On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 13:09 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote: > --On Friday, August 06, 2004 7:37 AM -0600 "Christopher A. Williams" > <chrisw01@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > 1) The US Government does not own everything these systems run on. > > Companies own their own property. > > True ownership means control. You don't control it if the government can > shut you down (eg. through heavy fines) for highly subjective activity. > > > there are some well-known limitations (like > > shouting "Fire!" in the theatre when there is no fire). > > That one always comes up. Recognize that that's another case of private > control of speech, and the theater is justified in controlling what's said > there. > > The problem arises when the government can tell a private company what > information (ie. imagery, photons, bits) is not permitted to be > disseminated, because it offends some segment of the populace with > primitive mores that the company might employ. This is ridiculous. Understand, in most cases the issue is not the government saying what is and is not permitted. The issue is other coworkers who are complaining to an employer. Those coworkers can sue in civil court; in a case like this, a litigant would claim a "hostile work environment" not sexual harassment because this is clearly not sexual harassment (unless it said "Mike's flaccid penis" specifically targetting a coworker). The government has merely constructed laws to specify what a person can sue for, and it is up to the judge and jury to decide of the law applies in a specific case and if the defendant is guilty. At any rate, if you're an employer, you're going to want to avoid all such lawsuits, regardless if they have merit or not, and with that mindset, it's much easier to have a zero tolerance policy against things like the word "erect penis" showing up on employee's screens than it is to defend against arguably frivolous lawsuits. If you think these type of people do not exist in your workplace, you are probably mistaken. There are people who will be genuinely offended by things like this (probably due to their own insecurities) and there will be people who are simply looking for a reason to get you into trouble. At any rate, under most laws in the states, the company is liable if they do not act upon such complaints, and so they will act, and harshly. And I don't think maintaining some joke put into a screensaver for the sake of sticking to the PC police is worth someone losing their job over. There are better battles to fight.
