Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
First, the textbook companies self-censor for the PC
left and religious right in order to get the big
contracts with the state and to not get sales hurt by
a big lawsuit, initiated by a disgruntled pastor or
feminist who doesn't like the fantasy in Aesop's
fables or the imbalance in the roles of women as
compared to men in history. These lawsuits are
consistantly lost by the parents who want to censor
the books, but it is enough for the textbook to stop
selling almost completely. The textbook companies
don't like this, so they self-censor.
My own view is that NPOV itself provides a sort of self-censorship
that is hopefully not as heavy handed as what a proprietary
development process comes up with.
NPOV is designed to be maximally acceptable to a wide range of people.
A feminist and a pastor of very different political and ethical
frameworks ought to be able to read any NPOV article or book and agree
that it's fair.
With a proprietary development process, the only way to achieve
consensus is to simply omit or water down material that might offend.
With the many-minds creativity of the wiki process, there's usually a
way to present the material in such a way that everyone can agree on
it.
I'm sorry if this letter sounded like a
conspiricy-theory rant and
I'm paranoid, but that's just what it seems like.
No, I don't think that. These are legitimate issues and we do have to
consider them.
Or we could go for a place where this censorship
isn't so bad,
possible Europe or Canada?
I think you'll find that things are generally *much* worse elsewhere,
and especially in Canada.
In Canada, a man was fined for placing an ad in the newspaper quoting
from Leviticus and condemning homosexuality. This was upheld on
appeal.
This website is worth reviewing, too:
http://www.bcla.bc.ca/ifc/censorshipbc/intro.html