Hate Speech enters Oracle forums
When balancing the First Amendment
rights to free speech on the web, some folks say that "anything
goes" even racism, bigotry and "hate speech", nasty
words which are tolerated in
the USA, but are highly illegal in many countries.
The Oracle Usenet newsgroups have a long
history of offensive, profane and vile postings, and most companies
ban their use at work. Sadly, it's getting more offensive than
ever before and we are
now seeing
racist remarks being directed towards entire groups of Oracle
professionals:
Could you please explain why many Asians
like you are not too lazy to
- take over our jobs
- spam this group like hell with job postings
but are too lazy to do the work they robbed from us, and
continue to
parasite on this forum?
If you want us to do your work for free, please get lost. . .
And, yes, they are usually Asian, and, yes, they are usually 100
percent incompetent.
If there are any competent Asians, I failed to meet them.
It's not clear if the person who
published this offensive will be arrested or jailed since it
requires a concerted effort to track-down web bigots.
In corporations
worldwide, employees are bound by an “acceptable use policy”
that prohibits the viewing of pornographic or racist material
while at-work. In the link below we see racist remarks on
Oracle’s OTN web site.
Warning to
employees: If your
employers acceptable use policy (AUP) prohibits you from visiting web
sites with racist content while at-work,
NO NOT click this link
The OTN terms
of service notes that promoting racism is a violation, yet the
offending bigots continue to publish on OTN:
You agree not to . . . post, . .
. any Content that: (a) is false or misleading; (b) is
defamatory; (c) is harassing or invades another's privacy, or
promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or
individual; . . . or (g) violates any applicable laws or
regulations.
Complaints
were made against several OTN users for promoting bigotry and
racism. The complaint was addressed by Oracle’s
Justin Kestlyn, Editor-in-Chief of Oracle Technology
Network:
“Yes -
please report them here. This is not necessarily a violation
of Terms of Use however - just boorish behavior.”
Hate speech is a serious crime in many
countries
While the First Amendment
generally protects racist hate speech, some countries are less
tolerant of bigots. The country of
India has
blocked the Oracle usenet newsgroups because they allows
hate speech.
In
countries like Germany, publishing hate speech is punishable by
a stiff prison term:
"A German historian who
claimed that Auschwitz prisoners enjoyed cinemas, a swimming
pool and brothels was sentenced to 10 months in jail.
In Germany and Austria,
it's a crime to deny the Holocaust, even if you are living
in America. Germany does not agree with what Voltaire said
"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll
defend to the death your right to say it".
Laurent Schneider notes the
French Law
Loi Gayssot which makes it an offense to question the
Holocaust:
"[It is an offense to]
question the existence of the category of crimes against
humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945, on the
basis of which Nazi leaders were convicted by the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg"
The long arm of the law
reaches out across borders
Germany has exercised their
right to extradite anyone who published a web site that can
be seen in Germany, regardless of where the author is
residing, and Mr. Zündel was
extradited from Tennessee and imprisoned in Germany.
There are
many other countries across the glob who do not tolerate racism
and bigotry. The Indian
government has
blocked Google Blogs because some sites publish libel,
defamation and pornography:
“Sites can be blocked if they
contain "pornography, speeches of hate, contempt, slander or
defamation, or if they promote gambling, racism, violence or
terrorism".
"Such sites may be blocked within
the provisions of the Fundamental Right to free speech and
expression, granted in India's Constitution," said cyber-law
expert Praveen Dalal.”
Stopping hate speech in Oracle
publications
Many Oracle professionals are
clamping-down on racists. Steve Feuerstein, one of the
bestselling Oracle authors in the world announced that he does not
like "acerbic" anonymous comments, and
no longer accepts anonymous comments on his Oracle blog:
"I have
decided to change my blog settings so that you must be a
registered user at Blogger in order to post a comment. . .
I realized that I very much don't like having people post
fairly acerbic comments without having to have some kind of
identification as to who they are.
So, goodbye Anonymous,
hello minimally-accountable Commentators!"
Feuerstein
goes-on to elegantly explain what types of people bother him and
what types of non-anonymous comments he will allow to be
published on his blog:
“The world is full of brutal,
hate-filled, and/or greedy people. They make the world a much
uglier, harsher place. I can't stop them from existing, but I can
keep them off my blog.
So...no haters on my blog. I will not
accept comments from people with hateful tags. I will not publish
comments that contain vile, spiteful, malicious comments.
So Hater of Liberals can now change
his/her tag and then perhaps his/her comments will make it onto my
blog. Maybe not.”
Dr. Tim Hall also
notes problems with anonymous people publishing
unacceptable content on his blog:
“I've just deleted a couple of
anonymous comments and prevented anonymous posting. I'm not totally
happy about it because it seems like censorship, but I'm not going
to sit in the middle and let people use my sites as a forum to slag
off others.”
Bestselling Oracle author Robert Freeman has similar problems with
anonymous comments. A responsible publisher, Freeman notes the
potential that his publication might be
used to hurt people:
"Pending a review with my lawyer on
current libel law, I have removed the ability to post comments at
all from this Blog. . . . It's a shame that I have to do this, but
the risk seems to great to do otherwise. In fact, pending the
review, I may just shelve this blog all together."
Robert
Freeman also notes that "evil
people" had published unkind comments that he removed:
"There are evil people in the world. I
firmly believe this, and it's evidenced every day. You will notice
on my blog that one of these evil people has appeared. How can we
tell this person is evil?
1. The posts were anonymous.
2. The posts were unkind and out of context.
3. The posts were presumptuous, at best.
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