Slashdot Mirror
Web Site Sues Annoying Pest Troll
kongjie writes "Cleveland's The Plain Dealer has a story in the business section about a pest-control web site that is suing someone who obviously has a particular bone to pick with exterminators: he is accused of being a "troll" who "constantly leaving obnoxious and offensive messages" on their pest-control bulletin board. The suit is for $5,000 and is for "violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.""
I can see Slashdot's new business model...
The exterminator!
Eliminates pests and trolls...
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
(just kidding...)
Man, a lot of you people are in some serious trouble!
Go get 'em, Taco !
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Should company bulleting boards who do not want to put up with this enable verification of posts by moderators?
Or even a simple filter to filter out common offensive messages.
is this a good thing or a bad thing?
I think sterner measures need to be taken. Such as having spammers and trolls fight to the death in a pit for our amusement.
That you've resorted to trolling a pest-control web site?
To make your analogy more accurate. The homeless man was going into the restraunt, goosing the waitresses, yelling and throwing stuff until the customers left.
Once you visit someone elses site you abide by THIER rules. You want free speach? Make your own site then you can say whatever you want.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think Slashdot has found a sustainable business model!
When's the 2nd IPO?
rooooar
Actually, by signing up for that forum he accepted an agreement that he could be banned for hateful speech, etc. When he did so, he then (This is what I'm getting from the story) ban evaded and did it some more.
You can scream 'FARK THE USA' on the street all you want... just don't go into corner store and start doing it.
I am a filthy pirate.
Being a jerk shouldn't be illegal / a suable thing.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
And if he kept sneaking into my business to do his musical number, I have the right to have him charged for tresspassing.
Freedom of speech does not mean you get to use other people's property (in this case, a website) to practice it.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Slashdot first websit to make 100 billion dollars
It even looks like a slashdot headline, what with the splalling errors and all.
my pet machine
"It sounds in part that this [lawsuit] highlights the lack of public spaces on the Internet," Seltzer said. "I would be more comfortable saying they could kick off whoever they wanted if there was someplace else they could tell him to go."
:)
He doesn't get out much, does he?
When you open your site up to anyone, and make the process of getting an account public and easily accessable, you've just created a public space. The vast majority of web-based message boards are this way. No identity verification, no scrutinized application process, no requirements (except possibly vowing that you're over 18). The act of getting an account on these boards is almost totally geared toward providing a constant on-line identity in the forums, but it has nothing to do with who you are in meatspace.
That being said, I'm fine with this lawsuit. It takes money and resources to create such a forum, even if it's free to use. I'm posting on Slashdot's dime right now, in fact.
There are plenty of places for boneheads to go. Selzer's particular place has been targetted for asshole bombardment, and that sucks.
Maybe he should implement a Karma scheme?
GMFTatsujin
However, if this hypothetical homeless man were in your living room with his drum, he would be trespassing on your property and you could request that he beats his drum elsewhere.
If he were to continually sneak in to your house every time you kicked him out, would you not take action against him?
I've run message boards in the past - there are always a few bad apples, and I inevitably got/get others saying
"I'm on board X (running software Y) and they just ban someone - you're stupid cause you can't ban someone."
I try to stress to people you CAN NOT ban someone technically in forums on the internet. Well, not easily. Certainly without putting up roadblocks which just annoy the rest of the people.
What can you do?
1. Require username/password - unless these are paid for, it's hard to stop people from registering
2. Require a reply to email (or click on a link) to verify an email address. Big deal - so I know you know how to open a hotmail account.
3. Track IPs and ban on that - great, except for people on dialups, or shared systems, or mobile people.
4. Require moderators to review and approve all posts before they go out. Most reliable, but requires increasing staff time/cost as traffic grows.
There is NO foolproof way to stop this sort of stuff. I hope this suit sends a message to those trolls who waste/abuse resources and do not heed polite requests to play by the rules the rest of us follow.
I'm normally not in favor of legal tactics, and generally favor technical answers to technical problems, but this isn't a technical problem. It's a behavioural one, and we have a legal system in place to deal with bad/wrong/illegal behaviour.
creation science book
Jon Katz, a freelance writer and dog enthusiast, was arrested and jailed with no bail for attempting to delete an old work of his that falls under the new anti-troll act.
