Liberty, Tolerance, politics in Ubuntu forums (round 2 :-( )

[Beniamino Caputo]

Matthew East wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 13:24 +0200, yann wrote:
> [...]
>> Question is: what are the rules in your forums? What would you do if 
>> tomorrow, someone comes up with an avatar representing Mahomet? If your 
>> locoteam is composed of more than one country, which law do you refer 
>> to? Our servers are in France, if there is material on the forum that is 
>> legal in France and illegal in Canada, should we delete it? Are you 
>> having the same problems as we are?
> [...]
> 
> In my view you need to distinguish between three things here.
> 
> First of all, trademark infringements, which is a matter for Ubuntu, and
> which is what was discussed at the CC meeting. At that meeting, it was
> rightly said that these sorts of avatars on forums do not infringe
> trademarks, mainly because they are not being used to make a profit.
> 
> Second, posts which infringe French law. If something does, you are
> quite right to delete it. If something doesn't, don't delete it on that
> ground.
> 
> Third however, I think you should apply the code of conduct on the
> forum, which above all means being respectful. How you interpret and
> apply the code is up to you (if you want more guidance, the CC can
> probably help again), but in this case my personal opinion would be that
> the user should be asked to change the avatar.
> 
> I can't speak for how this is done on the Italian forum, Ben, can you
> comment?
> 
> Matt

Hi Yann, Matt,

Our guidelines (Italian forum) simply prohibit posts, images, avatars, 
signatures with obscene, offensive, political, religious, offensive, 
racist materials that can hurt users' sensibility. Obviously, we also 
prohibit materials which violate the Italian Law.

In your case (Your server is in France), Yann, I think that you have to 
respect French law, but you can apply a more restrictive set of 
guidelines that try to respect and protect not only French people.


-- 
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Beniamino Caputo
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