(For reference, in case someone hasn’t read it: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)
Without saying anything about my own stance on these opinions, it’s intellectualy weak to consider it a firable offense to have uttered them thirteen years ago. People should be stronger than that, and have a wider perspective.
Also, here's a quote of his about people with Down syndrome:
> If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot...
https://twitter.com/popey/status/793384010718248960?lang=en
Seriously, everyone's better off with him gone, including free software as a whole. He's not worth defending. It was about damn time he actually faced some consequences for his shitty behavior.
It's easy to make these kind of reading/comprehension mistakes when one gets caught up in cancel culture and their outrage mobs.
For the record, I have never endorsed those positions [1], but I also see that they were on the fringe of acceptable discussion at the time.
[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Pedophile_mo... for how I felt about pro-pedophile advocacy back in 2004, in an era when a small outspoken fringe worked really hard to make it part of the Wikipedia.
The episode of Brass eye lambasting the scares about it actually came out in 2001, so the assertion is nonsense.
NAMBLA and similar will take every opportunity to push pro-paedophile[1] and pro-abuse positions. Your example just speaks to the nativity of Wikipedia (and a bunch of other US tech companies) around people who commit contact offences against children.
But we need to be clear: this was not in anyway a mainstream position. It was a smallish number of child abusers gaming a system.
The most recent example isn't just about what he said though. It's about how he said it. And it's this that people find unacceptable. The discussion was about how to manage the potentially serious image problem when a high profile member of the organisation has been accused of sexually assaulting a child.
Either he doesn't know that this is the wrong time to say those things, or he does know and doesn't care, but either way it made it harder for other people to do their job - managing the comms of having your organisation financially linked to a high profile sex offender.
[1] I guess we need to say that some people with a sexual interest in children will not commit offences against children, and so some pro-paedophile commentary is acceptable.
this is just incredibly stupid to believe, pro-paedophile commentary is acceptable? why in the ever living fk would that be aceptable? because a pedo might not actually commit those acts? are you stupid?
So it's obvious to me that underage sexting itself shouldn't be prosecuted as child porn. Because if they're old enough to prosecute as adults, they're also old enough to legally share naked pictures of themselves.
But of course, it's arguable that third parties -- especially adult third parties -- who distribute such images should be prosecuted.
He's not a fool in that regard. He understands that as long as you can attach paedophilia to something, this type of outrage phenomena can completely sink any attempt at civil discourse, and can be weaponized in order to force through liberty/civic rights destructive measures. Think about it.
We could frame an Act to implement Panopticon for the sake of catching Paedophiles, and then poof! Resistance disappears because if you dissent, you're now pro-paedophile! Yet every last civic minded person who values personal freedom/liberty should be able to tell that the inevitable result of such a system being implemented is inevitable abuse.
Now replace that with LGBT rights, or women's rights, or sexual assault, or any other controversial theme under the sun.
You cannot have the Nazi exception. In any form, or on any topic. Freedom is Freedom. And you can't even dismiss it with a handwave to the freedom to experience consequences either, because you're just perpetuating the sin you're willing to punish Stallman for by tolerating the outright lies of the reporter which fueled the whole thing in the first place.
https://www.popehat.com/2017/04/18/the-seductive-appeal-of-t...
People need to put the pitchforks down, and go about your day. You should advise the people who started the entire hubbub that the proper place to deal with that disagreement was with Stallman himself in private, maybe with an administrator.
If we resort to mob justice to get our way, we end up throwing out any semblance of Order to our country, instead we just end up with a reflexive gaggle of inflammable passions waiting for the next match to be struck.
I hate to say it, but you really can't fault Stallman on this one. You can be annoyed. You can find it distasteful; but in the end he is exactly right. It is important that the more heinous the accusation, the greater the pains needed to be taken to ensure that we specifically and only read into what is actually there, and adhere to what is actually actionable by law.
Otherwise you see exactly what has erupted here. An outburst of rage against someone completely uninvolved, combined with the burning down of the metaphorical village for what?
A Five Minute Rage?
Christ, how Orwellian! 1984 isn't even being misused as a manual. It's here and now. God help us.
You are free to "mob" around an idea. Yes. You are free to actuate to generate results. I do not contest that.
>Equating of Our Country
I'm merely referencing a collective investment and faith in a system of Law and Order as set forth in the Constitution.