If found guilty, his punishment could range anywhere from a fine of $500 to a sentence of 2 years of jail time during which he would be forced to read his old Slashdot articles 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday, until released.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
But Free Speech doesn't apply when you're on private property. On my "land" I CAN tell you what you are and are not allowed to do and say. And on the net, it's ALL private property, so I CAN tell you to go piss up a rope. I agree it's extreme, so does their lawyer, but it seems to me that as time goes on, trolls are getting WORSE. They're not just leaving nasty and annoying messages by the ton, they're resorting to DDoS attacks, IRC flooding, attempting domain "theft", spam attacks, and a host of other extreme measures. I'm somewhat torn over this too, but from the story, I'm leaning towards their side, to sue. He's cut traffic, thus potentially threatening their revenue stream. That's real damage, not just a poor response to name calling.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
No... Since sometimes the editors also troll, *we* got the pay... eh, Taco? ;-) Just kidding...
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
This one is it.
However...this is a private forum, owned by a company, and thus not included in Freedom of Speech laws.
... but it's not.
Privately owned fora can ultimately decide what they want on their space.
Had it been a publicly owned forum, then you would have had every right to scream for your rights
(by forum, I mean it in the sense of a place to talk, singular of fora)
-- Tino Didriksen / projectjj.dk
That you've resorted to trolling a geek news web site?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Freedom of speech is not freedom of action. You cant be prosecuted for anything you believe, or expressing those beliefs. But you can be for harassment, trespassing, indecent behaviour, public drunkeness, etc.
Too many people act like shitbags then try and hide behind 'freedom of speech'.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
1. build popular website, attracting many thousands of trolls
2. sue trolls, total=$5k*(number of trolls)
3. profit!!!
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Man I never thoughted trolls could be a good thing, but now!
I will make millions by sueing all the trolls on my webboard! >:D
I envy CmdTaco though, he can become a multimillionair playboy now.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
If you're walking down 5th Avenue in Manhattan and some homeless guy is beating away at a drum and chanting "Fuck the USA. Don't bomb Iraq" you cannot sue him because it would breech the freedom of speech laws.
Yeah, but that's a public street owned by the govenment. If he tried to go into, say, the superbowl and march out onto the field doing the same thing, he would not be allowed.
There's also the argument that he's specifically trying to disrupt other people's conversation. If he's more interested in stopping the others from talking (rather than "more interested in expressing his opinion") he's actually harming freedom of speech, not excercising it.
That was the problem. They did ban him, from the web servers they owned and operated, and he kept getting in. Businesses still have the right to refuse service.
I'm not saying the lawsuit is the best solution, but the right to troll is, as they say, essentially identical to the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, and the latter has been explicitly named as *not* protected speech. And there is NO constitutional right to use a message board against the wishes of its owner.
Man, oh man! if these guys manage to actually win this case, you can bet that Cmdr. Taco will be next in line to the court house! Can you imagine how much money he could make off slashdot trolls?
Well, since I'd imagine the vast majority are still (supposed to be) in school/kindergarten, I'm thinking, "not much"...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
As others have already pointed out, free speech is not absolute. When you access a web page or web board, you are agreeing to adhere to the rules of that forum because the website (contrary to many people's beleifs) is not public property.
Second, though the drummer may not be arrested for merely drumming and chanting, he can be arrested under charges of Disorderly Conduct and Disturbing the Peace if:
enough people complain about him
he causes interference with the normal course of business on that street
he degrades the business occuring in the shops on that street
You have the right to free speech, but not to be destructive.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
[T]his isn't a case about free speech but about honoring the contracts - those long terms-of-use agreements most users click through - that users accept before they use an Internet service. [...] But Huckaby and a few other users chased away many of the regular users with a mix of angry messages and racially charged exchanges [...] The suit said Huckaby regularly violated the rules of the forum - it bars abusive, hateful or vulgar language - and Huckaby repeatedly was asked to stay away from the site.
...and this has been disproven so many times as to not even be worth mentionning.
--- "No matter who or what, a box of flowers is better than a smack in the belly with a wet fish." --RAH
I don't think the people behind this suit are particularly adept. Block the IP. If that doesn't do it contact their provider. If that doesn't work start blocking the whole IP range owned by that person's ISP.
