Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: What constitutes abuse ...
Message-ID: <50217@bbn.COM>
Date: 30 Dec 89 17:12:21 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Lines: 154

bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:

}From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)

}>Editors editing for content, style, etc are fine --- that's their job,
}>mostly; editors editing for political correctness cross the line into
}>being lowercase-c-censors.

}I think the fact that you even have to introduce this "lowercase-c"
}(there, I did it again) terminology into your argument makes it
}suspect. Did you just make this distinction up (uppercase-C vs
}lowercase-c censorship) or does it derive from some common usage
}somewhere? Or maybe you thought I was making this distinction (I
}certainly wasn't, my whole point is that there is no such
}distinction.)

But there IS.  There are two possible definitions of "censorship" ---
one is the definition as a particular type of editorial practice, and
the other is the *enforcement* of that practice by the state.  The
distinction between using minuscule for the basic definition of doing
something or other versus reserving the majuscule version to mean
"doing that same thing officially" is a fairly common, if informal
convention (at least among my correspondents; for example folks are
generally careful to distinguish between little-l-libertarians [holders
of a particular philsophical position] versus big-L-Libertarians
[members of a particular US political movement]]) If you'd rather keep
everything brutally long to type and read, I'd be happy to be arguing
about the distinctions between "acts of editorial censorship" versus
"state sanctioned and enforced acts of editorial censorship".  Or since
you're gun shy about the c-word, make that first one "editorial
activities similar to what editors do when effecting the editorial acts
mandated by state-enforced censorship" [and I understand that you
consider the "state-enforced" in that last to be redundant... but even
if you think it extraneous we can agree to leave it there for emphasis,
no?]

It would be like my pointing out that while capital-D-Discrimination is
quite illegal, lowercase-d-discrimination happens all the time, and it
doensn't make the actions any the less reprehensible because they
happen to sneak under the wire and be legal.  You're right --- it is a
*philsophical* and *practical* distinction, not a *legal* one ---- in
my usage, the actual editorial activities in BOTH (C|c)ensorship are
quite the same; the only difference is in what happens to you if you
defy the censor.

And similarly...


}An editor who edits for "political correctness" does not cross the
}line into being a "lowercase-c-censor" or any other kind of censor.
}Censorship is something the state does. Editors merely edit,
}correctly, fairly or otherwise.

Foo.  "editing" is a craft made up of a bunch of mostly orthogonal
activities.  Particular editor can do one or more of them, and
particular editorial positions can empower an editor to do one or more
of them.  To view the craft as "editors merely edit" is about as
helpful as defining mathematics as "what mathematicians do".  Just as
there is a family of editorial activities that come under the heading
of "copy editing", there is another family of activities that come
under the heading of "censoring".  Whether it is state sanctioned or
not, and whether it is made clear to the readers at the outset or not,
are quite orthogonal matters.  The *editorial*process* of censorship is
quite clear; whether there are folks in the wings with guns enforcing
that editor's "judgement" is quite an orthogonal matter, and doesn't
affect the evaluation of the editor's actions.


}I am honestly enjoying this because I think it's a great example of
}confusing a metaphor with reality, that's the whole problem here!

that's funny, because I agree... :-)


}Censorship as a metaphor for "editing we don't agree with" vs.
}censorship, the word, meaning "making the publication of a certain
}view a criminal offense".

See how confusing and non-meshed these things can be...  I think we're
discussing nothing of the kind.  You seem to be arguing that the *only*
censorship is state-enforced censorship.  I'm arguing that the *act*
must come first, be defined, understood, and practiced; and the state
*instutituionalization* of it comes second.  And that leads to
precisely the kind of misunderstandings we have here:  one can ask
"what is it that a(n editorial) censor does to distinguish those acts
from other types of editing?"  I claim that is a valid question and
gets you the obvious answer.  And then I can go on to ask "When does it
become (in my usage) capital-C-censorship?" and the answer is again
obvious (to me at least).

In some areas, there is sometimes a word for the act itself to
distinguish it from the legal version of it [e.g., lying vs perjury.
or hunting vs poaching Another example pops up in this posting
later.... see below].  There happens to be no convenient word for
"editing for political or moral correctness", and so we run the risk of
having confusion over whether we're talking about the editorial act or
the state enforcement of that act.  In this case, however, no one
(except you perhaps) was confusing the two: by calling a particular
group's moderator a censor I doubt that anyone would fear that if they
forged an Approved posting so as to get past the editorial roadblock,
that "the boys" would come by his house and teach him a little lesson.


}>But again, you're partly right --- we should remember that this is
}>"just usenet", and we're not talking about real capital-C-censorship.
}>But that doesn't make lowercase-c-censorship any the more palatable [or
}>welcome].

}No, I'm completely right.

Hardly, but at the least we can see that you're confident [I hesitate
to say arrogant...:-)].  That reprehensible, harmful, antisocial acts
happen is just plain fact and just plain reality, regardless of whether
the perpetrators enjoy state support or not.  The distinction between
the acts being state-sanctioned or not is a significant one, but it
doesn't make the underlying act much different.  If you want to coin a
term for "what an editorial censor does" that is not "censorship"
that'd be fine, and then you'd have "censorship" defined to be "what
happens when the state enforces <what an editorial censor does>".  If
there was such a disjoint word, this side debate would have never
gotten started...  the moderator would be accused of "doing what an
editorial censor does", and some of us would stand up and say "that's
not right --- we don't want our newsgroup moderator's taking that
prerogative" and the debate would stay reasonably within the confines
of what the expectations within usenet are of moderators and moderated
groups.  That there is not a particularly convenient separate word, and
that using the c-word so ignites you, is unfortunate, but mostly
unavoidable.

For example, the meaning isn't quite exactly right, but if we were
debating racial discrimination instead of censorship we might be able
to use "bigotry" for that and then define racial discrimination as
"state enforced racial bigory"].  In *that* venue you would have a
perfectly find and correct point.. you would ask that we STOP calling
it "racial discrimination" because that has all sorts of legal
implications and please confine ourselves to using "racial bigotry" and
I would agree heartily.  As I cay, it is unfortunate that there is no
similar pair of terms to allow this discussion to be unambiguous.  I
used captial-C versus lowercase-c to distinguish the state-act from the
private-act; you may not agree with my taking just liberties and
coining my own word, and that's fine --- we can discuss that.

I think we can, and should, ask whether we want to allow usenet
newsgroup moderators to be censors; whether such a newsgroup is their
little playground to do with as they please or if they are
actually acting on behalf of us all and we should have some say in the
"editorial standards" they effect in our name.  Perhaps you'd be less
hot under the collar if it we only used the latter phrasing [after the
semicolon], but I think that few folks misinterpreted the informal
usage of the former phrasing to _really_ mean anything other than the
latter.  


  /Bernie\