Everyone is free to believe as they want, but reality demands it's toll when your "belief" begins to extract cost in the form of pursuits of extrajudicial justice. When you start seeing the lynch mobs gather (which make no mistake, this type of escalation isn't that far off from; reputational violence is still violence), I put my foot down.
It darn well should be concerning. There are clearly battle lines being drawn. There is a growing corpus of individuals that see fit to utilize internetworking and information warfare through disinformation to cause harm; without due process, or respect to any authority or attempts at officially mediated redress.
Civilization depends on mutual restraint, and unity in the agreed upon means to the redress of grievance. If individuals cannot come to the table to resolve their issues in a private manner, or do something novel, like calling each other out on something without outright lying in a public forum, or maliciously smearing each other in a manner unable to withstand basic scrutiny, but leading to a widespread disruption of the peace, then battle lines are well on their way to being drawn. Voicing the truth is one thing. Sometimes, it is unpleasant, but needs to be spoken. ; but to spread lies and slander maliciously to the end of tormenting hatred is another.
I have no qualms with any of these people's causes. My beef is with their means. Given the increasing frequency with which people seem to be taking rather cavalier positions with the truth, and asserting that others should be deprived of their station without due process of any kind (the nigh inevitable result of a malicious false media campaign), a boiling point is clearly coming.
I hate it. I don't know what to do about it, but it is written on the wall clear as day. There is very serious change on the horizon. This digital age has brought forth the new lynch mob. A veritable army of people can rebroadcast the worst types of untruth about you with little or no redress. I can't even say I can endorse their behavior from an ends justifies the means point of view. If everyone got these types of posses together and went after everyone else all the time, I don't see a reachable equilibrium. The sides just get larger, and wider until you either have the very quintessential example of the oppressed minority (thereby the minority deserves legal protection), or both sides get large, polarized, and energized enough where should violence break out, it's a threat to the entire system.
I'm afraid our civilization is in the fits of a social anaphylaxis; and I have no idea what the anti-histamine would be. The adrenaline analog, however, is something we all know, and history has demonstrated time and again.
Violence.
I don't want it to come to that. If we can't stop making war against each other with words, there is nothing to keep us from falling upon each other with fists when the time comes that patience wears thin.
Stallman, for all everyone is enraged at his gall and supposed insensitivity, said what absolutely needed to be said.
I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't care for everyone involved. I understand. I may not agree, but damnit, I understand. I wish the entire thing never happened. That Epstein and his shenanigans would have been dealt with years ago instead of being allowed to fester. That none of those girls had to go through what they did. That two men of great intelligence weren't caught in the middle of it.
But letting things devolve to this level of incivility is unacceptable. I cannot, and Will not on any last scrap of good conscience stand by and let this travesty play out without being heard.
If all it means, is that everyone reads this, and waves me off as a crank so be it. I can accept failure. I tried. It is my hope that maybe, just maybe; even if it isn't in this issue in particular, mywords can act as a seed.
A seed from which others may find that within the fertile landscape of their minds will burst forth a renewed commitment to treat each other with decency, respect, civility, and forgiveness.
I don't care who you believe in, but if you can muster at least those four qualities,and maintain them to any degree, there is naught to be feared.
Good night, and may whom you worship (if any) bless.
Then please don't post it. Lazy citation of original material is how we got here.
RMS has made a few comments saying that images of child sexual abuse should not be illegal.
https://stallman.org/archives/2012-jul-oct.html#15_September...
> Rick Falkvinge joins me in demanding an end to the censorship of "child pornography", and points out that if in the US you observe the rape of a child, making a video or photo to use as evidence would subject you to a greater penalty than the rapist.
> The article does not mention that it's common practice for teenagers to exchange nude photos with their lovers, and they all potentially could be imprisoned for this. A substantial fraction of them are actually prosecuted.
https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
> Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
> Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. [Reference updated on 2018-04-25 because the old link was broken.]
> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
https://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html
> In the US, people convicted for having copies of child pornography tend to get longer prison sentences than those convicted of having sex with children.
> Mere possession of child pornography should not be a crime at all. To prosecute people for possessing something published, no matter what it may be, is a big threat to human rights.
https://stallman.org/archives/2011-may-aug.html
> "Child" pornography is being used as an excuse to threaten all American internet users' privacy.