If the guy has to find a whole new ISP just to post a message that will be killed by a moderator in a few hours he's not going to be doing it for long.
The only way I can see this not being a good idea is if the ISP in question is sufficiently large AND sufficiently unresponsive to your complaints, but I don't see that as being the case here. I think they're spending a whole lotta money on something they're going to lose anyway.
My
Limekiller
You're trolling here, right?
While the plaintiffs case may very well have merits, based on the TOS nearly every website has (and if not, there are still remedies), the fact remains that in this case, as in so many others I have seen, the ruling, if granted in favor of the plaintiffs (GIE, et. al.) will have little real effect. Everyone knows what happens when you feed the trolls. That is exactly what they thrive on. Further, the defendant (Huckaby) can stall the case for years, run up a huge bill for GIE, and still keep it up. If he is not in violation of any criminal statutes, then he can pretty much keep trolling, and there is little the Courts can do.
It is, then, a question of technology.
Drink, Be Merry, Blame the Beergut on Your Genes
In a truly public space, yes.
This case is more like a troublemaker walking into a bar, shouting at everyone in the room at the top of his lungs, and demanding his right to pee on their shoes as a speech action. I don't have any problem with bouncers (in the employ of the guy who pays the rent on the building) showing guys like this the door.
This guy wasn't walking down a public street. He was abusing a privately controlled, open space. He was repeatedly making a disturbance that violated the agreement as to his conduct he made when he walked in the door. He was warned, bounced, but kept coming back. Effectively, he was tresspassing, and thus, legal action can and should be taken.
Open forum on the Internet !== non-regulated open space.
GMFTatsujin
You could consider websites more like a store or mall. That you are given an implied invitation to visit as long as you comply with their rules, if the rules are not illegal, discriminitory, and unreasonable.
This is a case where this person was told to leave, then came back using other names. The McDonalds manager could ask you to leave if you are sleeping on the table after eating your Taco Bell dinner and if you don't leave, the manager could have you arrested for tresspassing. You could be required not to take pictures in an establishment, as part of the rules of entry is not to take pictures -- even if it does not violate copyright.
Just because there is no bolted door on the front and there is a public sidewalk attached does not mean you can go into and do anything you want.
Fight Spammers!
That's close, but it's more like the troll did the same thing with 50 robots and whores so that no one could even get in the door, much less carry on a conversation or enjoy being there.
I like this and hope all the Steve Barktos and their company sponsors are ruined. That's right, whores, I'd like to see you lose your jobs, houses and reputations for such activity.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...not for being a troll but for being a moron. So he's harassing a website where he has left his true data?
Sue the hell out of him
Wait a minute . . . that's bad for me.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I think this is a cut and dry case of a company prematurely jumping into a matter whole, hog.
Any system or forum administrator worth his salt could easily block a range of IP addresses as well as some of the more popular proxy servers that allow deviant trolls to sneak through and continue posting.
Just look at Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Rob and Rusty both, respectfully, understand the dynamics of Web communities and know that court isn't how to solve trivial little troll problems. All you do is give a person a very friendly time out period during which they can't post and you're home free.
The problem here is not trolls or Internet arguers. The problem here is talent, and this pest control company doesn't have anyone in their IT department with half a brain.
K5 and Slash are still running strong through years of low budgets, high troll/contributor ratios, and Dot Com busts. It's not rocket scientry, folks, it's just simple, kind administration on the part of Rusty and Rob Malda.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Grow up. Courts are for real problems, not for settling your little Internet tiffs.
I mean, really. Why don't they just remove his posts and ban him? I can just see the owners of this web site frowning and twiddling their thumbs, saying, "Well, our website is ruined now. Will we have to close it, or do you think we could just put up a message asking people to ignore these trolls? If this keeps up we'll have to put a bigger hard drive on the server." etc.
It never occurred to me to sue someone when my IRC channels would get taken over back in the day.
<:
The first amendment doesn't even apply in this case.
Nathan
When you sue someone, you are generally not limited to recovering actual damages. You can sue for punitive damages as well, to deter the defendant (and others like him) from repeating his actions in the future -- which would require further intervention of the legal system.
