Re: Communications Forums and Free Speech

[Nicholas Nethercote]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Mitchell Baker <mitc...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> In short, I do not agree that an appreciation of  free speech means that
> Mozilla infrastructure and community and reach is available to every
> Mozillian as a right for all ideas.

http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2012/03/10/what-free-speech-really-means/
(which I got from Tim Chevalier) covers this topic really nicely
(albeit in a US-specific manner). It's fairly short and the whole
thing is worth reading, but here are the key points:

1. Free speech is shorthand for the First Amendment.
2. Free speech is about stopping government censorship.
3. The First Amendment says nothing about non-governmental entities.
4. Freedom to say what you want is not freedom from people reacting to
what you say.

Nick

[Joshua Cranmer]

I must disagree on the first two points. Free speech, as culturally
defined, is the ability to speak freely without fear of reprisal,
whether by an explicit government or by any body that has some power of
governing in a particular setting (consider the Mozilla Foundation over
Planet Mozilla). While the legal terminology is specifically limited to
government censorship, it is still possible to use the term to discuss
the ability to speak freely in any fora. The third point is true but not
interesting for the discussion at hand (at least, not if you disagree
with the first two). However, the fourth point remains equally valid.

In short: while I do agree that, at least under US law, Mozilla is under
no legal obligation to provide a venue for free speech, I can still
argue that it ought to (or ought not to) provide one.

I also hope I am not the only person to note the irony that the context
of these posts involved a desire to limit the application of some
terminology to a particular cultural/religious definition. :-)

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/03/12 01:28, Nicholas Nethercote wrote:
> http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2012/03/10/what-free-speech-really-means/
> (which I got from Tim Chevalier) covers this topic really nicely
> (albeit in a US-specific manner). It's fairly short and the whole
> thing is worth reading, but here are the key points:
>
> 1. Free speech is shorthand for the First Amendment.

If I were being controversial, I would call you a cultural imperialist
;-) Seriously: given that Mozilla is a worldwide project, how do you
assert this point?

> 2. Free speech is about stopping government censorship.
> 3. The First Amendment says nothing about non-governmental entities.

I think Mozilla-the-organization has more similarities to a government
than you would at first think. This is actually a very important point,
precisely because it speaks to the objections people have that private
organizations have no responsibilities to enable certain sorts of speech.

One reason governments have to be very careful about restricting free
speech is that government-imposed restrictions are very broad in scope.
If I live in a country, most of what I say day-to-day would be covered
by such a restriction. Therefore, in the US (to give an example, but
also in other countries ;-), there are particularly tight restrictions
on how much and what the government can stop you saying.

There are plenty of people I know only through Mozilla interactions, and
with whom most or all of my interactions are in a Mozilla context.
Therefore, in a sense, Mozilla is a "government" for those relationships
in that our relationship exists in a Mozilla context similar to the way
my relationship with my next-door neighbour exists in a UK context. Any
restrictions imposed by Mozilla would affect a lot of the way we interact.

Therefore, I think an argument along the lines of "Mozilla has no
requirement to consider freedom of speech as it's not a government" is
far from a no-brainer.

Gerv

[Nicholas Nethercote]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>>
>> 1. Free speech is shorthand for the First Amendment.
>

> If I were being controversial, I would call you a cultural imperialist ;-)

I'm Australian, FWIW.

> Seriously: given that Mozilla is a worldwide project, how do you assert this
> point?

As you and Daniel have discussed, the US has very "strong" free speech
laws. In my experience when people (esp. programmers) use the term
"free speech" they usually are referring to that kind of "strong" free
speech.

> Therefore, I think an argument along the lines of "Mozilla has no
> requirement to consider freedom of speech as it's not a government" is far
> from a no-brainer.

I think the key difference is that Mozilla can't imprison you.

Now, I totally agree with the notion that we don't want a Code of
Conduct that reaches too far and prevents reasonable discussion. The
reason I mentioned the above things about the US free speech laws is
that discussions about free speech can be painful when people have
different definitions and understandings of "free speech". So my aim
was to introduce some clarity early on. In that sense your discussion
with Daniel was useful, so thanks for that.

Nick

[Gervase Markham]

On 14/03/12 02:24, Nicholas Nethercote wrote:
>> Seriously: given that Mozilla is a worldwide project, how do you assert this
>> point?
>
> As you and Daniel have discussed, the US has very "strong" free speech
> laws. In my experience when people (esp. programmers) use the term
> "free speech" they usually are referring to that kind of "strong" free
> speech.

Well, OK, but we still need to bear in mind the variety of opinions on
the topic. However, reading the rest of your message, I think we are in
agreement here.

>> Therefore, I think an argument along the lines of "Mozilla has no
>> requirement to consider freedom of speech as it's not a government" is far
>> from a no-brainer.
>
> I think the key difference is that Mozilla can't imprison you.

Not physically, no. But I still think that, if one of the penalties
available under a code of conduct were removal from a community, that is
a very strong sanction - well above e.g. being banned from one of my
local gyms for saying something they didn't like, to take one example of
a private organisation. Therefore we need to be careful about the
breadth of the conditions under which it could be imposed.

Valerie contrasts government speech with "forcing a private entity to
publish speech it finds objectionable". I don't think the latter is a
reasonable summary of what it means to speak as part of one's
interactions with the Mozilla community. Mozilla, with respect to its
community, is somewhere in between a 'government' and a 'single private
entity among many'. This is what makes this a hard question IMO.

> Now, I totally agree with the notion that we don't want a Code of
> Conduct that reaches too far and prevents reasonable discussion. The
> reason I mentioned the above things about the US free speech laws is
> that discussions about free speech can be painful when people have
> different definitions and understandings of "free speech". So my aim
> was to introduce some clarity early on. In that sense your discussion
> with Daniel was useful, so thanks for that.

No problem. My aim in commenting on Valerie's summary via your post was
to make exactly the same point - there are different definitions of
"free speech".

Gerv

[Mike Connor]

On 2012-03-12, at 4:08 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:

> In other words, how much should the Mozilla community be required to experience to my views on non-Mozilla issues? Not much. How much should Mozilla be my megaphone? Not much. How much should participation in Mozilla be intertwined with hearing my views on non-Mozilla issues? Not much.
>
> I know this is mushy. I suspect both the "always OK" and "never OK" positions are difficult and will cause more trouble than they are worth. I personally don't want to end up evaluating email signature and such -- is the commercial "sent by my [add device name here] " more or less objectionable than a personal comment?
>
> A "not much" level requires flexibility by everyone. That is flexibility in not including things that alienate other Mozillians, and flexibility from all of us in letting some things go. I suspect that if we try to go further we will end up deep in content, where we will not agree.
>
> This is why I'm leaning towards a default that mozilla channels are mozilla-related, with easy ways to get to the full stream / full personality of Mozillians.

>
> In short, I do not agree that an appreciation of free speech means that Mozilla infrastructure and community and reach is available to every Mozillian as a right for all ideas.

I like this framing a great deal, and I believe the conclusions are spot on. It's hard-to-impossible to describe a specific line in a way that everyone will agree on, but it's fairly easy to describe a model where the guidance is to stay mostly on Mozilla issues, and to limit how far one strays from that realm (and how often!).

-- Mike