[SciPy-Dev] removing the Lena image

[Jaime Fernández del Río]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Anne Archibald <archibald at astron.nl> wrote:

>
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 5:12 PM Alan G Isaac <alan.isaac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 8/15/2015 8:40 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:
>> > It's a detail from a pornographic image
>>
>>
>> One may oppose the image without exaggerating:
>> the original photo was merely erotic, not pornographic.
>> And as for the cropped image that has become a reference
>> standard, it is unobjectionable if culturally archaic.
>>
>
> If we're being precise about language, this image is not unobjectionable:
> there are indeed people who have objections to it:
> http://www.cmc.edu/news/every-picture-tells-a-story
> https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-playboy-centerfold-does-not-belong-in-tj-classrooms/2015/04/24/76e87fa4-e47a-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html
>
> An excess of political correctness is difficult
>> to distinguish from censorship.
>>
>
> We could have a discussion about culture, feminism, microaggressions, and
> the potential for widespread small choices to do harm. Such discussions are
> often ugly and divisive, perhaps because the harms under discussion are not
> apparent to some people. But this image is not being proposed for removal
> for feminist reasons. It is being proposed for removal because the license
> is a problem.
>
> For my part, I think the license problem is real and reason enough for
> removal. The feminist issues with the image are part of why I have no
> motivation to attempt to obtain permission. (Perhaps one could obtain
> permission to include the image but only with a Playboy-bunny watermark?)
>
> Just to be clear, I am not trying to make a case
>> for including the image.  There may be some case
>> for skimage.data.lena() to fetch the image from
>> the USC-SIPI Image Database
>> http://sipi.usc.edu/database/download.php?vol=misc&img=4.2.04
>> but I am not trying to make that case either.
>> I am merely addressing an issue of the debasement
>> of language.
>>
>
> Please don't play devil's advocate or language-lawyer with social-justice
> issues. It makes the discussions more stressful and unpleasant without
> actually raising substantive points.
>

+1 for removal.

Josep Tarradellas, upon returning to Barcelona after 42 years of exile
during Franco's dictatorship, is quoted as saying a local version of Ben
Parker's power and responsibility phrase: "We can do anything, except
embarrass ourselves."

That an all-white-male committee were to determine that there is nothing
objectionable with the Lena image, aside from the copyright, and thus send
a representation to the Playboy mansion to discuss licensing, would
certainly not pass the embarrassment test for me.

Jaime

-- 
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