Depending on how much time and effort (and legal bills) GIE has invested to keep him off their forums, and how much damage their reputation has lost because of the trolls on their forums, I can believe $5000 is the actual damages. An organization I work with has persistent trolls, and we spend a huge amount of time to remove them when they act up.
I wonder, though, if GIE has talked to the guy's ISP(s) and reported him for abuse. In my experience, that is much more effective than trying to unmask and sue someone over the Internet.
Slashdots revenue problems are solved! ...
1) make a website
5) sue the trolls
6) Profit!
Miss Selzer is a lawyer for the EFF. She also created the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. As far as I know, she has no relation to the pest-control website. She was simply interviewed for the story.
She was commenting that most web forums are privately owned, so if this ruling stands, trolls can be kicked off virtually any website. Note, she didn't actually take a stance on the case, she simply suggested she was uncomfortable with it.
Ok perhaps we need to clear up a few things. Firstly a few misconceptions. The internet is not a democracy, its an oligarchy (government by the few). What does this imply? It implies that the virtual space on the internet that you use that is not a) your own or b) contracted to you to manage, you have no rights to. You are there as a privlidge. (IRC is a great example of this) It is not 'public' space. it is *shared* space.
Being that this is a shared space and random person is neither point A nor point B, there is a level of conduct expected by the ppl that are A and B, and you can be bounced if they deem fit. Please recall that you as A or if so given power as B have the right to control your network, everything coming in and going out.
If you wanan run your own space with your own rules go ahead.. but i'll clue you in here, you wanna let ppl run amok and piss of everyone, you aren't going to get anyone there over then people pissing on each other.
A support BBS on a company website != public land. It isn't slashdot. You don't have the right to say ANYTHING you want to anybody. Hell you don't even have that right on Slashdot. If OSDN decides that you are a problem they will block your IP and remove your account. You want free speech on the net then you pay for it.
Also your drum beating hobo analogy has serious flaws. In most places you can't yell and do such things without a permit. Have you never heard of "Disturbing the Peace" laws?
All freedoms have there limits:
Free Speech doesn't allow you to yell fire in a theater, to incite a riot, or make obscene displays. You are only allowed "free" speech when the public lets you.
Free Press is mostly limited by resources. Yes you can print almost anything you want but the goverment doesn't have to pay for it. You do. Nor can you by force shove your pamplet in my hand.
One element if "freedom" you seem to forget is "I" also have the right to ignore you and not listen to you.
If you do anything to distrupt that right then I am allowed to stop you. See above for examples. So on MY private BBS I have the right to stop you from invading my privacy!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The idea that a commercial entity can incur an actionable loss because of the freedom of speech is a new and dangerous trend in our society
No it isn't. It's called private property and the principle has been around just as long as the first amendment. If you make noise on my property, I can kick you off. No questions. If you make noise in the street, I can't do anything about it. The web site could easily be considered private property and posting to the site would require the visitors abide by the terms of use. If they don't fine, they have to go do their own website.
This has nothing to do with corporate entities imposing censorship. It has everything to do with private property and the user thereof.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Is it possible that the website owners are not as much interested in winning a lawsuit as they are getting this guy to stop interfering with their business? I'd bet they're hoping to settle out of court. Apologize and leave us alone, and we'll drop the case against you.
<:
If I have a forum on my site, well its MY SITE. The forums are not a public place like a sidewalk. If my forums are part of a business, and some asshole is coming into them with false user accounts reapeatedly after I tell him to leave, then I should be able to sue him.
Certainly you're right. But it's not the fact that they're suing "for money" that bothers me, what else can you sue for? What bothers me is that they're suing at all.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
While that is certainly true, I also don't think it falls within the spectrum of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If you run a site that purports to have/be a public forum, you have to get a very thick skin very quickly, because the public doesn't just include those with opinions that match your own, or that you find useful.
At the risk of sounding like a "Beowulf cluster" statement, I think that a good solution would be to use a Bayesian-style filtering system on posts. Have the negative corpus consist of the guy's previous messages and the positive corpus consist of the remainder of the forum, minus any responses to the troll's messages.
