[OT] RE: Inappropriate content in Fedora Core 2

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Saturday, August 07, 2004 12:03 AM -0400 Aaron Gaudio 
<prothonotar at tarnation.dyndns.org> wrote:

> 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.

And that is exactly why these laws are fundamentally wrong. You suffer 
legal penalties for what happens entirely inside someone else's head. There 
is no objective standard.

> 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.

I'm not suggesting that those jokes are effective at fighting this battle. 
Rather, those who enjoy them are victims of it. I've been in a corporation 
where everyone's looking over their shoulder for this kind of attack. It's 
not fun. In smaller companies, people are being silently evaluated for the 
likelihood of being too easily offended or being lawsuit hungry and are 
being sent to the resume slush file. Larger companies simply move as much 
labor as possible off shore to countries without the legal landmines.

> This is ridiculous. Understand, in most cases the issue is not the
> government saying what is and is not permitted.

In fact, the issue is the government NOT saying what is and is not 
permitted. It's all up to the victim. It's the subjective nature of the law 
that's the problem. A good lawyer can make "hostile work environment" mean 
anything he wants, if it can net him and his client some cash.