Racism isn't just a US problem. But if you think the way racism is understood in the US is also universal you are sorely mistaken.
Oh, I don't. It tends to have unique features per culture, though there are a few common features (for example, deciding the disfavored group is stupid is quite common).
Every culture has looted from others violently when push comes to shove over one resource or another at points in history. Vikings portrayed primarily as savage raiders is just another stereotype pushed by selective editing of history by another part of Europe that was waging a war to expand their empire against the 'barbarians' or 'savages'.
I would note that one of the easiest ways to have a certain group be the 'bad guys' is if the main way you encounter them is in the form of raiding parties -- the ones back at home might be perfectly fine people, but the ones burning down farmhouses so they can more easily search the ashes for gold are probably worthy of smiting.
This does, however, cause problems for dungeons, because, well, PCs going into dungeons to slaughter the inhabitants and come out with loot look an awful lot like a raiding party...
Haha, that's true. Why is your group trying to take goods and resources away from anyone else by force? Because someone told you they're bad? Because they attacked a village to take some resources and now you're the hand of justice? What if those resources that the village had were only obtained because of an earlier fight that pushed the dungeon denizens off that land? what if even earlier than that said dungeon denizens pushed someone else out?
It's like nearly everything in history if you go down that route... everyone is good and everyone is bad eventually...which it is depends entirely on the perspective of the current viewer and on where you draw the cutoff for what counts as righting some wrong.
Racism isn't just a US problem. But if you think the way racism is understood in the US is also universal you are sorely mistaken.
Oh, I don't. It tends to have unique features per culture, though there are a few common features (for example, deciding the disfavored group is stupid is quite common).
... and yet here you arguing that an American company should hire a bunch of Harvard graduates to tell players and publishers the world over how they have to think about it.
I don't recall arguing any of the sort. I can understand why Wizards might want one, but that's a separate issue.
However, your apparent bias against Harvard graduates makes me suspect you're from the US anyway. I don't know anything specific about Harvard's program (if any), but taking advantage of people who have actually studied a topic is generally a good idea.
1) Freedom of speech in that context refers to punishment by governments, not merely being held accountable by private citizens and platforms. You don't have total freedom of speech here on this forum either.
2) The CC is a form of disassociation, sure, but we have yet to see the effectiveness of that tested by true hate speech. It's possible an incident of some kind will arise between now and the creation of the 6e SRD, and if it does, that will likely have an impact on the license they choose to publish it under. I think they jumped the gun personally, but again SRD 5.1 was their property, so we'll have to wait and see.
1) No, but whose livelihood depends on posting in a forum?
2) I think Wizards will be just fine even if whatever catastrophe you imagine actually happens. They made the right call, and I will vocally support them if/when it comes down to it, and so will others. The question is, will you?
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
Reconcile this for me. Some of us here are no strangers to the purpose and consequence of real-world colonialism. Have firsthand experience with what happens when those with wealth and with privilege work real hard to "do their best" to replace how a community thinks with what it thinks is best for them. We are talking about an American multinational corporation, and I am old enough to remember when anyone with a sense of justice had little to no trust in such entities. But here you're insisting a panel of "experts" representing the interests of one such entity ought be granted global reach to decide what's best for players and publishers the world over. So you're saying anything in a game that might so much as risk promoting injustice in the real world needs to be dealt with but if that means here in the real world you've got to act like every imperialist jerk ever to walk the earth and deeply offend others that's just fine. Do I have that right?
First of all, maybe cool it with the antagonism.
What I think is that formalized policies to help protect the disenfranchised is a good thing, that'll be my thesis statement. I looked at the originally proposed 6F clause and thought that it was not implemented very well and was trying to think of alternatives, one of which was having some sort of body to oversee content and flag stuff that's harmful. Whether that would be the cultural consultants that they already employ or possibly some other group is something I was discussing, not deciding for everyone.