Is there any forum software out there that incorporates this sort of functionality?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
They've simply refused to put themselves in a constantly reactive state. They are taking some action to establish a precedent that you must abide by their TOS, or face REAL consequences, not simply 'you can't post for 2 hours' or some other slap on the wrist.
PCT seems to be an association or industry portal of some sort - they're servicing a number of pest control companies. Their forum users aren't there to get into popularity contests with 'friends/foes' and moderation totals and all that crap - they're there to exchange business information. Other 'social engineering' answers simply burden the rest of the users who are abiding by the rules.
Block by IP and you potentially block other members. Require moderator approvals and you lose the 'real time' aspect of the forum.
IT people want to look for technical solutions to this because it keeps them in a position of power. If this lawsuit is successful, you won't have to rely on your IT people as much to keep a lid on technical problems. There will hopefully be one more precedent which establishes that 'stop' means 'stop', and there will be a financial penalty for failing to comply.
creation science book
for every 200 trolls on slashdot. thats a million bucks!
Nice try, mathboy. That's only 100k.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
i think even in the streets, people would call on the police to remove this 'pest'
The Awful Truth
What if the troll post offesive words on his site and a potential customer saw the message and stop doing business with him? Some little old lady might not understand that the BBS can't be monitored 24/7. She would simply be offended and blame the owner.
"How could you let that filth be on your website."
Also the extra time and effort required to remove said Troll was costing the guy money as well.
If the guy spray painted the store or broke a window would he not be expected to pay damages? How is this different?
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Suppose you stand outside the restaurant telling people you got food poisoning while eating there. You have a constitutional right to do so. But with a website, there is no public entrance to stand at. If you join a forum and tell people the website is lying to them, the website operators can sue you for trolling. The law may permit the suit, but is it right?
A full size poster of the magazine cover with the cockroach in the white John Travolta "Stayin' Alive" suit.
OK, I'll enter your house despite your explicit request for me to leave and start beating my drum. If you throw me out, I'll break back in and beat my drum some more.
Let's see how long that lasts before you call the cops.
You're suck a fucking moronic troll.
How about threat like comments. Are they ok? How about this comment made by Klerk about my 4 year old son and 5 year old daughter.
klerk: I had sex with your daughter and son, jackass! You're my 300th freak!
Is this what free speech intended?
I think Klerk is a sick bastard and that society would be just fine without his comments. I'm surprised he hasn't been kicked off Slashdot yet.
Freedom of speech is about the freedom of expressing ideas with a positive intent, not about blabbing every offensive thought that pops into your head.
ayottesoftware.com
That someone started taking these irresponsible cretins to task. I applaud this action. For anyone who wants to cry "free speach", it should be noted that the server, bulletin board, and services involved were totally private in nature. That, and this twonk had to get through some kind of agreement prohibitig such behavior in order to gain access. I'm constantly amazed that people seem to think that because a forum is on the Internet that it somehow enjoys some additional protections covering anything you want to say. If you own the equipment, you get to decide what gets done with it, and who can use it.
> Nice try, mathboy. That's only 100k.
Ok, explain it to me. Are you saying 200 * 5k = 100k? I guess I must be missing something. Are you calling him a mathboy to compliment his math skills, or just to direct attention to your own deficiencies in the subject?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
"first psot!"
/. 5000 clams. Best pay up before they exterminate you.
For your failure, and your troll, you now owe
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
No it isn't. It's called private property and the principle has been around just as long as the first amendment.
Let's think about that for a moment. Are you suggesting that the freedom of speech only exists on one's own property? Suppose a landlord doesn't agree with a letter a tenant sent to the editor of a newspaper? Should that landlord be able to evict the tenant?
If you make noise on my property, I can kick you off.
Taking action against someone for criminal trespass is one thing. But you are talking about taking civil action against someone. A jury is not necessarily involved, and because civil law is about money rather than justice, you've just placed the first amendment in the purview of big money. See what happens when you confuse power with freedom?
*sigh* That means open to the public, not an exclusive membership thing.
It is still private property, and they are still free to admit or deny entrance or speech to who ever they choose.
The GOVERNMENT cannot abridge your right to free speech, but the second you enter private property and agree to follow a set of rules, the owner can demand you do or say whatever he or she wants you to.
