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Richard M. Stallman Resigns as FSF President and from its Board of Directors
https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns (emphasis from original retained):
On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of
the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board
of directors.The board will be conducting a search for a new president, beginning
immediately. Further details of the search will be published on
fsf.org.For questions, contact FSF executive director John Sullivan at
johns@fsf.org.Copyright © 2004-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Privacy Policy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (or later version) — Why this license?
Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Resigns from MIT Over Epstein Comments
Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Resigns From MIT Over Epstein Comments
Famed free software advocate and computer scientist Richard Stallman has resigned from MIT, according to an email he published online. The resignation comes after Stallman made comments about victims of child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, including that the victims went along with the abuse willingly.
"I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT," Stallman wrote in the email, referring to MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations."
[...] Last week, Motherboard published the full email thread in which Stallman wrote that the "most plausible scenario" is that Epstein's underage victims in his campaign of trafficking were "entirely willing." Stallman also argued about the definition of "rape" and whether the term applies to the victims.
[Ed.'s note - just because Vice say things in the above blockquote does not mean that SoylentNews or its editors consider it a demonstrably provable representation of reality. We're just reporting that they are reporting, nothing more. At least this Ed. finds out-of-context quoting of short inflamatory phrases to be particularly disingenuous, and perhaps even a warning sign that manipulation of a quote has taking place. -- FP.]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday September 17 2019, @09:50AM (5 children)
A major problem with this is that nearly all children under 18 do not have all of the facts.
You say this and you still expect children under 18 to have all the facts and decide for themselves?
I agree with this... however it seems to counter your other arguments.
Which is why we do not let them decide for themselves.... so that they can be protected from those that would harm children... even if that is protecting children from themselves by preventing them from making ill considered decisions.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 17 2019, @10:14AM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nuke on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:42PM (2 children)
The line needs to be drawn somewhere and it would take a lot resources for every post-puberty teen to be assessed and re-assessed (3-monthly?) by a psychiatrist to determine whether they were yet sufficiently worldly to give consent.
I had acquired plenty of facts by that age, but the problem was acquiring the partners :-(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @11:28PM
Then maybe we could treat it like we do in cases where an adult is accused of raping another adult. We could have police investigate to determine whether or not an actual rape occurred, and not just have arbitrary age-based lines.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 18 2019, @07:42AM
If things need to change, they only need to change to fix actual problems, not non-problems.
One problem, as RMS stated, is that there's an enormous difference between an enjoyed, non-regretted, consentual sexual exchange between someone just under and someone just over an arbitrary age-limit in one geographical location that happens to be higher than the equivalent limit in the majority of the civilised world, and a violent dark-alley rape. We need different legal terms to describe such things so that one can be discussed without the other party whatabouting things that are to do with the other. We can start by pushing all of the "consent withheld", "consent under duress", or "consent impossible" cases into "rape", obviously - but we need another word for the "consent freely given" cases. The "prepend an adjectival modifier" technique the ex-British empire uses - viz. "statutory" in this case - is terrible, and has hindered discussion about such topics for centuries.
Because once we've agreed that there was some kind of consent, we can start disecting it. Was it informed consent? Was it cajoled? Was there some other kind of influence (e.g. drink buying)? Was it under expectation of favours? Were those favours because of a power imbalance? Were those favours presumed, or actually offered? It literally has to be addressed on a case by case basis, each of those components needs to be picked apart.
Which of course means it needs to be done after the "offence" has happened. But these things are relatively rare, so that's way less overhead than having to have a national Fucking Licence.
As an aside - one thing that absolutely needs to be fixed is the case where upon increased aging of both parties, a sexual relationship transitions from being legal to non-legal. E.g. some countries/states have a pair of 17-year-olds fucking as perfectly acceptible; however, as soon as the older 17-year-old reaches 18, it becomes illegal. Until the older one turns 18 of course. Pure insanity. Some countries are sensible and they say "no more than a 2-year age gap if one is underage" or suchlike, which has no such flaw. If a legal system can't fix such utter illogic first, I really don't think it should even start to try to address the deeper questions of how to evaluate whether mature informed mutual sexual relations occured or not. No point dusting the mantelpiece whilst there's still an elephant in the room.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday September 17 2019, @11:44AM
Yes, I appreciate this. I know these are not complete solutions.
There is public law and then there is Actual Law, which resembles more of an unwritten law of the jungle.
Thanks for considering my ideas and a constuctive response, which is rare but I enjoy it when it happens.
Yeah, how can we educate the children of the world to protect themselves without giving them nightmares?
That's why I say 'date' in my proposed voting question. 10 year olds know what a boyfriend is without all of the adult details.
I kindof think if all of the 18 and unders were able to discuss it amongst themselves, they would all arrive at a unanimous decision that their lives will be better without 60 year old creeps legally pursuing them for massages.
But if epstein and co end up counting the votes of the first global youth referendum, or if his spy service controls the processors of the vote counting machines, things could go very badly the wrong direction.
This is why digital rights free software is important to me, nothing with computers can be trusted without these principles. And ultimately if mr stallman's reputation gets ruined, it is a big win for everyone who wants to rig every vote unitl the planet is destroyed.
I may ramble a little bit, in other times I may have held back more but at the moment I am just so angry about how the narrative is being redirected away from the responsible parties.