> The term "child pornography" is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution.
> Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so. In the Internet, enforcement of censorship puts other rights in danger.
> Please support demandprogress.org's campaign against this bill.
There are loads of these. Stallman takes a hardline anti-Censorship view, and he sees any prohibition on possession or distribution of images of child sexual abuse as censorship.
His argument about criminalising children who share images of themselves with other children has a simple fix: stop prosecuting children for doing stupid shit.
That would be less rule of law, and more blind faith in the benevolence of public officials.
Should we be taking steps to ensure anarchists aren't allowed to write software or work at a university?
It is concerning to me that RMS would allow kids to make adult decision while at the same time saying that adults selling software to other adults under licenses he doesn't like should be punished.
The more concerning thing is he's not allowed to simultaneously discuss that line of thinking while working at MIT.
He also isn't sure than "voluntary pedophilia" is harmful / that people before puberty should be able to pick their sex partners despite not even being a teenager.
Limiting this to being just a discussion on what can be "discussed" isn't valid. He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statements.
No? I'm not really sure what you mean by "punish" here. He advocates for Free Software -- to my knowledge he's never advocated for punishing anybody.
> He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statement.
How? Where's the harm? What's harmful about questioning the age of consent being 18 (which, may I remind you, varies from 12-19 worldwide). Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? You can disagree with him (I certainly do) but I don't see why we should shame him for even broaching the subject.
That is from this interview https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09....
We aren't talking about the age of consent. RMS explicitly said children before they hit puberty / sexual maturity which is a bit different than a 17 year old to most people.
They're not, it's fine to talk about these things, and there are plenty of places where people discuss all aspects of law around sexual offending.
The wrong time and place to talk about them is when your organisation is discussing potential problems because a high profile person linked to your organisation has been accused of raping a coerced child. People in that thread needed a useful way to deal with "MIT has links to Epstein, and Minsky is accused of raping a child". RMS's diversions into "is it rape?" and "is it assault?" were not helpful to that thread.
Either RMS was oblivious to the distress and distraction his comments would cause, or he knew and didn't care. Neither is good.
First, the conversation was internal, it was leaked to the public. Second, it's nothing new. He's been documenting his opinions for decades. Third, it was a relevant discussion because he was talking about the characterization of the events by the media.
If you just have a bone to pick with RMS I'm not sure what there is left to discuss.
In this case, I expect but don't have time to check that Stallman is using a very wide definition of coerced that captures most or all of whatever you are uncomfortable with and he is going to be technically correct on most if not all of his original points. That is completely in his style.
And more to the issue at hand, these are questions that are irrelevant to Stallman's position as head of the FSF or his role in MIT. He is not using his position to push pro-adultery themes. He is calling on people to think about what words mean and what the implications of those meanings are. People can't kick up a stink for something that happened 10 years ago and claim that nothing has changed. Stallman is perfectly happy to stand up and say that he's changed his mind on many points. A couple of lines on a personal website are just not that insightful into his character.
Also, whether alcohol or drugs should be available for consumption by anybody is still an open question. That is a different debate. Most of the arguments as to why a 10 year old shouldn't be drinking can actually be applied to a 40 year old. The major difference (brain development) is a big deal but there are a lot of other problems with addictive substances that are not age dependent. Why should it be acceptable for a 40 year old to drink but not a 10 year old? There are interesting aspects to consider there and to logically pin down the reasoning to a moral framework requires quite a bit of thought and probably discussion with others.
It's a perfect example of where our society seems to be heading. Taking words and sentences out of their context and publishing the fragments over and over leads to incomplete understanding and misinterpretation.
To me, this is similar to the recent cases where some public figure said the N word 10 years ago, and so their present company fired them. Remember the phrase from childhood "Stick and stone may break my bones but words can never harm me." That's the principle of free speech. We sure don't have that anymore.
If you are a media person and use the N word in your position, and it's against your employer's policy to do that, fine - you're fired. But if you personally are a racist or hate gays or whatever, that should be your choice, and if you say the N word to your neighbor and they record it, your employer should not be able to fire you.
We have become way too sensitive IMO, and the fact that news is on 24/7 (they have to fill that time with something!) and is more about evoking feelings, spouting opinions and prophecies, and sensationalism than it is about facts, is a big part of the problem.
" Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. "
June 28th 2003: http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...