Either way, it all goes back to my opinion that formalized policies to help protect people is a good thing. What form that takes is still to be determined. I think most people think that a "morality clause" is not the way to go, including the OP. I think a more viable alternative, if we're talking about something like an OGL, is to establish a group that is meant to oversee that kind of thing.
Every culture has looted from others violently when push comes to shove over one resource or another at points in history. Vikings portrayed primarily as savage raiders is just another stereotype pushed by selective editing of history by another part of Europe that was waging a war to expand their empire against the 'barbarians' or 'savages'.
I would note that one of the easiest ways to have a certain group be the 'bad guys' is if the main way you encounter them is in the form of raiding parties -- the ones back at home might be perfectly fine people, but the ones burning down farmhouses so they can more easily search the ashes for gold are probably worthy of smiting.
This does, however, cause problems for dungeons, because, well, PCs going into dungeons to slaughter the inhabitants and come out with loot look an awful lot like a raiding party...
Which is why it is handy to have innately evil monsters in the dungeon.
When the "disallowed use" in question is the legal publishing of protected speech, that constitutes the very meaning of censorship. Point denied.
Speech cannot be protected from corporations. Speech can only be protected from the government. Secondarily, you are getting into Paradox of Tolerance territory, wherein absolute tolerance of any ideal, even hateful ideals, acts to diminish tolerance rather than expand it. If a platform for speech - such as, in a particularly torturous definition of 'platform for speech' in this case, the ability to publish content for D&D 5e - has rules associated with the use of that platform, nobody gets to say "having rules is unfair!" No one is obligated to give hateful ideals a platform to broadcast to the world from.
Finally, the point left entirely on the floor was that censorship does not protect people from bigotry, it just protects them from having an option to read an expression of it at the cost of fostering more hatred.
Again, Paradox of Tolerance. People who express hateful, hurtful views do not magically become cured of those views by expressing them, and they do convert other people into hateful people and reduce the tolerance of the overall gestalt. Giving them a platform to broadcast their hatred to the masses results in Fox News the spread and amplification of hatred as the platform acts to normalize those hateful views. Will some people become obsessed with their hate if not allowed to try and spread that hate to others, feeling like they're oppressed and silenced and becoming ever more furious over it? Yes. Fact: this already happens. ANY amount of protection against/deplatforming of hateful speech causes 'festering resentment'; the sort of mindset given to blind, virulent hatred is also the sort of mindset generally not strongly inclined to rational thinking or introspection. One cannot help making hateful people more hateful. One can help the targets of that hate, by reducing the amount of hate that reaches them.
Nobody would complain if somebody loudly bellowing a racist rant in the middle of a Wal-Mart was asked to leave by the store's management. Why do people feel like Wizards is required to allow similar rants within its own sphere of operations, to the immediate and difficult to repair detriment of D&D as a whole?
Well, apparently speech can be protected from corporations. It appears that in this case, the people did say "the rules are unfair", and they were withdrawn. What you just said can't happen, did happen. Turns out that "rules" are just agreements. Who knew? And yes, that is quite a tortured analogy, considering that D&D is not a platform at all, it is content. You and Wizards can try to claim it's their platform... well actually they did, and they lost the argument. The community itself is the platform, and Wizards got temporarily banned for violating the terms of service (OGL 1.0a) to which they and everyone else had agreed. But sure, you can keep pushing for something WotC has learned could cost them their business. Good luck with that.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
Well, apparently speech can be protected from corporations. It appears that in this case, the people did say "the rules are unfair", and they were withdrawn. What you just said can't happen, did happen. Turns out that "rules" are just agreements. Who knew? And yes, that is quite a tortured analogy, considering that D&D is not a platform at all, it is content. You and Wizards can try to claim it's their platform... well actually they did, and they lost the argument. The community itself is the platform, and Wizards got temporarily banned for violating the terms of service (OGL 1.0a) to which they and everyone else had agreed. But sure, you can keep pushing for something WotC has learned could cost them their business. Good luck with that.