You have the right to get your ass out and bitch in public though.
There not being any sidewalks on the internet, you would have to setup your own private i-estate (har har) and all that, but even that does not effect your right to go outside your house, down to the street, and start bitching.
Which is pretty much all the "right to free speech" guarantees you in the end.
You have the right to free speech, others do not have to give you access to their mediums. (unless they are government sponsored mediums, in which case you DO then have a right of access to them. Thus those Public Access TV channels.)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
BZZZZT! The 1st amendment and/or whatever you construe to be "free speech" ceases to exist the moment you step foot on private property. Free speech is only guaranteed on public property.
"The idea that a commercial entity can incur an actionable loss because of the freedom of speech is a new and dangerous trend in our society right now"
"New trend?" Apparently you're not familar with slander/libel laws.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=51162&cid=5109 194
"Actually, by signing up for that forum he accepted an agreement that he could be banned for hateful speech, etc"
Accepted in the sense of submitting a form from a page containing a hyperlinked credit to the alleged agreement?
Doesn't sound like an agreement to me. Sounds like a website TOU, which isn't worth the disk-space it's stored on.
I'll ignore your bad attitude towards newbies and try not to hurt you. =:>
I'm happy to see disruptive people thrown off, and so is Selzer. Selzer, however, sees this being a problem with other more disturbing internet trends of consolidation and active control of content.
The worry is that there are no places that are NOT under someone else's thumb. Most ISPs are implementing policies like this and all the large ones prevent you from running your own web site with your own equipment. This is a problem that's larger than trolls. People with unpopular oppinions may find themselves without a place to voice that oppinion very soon. Do you think AOL would let you run a rotten.com? Do you think MSN would let you run a klan site? How about the Free Software Foundation? Right now M$ spends billions of dollars a year discrediting their "competition", we can be sure they would consider the FSF a troll if the FSF lost it's ability to peer. The internet IS a public network because it uses public grounds and servitudes. The root cause of the problem is that ISPs are being regulated less as common carriers and more as some kind of net nanny.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Here it is again instead of running a better comment board to block ban people or gosh takign the polite pr approach and staisfying this customer.. they resort to lawsuit..
I see this company going out of business once the court publishes the 'victims' complaints..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I participate in an IRC channel for people on the Autistic-spectrum, we have a troll who has made it his life's mission to evade bans and harrass us. I simply cannot fathom WHY someone would find pleasure in this, but he does.
Pathetic human behavior has no bottom
I've got moderator points, so with one click of my mouse I could mark you "-1 Troll" and cost you $5000. Of course, now that I've posted, you're safe in this article. :-)
"Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer
I suppose it would if you did it on a Microsoft board. But that would bring the elite shock troops crashing down on you.
Have a look at the messageboard. This guy is a troll in the true Slashdot style: random profanity, multiple accounts, and goatse.cx links.
By the way, regarding the latte: if you follow the above link, do not click on the post with subject line "Do you recognize this insect?".
All you who are saying, "Sue his pants off." You deeply sadden me.
Sure this guy is an asshole, maybe he deserves some punishment. However, if you allow people to punished for what they say at human digression, where does it end?
Luckily, this is in an american court. Hopefully the court will see that it is indeed speech, and have to decide whether or not the person was slandering. Unfortunately, after lots of legal fees.
There will always be people you don't like and don't want to hear. On the flip side, there will be those that you do want to hear. Unfortunately they're mutually inclusive. If you want one, you have to swallow both. Tough. That's the price of free speech.
Sure, this was a privately owned bulletin board. So it's not really a question of free speech. But that just makes it their job to moderate his posts, and ban him if they don't like it.
That's ok, I'm fearless.
First post!!!!!
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Be careful what you post on this thread. There is some seriously unfair moderation going on.
It seems that many moderators are confusing the power of a webmaster with the freedom to speak.
YHBT
Going back to meatspace, for any of you who have actually tried to get a candidate or referendum on a ballot, you know how hard it is to get signatures in suburbia. You have to get permission from the proprietor. In the case of churches, it's illegal thanks to LBJ lest they lose their non-profit status. Sidewalks in suburbia, when they exist, are pointless as everyone is whizzing around in private automobiles.
