[Clipart] OpenClipart and Debian.

[Daniel Carrera]

Ted Gould wrote:

> Could you please provide a reference for this law?  I find it hard to
> believe that an archive of images including historical ones would be
> illegal.  I searched, and I could not find anything.

The Nazi flag *is* illegal in Germany. I've been told so by several 
Germans. I'll ask Rene next time I see him.


> By the way, I'm scared of bunnies.  No pictures of bunnies.  Censorship
> is still censorship no matter what political/economic/emotional reason
> you attach to it.

This position is silly. It is easy to say "censorship is still censorship" 
but that view is overly simplistic, and reality is not that simple.

If you start handing out flyers on the street advocating torture, anti 
seminism (or any kind of racism) or if you start handing out child 
pornography, or if you start advocating suicide, or if start following 
someone up the street yelling at them, you *are* going to get in trouble. 
Isn't that censorship?

Flag burning is illegal in the states. Isn't that censorship?

On the other hand, you can't censor everything.

There are real issues that have to be addressed, and shouldn't be ignored. 
You have to draw a line *somewhere* between what kind of "censhorship" is 
acceptable and what kind isn't. And going to either extreme (censor 
everything, or censor nothing) is damaging, and is ignoring a real issue.


> I would have no problem making a category that is "Nazi Germany" and
> allowing people to filter based on that category for their own uses, but
> making different sets of the OCAL library based on particular people's
> prejudices doesn't make a lot of sense.  There are too many of them to
> cover all the cases.

Ok, here you are making sense.

Yes, again, you have to draw a line somewhere and find some kind of 
balance. You have to make a reasonable effort to respect people's 
sensitivities, but you can't do everything.

So we need to decide on something that is "reasonable", based on how much 
work it is to do, and how much benefit it brings. Find a balance.

This is what I propose: Divide the archive into categories:

  * UN and Olympic flags.
  * Other flags.
  * Company logos.
  * Everything else.


Advantages:

 * The problem images will almost entirely be located in "other flags". 
   Others are likely to be caught in the top 3 categories. So, this is
   a relatively small effort that solves the bulk of the problem.

 * We avoid issues of who gets to pick what's offensive. We don't have
   a category called "offensive".
  
 * We are not really removing images. They are just being placed in
   categories.

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel Carrera            | I know everything, I just can't remember
Join OOoAuthors today!    | it all at once.
http://www.oooauthors.org | :-)