Hi Sam,
At 04:22 PM 02-04-2021, Sam Hartman wrote:
Might I suggest an alternative way to look at this?
I've found that talking about things in terms of offense gets free
speech advocates (including to some extent myself) upset, and takes us
one step further away from being able to think about the impact of our
words.
[snip]
Now let us come to "A Modest Proposal."
This is not the first time that satirical essay has come up in the IETF
context.
Ted Hardie used it a couple of times I can remember, and I don't think
he was the first in my history in the IETF.
And yet several of those times, specific people in our community spoke
up and said that because of their background, they felt excluded, hurt,
or offended by that particular reference.
That approach was used on the mailing list many years ago. From what
I remember, it was not by Ted. The objective was to bring a
significant problem to the attention of other IETF participants. I
doubt that it was intended to offend a particular group of
participants in those days.
The discussion is, on one hand, about freedom of expression, and on
the other hand, which IETF Contributions can be published on the IETF
web site. There are similar discussions in other places [1][2]. At
the individual level, the author of one of the drafts stated that
dissenting viewpoints were ignored and that his intention was to put
his dissent on record.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-parliament-twitter-canada-1.5892592
2. There is an on-going debate about Section 230, a U.S. law which is
applicable to the LLC. There is some information about that law at
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/