In urban planning, there is frequently a distinction made between the "public realm" and "private space". (And then there are shades of gray in between, such as office lobbies). In meatspace, the public realm is dying thanks to the automobile (and the war on Iraq -- had to throw that in on this Jan. 18 day of protest). In cyberspace, the public realm of UseNet is dying thanks to fora such as Slashdot, newspapers, blogs, and even pest control companies. Yes, I'm contributing to the problem by continuing to post to Slashdot and even running my own blog -- mostly because traffic on UseNet is way down.
Going back to the case at hand, yes the Pest Control Forum is the private realm. If that isn't the private realm in cyberspace, I don't know what is. The issue gets stickier when it comes to news sites. Should a newspaper site be able to ban trolls? How about a special-interest newspaper?
Ubiquitous widely used P2P fora voter-moderated fora would be the best solution to resurrecting the dying public realm in cyberspace. Unfortunately, copyright violators have given P2P a bad name, and corporate entities such as Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, newspapers, and Slashdot have captured the marketshare and mind share of cyberspace public discourse.
I want a new mod option, "Sue for Trolling". When can this be implemented? I can accept the money through PayPal or a Swiss bank account.
I doubt it. Look at his post history.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
There are numerous other comments stating that they shouldn't sue, and/or they are too technically imcompetent to deal with a troll. I was reiterating the point that those methods aren't foolproof. You know that it's impossible, and so do I and many others, but certainly others still think it's a technical issue, not a behavioural one.
creation science book
While you are generally correct, if the bum said "fuck" while expressing political speech, most good judges would be less inclined to punish him than if he were merely using the word to harass women.
What we really need to know, is how the ammendment does apply to this. For instance, if the bum goes into the corner grocery, does the same thing... he could be prosecuted for trespassing. But what if someone had a business with the primary purpose of allowing someone to speak their opinion? In the real world, there is no such thing that I'm aware of. But on the internet, slashdot certainly comes to mind, and possibly kuro5hin is an even better example. Would it be wrong to ban only some of those that want to express their opinion, while allowing others?
And if so, to what degree does this bulletin board accomplish the same purpose? Their primary business isn't providing a forum like slash or kuro5hin, but it does somehow seem deceptive of them to only want to allow "good speech". Would there be any difference if the guy were telling nasty truths about the company, instead of outright trolling?
I'd be much more comfortable if they were suing for slander/libel, to be honest. Then it could be decided solely on what he said, and how true it was. They'd still nail him, without reinforcing the power to silence anyone they didn't like.
Mind you, they already have that power technically, but it doesn't mean they have the moral right to use it capriciously.
Let's think about that for a moment. Are you suggesting that the freedom of speech only exists on one's own property?
No. But your freedom of speech may be limited on someone else's property.
Suppose a landlord doesn't agree with a letter a tenant sent to the editor of a newspaper? Should that landlord be able to evict the tenant?
Leaseholders still have limited property rights even though they are not the legal owner of the property. So police still need search warrants to enter apartments, and the owners cannot enter without prior notice. However a lease agreement is a contract and if someone breaks a term of the contract, they could possibly be evicted. Local laws may limit which contract provisions are enforcable though.
Taking action against someone for criminal trespass is one thing. But you are talking about taking civil action against someone. A jury is not necessarily involved, and because civil law is about money rather than justice, you've just placed the first amendment in the purview of big money. See what happens when you confuse power with freedom?
So if someone was to wander into my store and defecate all over the carpet, having them arrested for trespassing is fine. But if I sued them for the costs of having carpets cleaned, I'm just a tool of big money?
So then I assume for consistency's sake that you support the right of any person or business to send unsolicited email to anyone they want to? That's fine if you do, but if you oppose spam or support spam prevention laws, this is essentially the same situation.
They've banned him several times, and he keeps getting around it. There are ways around every type of block.
And note, blocking the entire IP range isn't really a viable option, because who knows how many customers they have from that ISP, especially if they're in the same locale as that ISP. That, and he can just change ISPs. Go with a National ISP. That'd really cut into their customers I expect. It's a pest control company, not a techie site. Imagine the number of AOL users.
They've also indicated that they've spent considerable time trying to deal with this with the "polite pr approach".
