Re: bruce.el

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> The data file is empty because the requisite contents would have been
> prohibited by the CDA itself.

That I can understand. What I don't understand (there's no need for
you to take the time to explain it to me) is why, in addition to that,
you had to copy spook.el to bruce.el and s/spook/bruce. Why wasn't it
sufficient to remove the spook data file, or replace the contents with
a single line "Censored for your protection on behalf of the US
Government"? (Also, I'd have expected etc/sex.6 to be a bigger problem!)

> The CDA was 12 years ago, and I believe the Supreme Court did declare
> that provision unconstitutional.  It would be good to add a note to
> the end of etc/CENSORSHIP with a reference to an EFF page with more
> information.

I think the CENSORSHIP license prohibits me changing it.

Some notes for possible updates:

The http://www.vtw.org/ website is no more (it redirects to someone's
blog now).

Here is a relevant quote from http://w2.eff.org/legal/victories/

    In 1996, EFF and a coalition of public interest groups sued to
    block the Communications Decency Act, which criminalized
    publishing certain content online that the government clearly
    could not prohibit offline. Unanimously, the U.S. Supreme Court
    struck down the law and established that online speech deserves
    the full protection of the First Amendment. Congress still didn't
    learn its lesson, subsequently passing the slightly narrower but
    still gravely dangerous Children Online Protection Act. Again, EFF
    fought back, and the Supreme Court has twice upheld injunctions
    against the law.

Here is the EFF statement from June 26, 1997 when the CDA was ruled
unconstitutional:

  http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/EFF_ACLU_v_DoJ/19970626_eff_cda.announce

Here are the details of "CDA II":

http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/ACLU_v_Reno_II/

> This issue has mostly good away and been replaced by other worse
> threats to human rights in the US.  

There do seem to be one or two small worries in this area these days...

> So perhaps we should delete bruce.el.

I would suggest this.