Ubuntu Core Channels Blocking Shell Accounts. Discussion.

[Tony Yarusso]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Aaron Toponce <aaron.toponce at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was shocked when I started connecting to IRC with Tor, and tried
> joining #ubuntu, only to find I was banned. When I found out about the
> blanket ban against Tor users, it was a sad day. To me, it seems people
> are guilty, even if proven innocent, which seens backwards to me. Isn't
> this the same philosophy of the MPAA/RIAA? Assume everyone is a
> criminal, so create draconian DRM schemes, which end up doing nothing
> for piracy, and hurting the honest consumer in the process. Your blanket
> Tor ban, in my mind, is the same.

I don't think that's an entirely fair comparison.  We generally do
operate on a policy of presumed innocence (even to the point of not
banning users in other channels after they've shown themselves to be
disruptive in one).  However, the underlying fact behind all of the
policies in place is that everything is run by a group of volunteers,
and forcing them to play whack-a-mole all the time increases the rates
of frustration, anger, and burnout to levels that have been determined
to be unacceptably high.  It's not that we assume everyone on those
networks is bad; it's that there have been enough bad users of those
networks to ruin it for everyone else, and at some point simple
practicality has to rule.