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Re: Obscene content in cygwin file.
- From: Joshua Kolden <joshua at CrackCreative dot com>
- To: Mark Thornton <mark dot p dot thornton at ntlworld dot com>
- Cc: cygwin at cygwin dot com
- Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 14:44:57 -0800
- Subject: Re: Obscene content in cygwin file.
- Organization: Crack Creative
- References: <41E042E6.4050001@CrackCreative.com> <41E04A5C.8020200@ntlworld.com>
There is also the issue of legal risk. Is the material illegal in any
country (which would cause obvious difficulty for any user or
maintainer in such countries) and do any of these countries apply
their laws extra territorially (which might cause problems to anyone
visiting a country with an extradition agreement with the offended
country). If there is a legal risk, is the continued inclusion of the
material, which is rather peripheral to the main purpose of Cygwin,
justified?
Mark Thornton
Interesting point, however it does appear to be rhetorical since no one
has in fact brought this up as an issue for them. My apologies if I
missed a post were someone said this was their issue. Nevertheless, for
entertainment value and in the interest of completeness let's evaluate
this issue as well.
First to clearly state the question. It appears to me to be: Should a
software author or packager take on the responsibility of no breaking
the laws of other countries where the software may be distributed.
If among the goals of the packager he wishes to cause no harm to his
users perhaps it is a good idea to remove the software.
Will removing the software reduce the risk to the user? Almost any
content is widely available on the net, so our efforts to protect the
user may be limited. Further, are we sure that this is the only package
that is not legal in a given country. If their are others then we would
need to remove them as well to insure that we've successfully removed
the additional risk our software puts on it's users.
It seems on the face of it that insuring the legality of the software in
every legal system is a responsibility poorly placed on the packager. A
far better judge of the legality of a given software package is the
user. That user only has to evaluate his own laws wear as the packager
must evaluate every countries laws.
If the user is to take responsibility then we must provide as much
information as possible for every package so that the user can apply his
own judgment. This handily addresses the other issue of personal
objection to the content as well.
j
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