Re: "purity" package

[Sven Rudolph <sr1@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>]

bruce@va.debian.org writes:

> Sven, instead of a me-too, would you explain clearly to me why it is
> necessary for Debian to carry material about inserting a live small
> animal up your anus?

(In case I get the wording wrong or unclear please take into account
that English isn't my native language. If something looks like an
obvious mistake, please ask me in private e-mail first.)

I fear that the whole topic is way beyond what Debian should care
about. But people decided to raise this subject, so I am to discuss
this.


First: You are asking the wrong question. When people are providing a
package for Debian we don't require them to explain why it is
necessary to have this package in Debian. Whenever someone sees
potential trouble he can point out reasons why this package should not
be part of Debian, but it is the job of the objecting person to
provide reasons.  So the question is "Why it is necessary for Debian
to ban this material?" (I already saw the relevant postings,
nevertheless I insist on getting the question right.) 

Second: This material isn't about inserting a live small animal up the
anus. Really. AFAIK one of the primary source of the hamster story was
a newspaper that tried to tell Joe Average that all people who enjoy
sex with animals have to be killed in order to teach them moral and
decency. So this paper simply invented the story that some of these
perverts enjoy inserting living hamsters into the anus. For the the
masses who conform with this cultural superstition this has the
desired effect of turning sodomists into non-humans. 

For the not-that-moral people this turned into a running gag (hence
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality.hamster.duct-tape appeared).
So I think that the question in the purity program cites this
occurence, it is caricaturing the exegerating (christian ?)
purists. Again: This is not about inserting hamsters, it is about
joking on purists who believe every stupid story as long as it matches
their moral superstitions. (I won't cite the well-invented story
about the Iraq soldiers who took babies out of the incubators ...)

Third: As the questions chosen in purity show the whole program is
about joking about purists. No person realy likes jokes about
himself. So do the people targeted by the purity program. And some
cultures are strongly influenced by (christian) purists, and this
seems to be the case for the major parts of the US (and isn't much
different for Germany). So the purity program isn't culturally
compatible with the major target countries for the Debian operating
system. Some of the questions asked in purity might conflict with
decency law or has to be kept inaccessible for childs.

Fourth: In order to please each culture and religion we need to move
packages that are culturally incompatible into special areas. A
package that contains things that must not be used by people below 21
in the US and by people below 18 in Germany have to be moved to
no-21-US-no-18-Germany. I failed to consider special Utah law. Some
religions do ban eating pig's meat. Whenever someone uploads a cooking
receipt database he will have to provide an extra part with pig
receipts that will be placed in no-pig-eating. Same for the
vegetarians. Other religions ban making photos (or pictures) of
people, so we have to move picon-usenix into a sub-section. Some
cultures ban gambling, so we have to move the relevant games. Should
we take into consideration that some news-servers provide potentially
illegal content? Should we block these servers? Do we really need
news server and news reading software in Debian?

Conclusion: The approach of pleasing each deviation in religion or
culture with a Debian subsection is to fail. The only arguments that
are to be considered are the law (local, national, international). We
need non-US, because US law makes it difficult to export these
programs, and because the main server is located in the US. So if
purity really conflicts with US law, we have to find a country where
this problem does not exist. IMHO we should make clear that such
programs are part of Debian unless the local law forbids this. So an
Official Debian CD in Germany has to contain pgp and ssh (unless their
licences are non-DFSG ...) We have to decide what to do with
law that discriminates on the age of the person.

As Vincent Renardias <vincent@waw.com> wrote:
: I agree, but given the number of different cultures/religions met in the
: Debian project it's virtually impossible to define what's offensive, and
: what isn't. We already have enough problems with the 'non-us' stuff by
: now. Let's not make the situation even more complicated (and US-centric).
:
Cited and agreed.


Minor point one: The decision to omit moral considerations isn't
new. The no-discrimination clause in the DFSG explicitly requires
licences to omit restrictions based on personal moral principles like
genetic research.

Bruce wrote (in another posting):
> Well, this "purity" package gets pretty explicit. For example some
> of the questions are (sic) "Have you ever used an animal to make you
> come?". "Have you ever inserted a small animal into your rectum?"
> And then it gets into dead animals, mutilating animals, etc.
>
> HEY, GUYS, I DIDN'T GET INTO THE DEBIAN PROJECT SO THAT MY SOFTWARE
> COULD BE USED TO ASK PEOPLE QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR HAVING SEX WITH ANIMALS!
>
This conflicts with the DFSG. Even when people get the purity program
from some other source they will use your software. We intentionally
put no restriction on the areas of use.

Minor point two: As mentioned above in many countries the moral ideas
of the majority turned into law. See CDA and similiar
things. Well-educated people seem to be less incluencend by such moral
fanatism. They are a minority, and some of these people don't like
these laws. I assume that the percentage of Debian developers
belonging to this minority is much higher then the average percentage
for the whole US (or for Germany). On the other hand I like the fact
that Debian developers tend to be well-educated.

Minor point three: On sex.
We already have hangman, abuse, quake. But the discussion arises with
a program that makes some black humor on sexual purity. So I think
that people care more about the sexual parts than about the poor
little animal. Killing dozens of people with a pumpgun seems to be OK
according to the previous non-existing discussion. This seems to be in
line with US-american culture and law, so this isn't surprising.

Bruce wrote (in another posting):
> Read back about what I objected to - it was violence, not healthy
> consentual sex. Raping an animal. Mutilating an animal for fun. Etc. I
> don't think you get to rape an animal in "doom" or "quake".
>
A lot of violence passed until you decided to object. An objection
appeared when sex was involved. According to your claims you do not
object to consentual sex between human and animals? Don't tell your
neighbour!

Minor sub-point one:
The example with hangman isn't created for rhetorical reasons. I once
played hangman, but soon I disliked the gallows picture. So I don't
play hangman anymore, even though I like this kind of word-guessing
games. This seems to correlate with German culture; the idea of
killing a person is less ubiquitous, e.g. we german law doesn't allow
a death penalty. (BTW: I don't play quake etc.)

Minor sub-point two: Nobody raped an animal. The purity program asks
whether you did this. Neither does it suggest you to do it or does it
describe how to rape an animal. IMHO that's a difference. Minor
sub-points closed.


I promised that the whole thing isn't that much about Debian ...

	Sven
-- 
Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>
http://www.sax.de/~sr1/


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