- we ask, how does this affect our market? 
Just because there's no charge, shouldn't mean we aren't concerned about 
marketability.

As a place to start, a minimum standard should be that the images 
included in the library should be generally legal and won't get me 
arrested for having it on my hard drive or distributing it. Why is that 
so much to ask?

-Kevin




Nicu Buculei (OCAL) wrote:

>
> I am definitely against this, because it would allow a vocal minority 
> to impose censorship. A few users voting are not representative for 
> the entire audience.
>
>
>
> [1] mostly the relevant threads are:
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/clipart/2005-July/003662.html
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/clipart/2005-August/003743.html
>