The rules are indeed content, but the license is the platform. The current platform is jointly shared between us and them, and will be so in perpetuity now, and maybe even the next one (1DnD's license, whichever that will be) will too - but that doesn't mean every future platform will be.
At the end of the day, I have a hard time regarding the surrender of a corporation's private property (including its intellectual property) to the commons as anything but liberating.
After all, oppression isn't about hate alone.
It's also about power and control over people and resources, and marginalized people are the people who are most often dispossessed under oppression.
As a result of the campaign to preserve the Open Game License, marginalized people (like the abundance of BIPOC, disabled, and/or LGBTQ creators in the tabletop roleplaying game community) have more opportunity than before to create worlds, tell stories, and share ideas (and maybe even pay a bill or two) with Dungeons and Dragons through either the Open Game License or the Creative Commons license.
I will always regard open access to a resource like that as a win, and I guess I will always be confused by people who would hand open access to a resource like that back for a corporation (the epitome of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism, as far as I'm concerned) or its committee to reassert power and control.
Oh, I don't. It tends to have unique features per culture, though there are a few common features (for example, deciding the disfavored group is stupid is quite common).
Haha, that's true. Why is your group trying to take goods and resources away from anyone else by force? Because someone told you they're bad? Because they attacked a village to take some resources and now you're the hand of justice? What if those resources that the village had were only obtained because of an earlier fight that pushed the dungeon denizens off that land? what if even earlier than that said dungeon denizens pushed someone else out?
It's like nearly everything in history if you go down that route... everyone is good and everyone is bad eventually...which it is depends entirely on the perspective of the current viewer and on where you draw the cutoff for what counts as righting some wrong.
I don't recall arguing any of the sort. I can understand why Wizards might want one, but that's a separate issue.
However, your apparent bias against Harvard graduates makes me suspect you're from the US anyway. I don't know anything specific about Harvard's program (if any), but taking advantage of people who have actually studied a topic is generally a good idea.
1) No, but whose livelihood depends on posting in a forum?
2) I think Wizards will be just fine even if whatever catastrophe you imagine actually happens. They made the right call, and I will vocally support them if/when it comes down to it, and so will others. The question is, will you?
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieI don't need or want an overseer.
Which is why it is handy to have innately evil monsters in the dungeon.
Well, apparently speech can be protected from corporations. It appears that in this case, the people did say "the rules are unfair", and they were withdrawn. What you just said can't happen, did happen. Turns out that "rules" are just agreements. Who knew? And yes, that is quite a tortured analogy, considering that D&D is not a platform at all, it is content. You and Wizards can try to claim it's their platform... well actually they did, and they lost the argument. The community itself is the platform, and Wizards got temporarily banned for violating the terms of service (OGL 1.0a) to which they and everyone else had agreed. But sure, you can keep pushing for something WotC has learned could cost them their business. Good luck with that.
As for the rest, I recommend The Persuaders, by Anand Giridharadas. It certainly opened my eyes.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieThe rules are indeed content, but the license is the platform. The current platform is jointly shared between us and them, and will be so in perpetuity now, and maybe even the next one (1DnD's license, whichever that will be) will too - but that doesn't mean every future platform will be.
At the end of the day, I have a hard time regarding the surrender of a corporation's private property (including its intellectual property) to the commons as anything but liberating.
After all, oppression isn't about hate alone.
It's also about power and control over people and resources, and marginalized people are the people who are most often dispossessed under oppression.
As a result of the campaign to preserve the Open Game License, marginalized people (like the abundance of BIPOC, disabled, and/or LGBTQ creators in the tabletop roleplaying game community) have more opportunity than before to create worlds, tell stories, and share ideas (and maybe even pay a bill or two) with Dungeons and Dragons through either the Open Game License or the Creative Commons license.
I will always regard open access to a resource like that as a win, and I guess I will always be confused by people who would hand open access to a resource like that back for a corporation (the epitome of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism, as far as I'm concerned) or its committee to reassert power and control.
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