Censoring my Software Richard Stallman [From Datamation, 1 March 1996]Last summer, a few clever legislators proposed a bill to "prohibitpornography" on the Internet. Last fall, right-wing Christians madethis cause their own. Last week, President Clinton signed the bill,and we lost the freedom of the press for the public library of thefuture. This week, I'm censoring GNU Emacs.No, GNU Emacs does not contain pornography. It is a software package,an award-winning extensible and programmable text editor. But the lawthat was passed applies to far more than pornography. It prohibits"indecent" speech, which can include anything from famous poems, tomasterpieces hanging in the Louvre, to advice about safe sex...tosoftware.Naturally, there was a lot of opposition to this bill. Not only frompeople who use the Internet, and people who appreciate erotica, butfrom everyone who cares about freedom of the press.But every time we tried to tell the public what was at stake, theforces of censorship responded with a lie: they told the public thatthe issue was simply pornography. By embedding this lie as apresupposition in their statements about the issue, they succeeded inmisinforming the public. So here I am, censoring my software.You see, Emacs contains a version of the famous "doctor program",a.k.a. Eliza, originally developed by Professor Weizenbaum at MIT.This is the program that imitates a Rogerian psychotherapist. Theuser talks to the program, and the program responds--by playing backthe user's own statements, and by recognizing a long list ofparticular words.The Emacs doctor program was set up to recognize many common cursewords, and respond with an appropriately cute message such as, "Wouldyou please watch your tongue?" or "Let's not be vulgar." In order todo this, it had to have a list of curse words. That means the sourcecode for the program was indecent.Because of the censorship law, I had to remove this feature. (Ireplaced it with a message announcing that the program has beencensored for your protection.) The new version of the doctor doesn'trecognize the indecent words. If you curse at it, it curses rightback to you--for lack of knowing better.Now that people are facing the threat of two years in prison forindecent network postings, it would be helpful if they could accessprecise rules via the Internet for how to avoid imprisonment.However, this is impossible. The rules would have to mention theforbidden words, so posting them on the Internet would be against therules.Of course, I'm making an assumption about just what "indecent" means.I have to do this, because nobody knows for sure. The most obviouspossible meaning is the meaning it has for television, so I'm usingthat as a tentative assumption. However, there is a good chance thatour courts will reject that interpretation of the law asunconstitutional.We can hope that the courts will recognize the Internet as a medium ofpublication like books and magazines. If they do, they will entirelyreject any law prohibiting "indecent" publications on the Internet.What really worries me is that the courts might take a muddledin-between escape route--by choosing another interpretation of"indecent", one that permits the doctor program or a statement of thedecency rules, but prohibits some of the books that children canbrowse through in the public library and the bookstore. Over theyears, as the Internet replaces the public library and the bookstore,some of our freedom of the press will be lost.Just a few weeks ago, another country imposed censorship on theInternet. That was China. We don't think well of China in thiscountry--its government doesn't respect basic freedoms. But how welldoes our government respect them? And do you care enough to preservethem here?If you care, stay in touch with the Voters Telecommunications Watch.Look in their Web site http://www.vtw.org/ for background informationand political action recommendations. Censorship won in February, butwe can beat it in November.Copyright 1996 Richard StallmanVerbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any mediumprovided this notice is preserved.