On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Yaakov Nemoy wrote:
As my own comments, while i think it's silly that in the US it
requires
consent and notification to record phone calls, it's been determined
that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy on the phone.
Likewise, government agencies need warrants and other permissions to do
pen-register and traps on a phone line, even though the phone company
could theoretically give out that information freely. The ethical
question is on what is the expectation on privacy, and in 2009, ideas
can be very different than they were in 1995.
Well, it's also apples and oranges. A phone line is 1-to-1 conversation.
IRC is 1-to-200 conversation. Very different indeed.
With that in mind, should we automatically publish everything by
default
so that there are no expectations of privacy in the first place?
Freenode guidelines suggest no. The reasons for it are because of
prevailing attitudes where people can get upset and inflamed on IRC
(mailing lists as well) and say things they probably shouldn't have
said. It's really just a courtesy.
I think that attitude contributes to the problem of people believing that
they can say whatever they want on IRC without thought or consequence. To
be clear: I'm guilty of this too. I've become much more circumspect about
what I say in public IRC, and I think that's a good thing.
That said, you and the people at Sugar Labs who would rather open up
everything are probably right.
In fairness, it really is a board-level decision -- which is where it was
decided at Sugar Labs. Just because I think it would be awesome to
harvest all data from Fedora IRC channels, doesn't mean it's what the
majority of the board would think. I do think the question should be
asked, though.
--g
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