Some people just cannot be dealt with through reasonable means.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
think its time u went back to math class, postboy. think before you type next time :P
5000 x 200 = 1 000 000
count the 0's
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
They did ban him, several times, and he kept evading it.
The only matter of speech in this is if they were allowed to ask him to leave, and do the virtual equivalent of having him escorted out (banned).
After that, it's virtual trespassing.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Actually it's more like this: the homeless man walks into the restaurant, one which advertises itself as a place specifically friendly to women in technology, carrying stinkbombs, very nasty gay pr0n and spouting obscenities. The homeless man also beat up on the proprietor.
The proprietor of the restaurant doesn't call the police or sue the homeless man, she calls the director of the homeless man's shelter and tells them of the incident. The homeless man is then told by the shelter he is not welcome there anymore and to find one of the other many shelters in or out of the town. She is then forced to hire bouncers to protect the restaurant from future molestation.
The homeless man finds a new shelter, then contacts his buddy trolls-under-the bridges and tells them "Open Season on Ms. Geek's!" They then start attacking the building the restaurant rents, vandalizing it, even to the point of setting up wiretaps in the building's trunk phone line.
The owner of the building suggests that maybe Ms. Geek's should find a new location. The proprietor of the restaurant decides that rents are too high, the frustration factor is way too much, and most people who were visiting the restaurant were checking out the menu, admiring what other people were eating, then deciding "oh no, I mustn't sit down and eat, it's too fattening."
So Ms. Geek's goes out of business thanks to that homeless troll and his buddies. Next week, a Starbuck's opens up in its place. Thanks a lot, WIPO, Vladinator and the rest of you.
Ms. Geek
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
There's good trolls and there's bad trolls. As a slashdot reader I find some funny. As a messageboard administrator, I hope they make an example out of this guy, would save me a shitload of hassle. One troll I've dealt with repeatedly posted personal attacks against various members of several forums I admin at, did everything he could to piss off as many people as possible (it's a site about a game series so basically he posted spoilers absolutely everywhere), then after being banned registered a slew of accounts and flooded the general discussion forum with crap. Having cleared that up and banned the source IPs he then used about fifty different open proxies to slip around -- got to the point where I just customized the forums to send me a message over Jabber every time someone registered and let me watch their first steps then decide whether or not it's a troll; I'm sure I roasted more than one account as a false positive. That's not counting the personal attacks on me and my AIM getting flooded with crap, as well as impersonations of me and various others on AIM and IRC or whatever; social-engineered an admin password off another site I go to this way and then deleted the entire database.
I dunno what's worse; the trolls or the fact that there's an ever growing number of people at the site who find him hilarious and egg him on. Though they're a minority, most people quite publicly think he's a twat. He's stopped attacking forums but continues to infest IRC.
To cut a long story short then, there are some sad, sad individuals like this, and someone or other always has to deal with them. The more people like this get publicly and painfully burned, the better. It's all fun and games until you really make it your mission to just piss everyone off.
Having a jerkful nature shouldn't be suable, but some of the things jerks do most definitely should be. Now, the fact that one lone bastard can single-handedly shut down a small message board has always been just one of the hazards of the online world. The question is, is that the way things should be?
On one hand, this sort of lawsuit could be easily abused. On the other hand, there is a very disturbing lack of consequences for online behavior right now.
In my gut, I side with the site owners. They're just trying to run a helpful, tame website, which keeps getting "vandalized" in a sense.
The one thing I don't get is, why not just require registration in order to post?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This guy is an idiot who deserves to lose in court. If someone wants to run a message board purely for exterminators to discuss their occupational issues, that's their right. If some idiot won't adhere to their use policy and repeatedly tries to interfere with their site, it's their right to boot him. Technical and legal means are both valid ways of doing this. The latter is valid, IMHO, because it's a much more powerful deterrent, and detracts less from the webmaster's daily work. Even /. can't keep the trolls away through technical means w/o crippling the site in unpleasant ways.
/. folks have cause a horde of infantile nerdlings to bombard the pest control message board with goatse photos and the like. I feel sorry for them - both the message board people and the idiot trolls (or crapflooders, rather) bombarding the site, though for different reasons.
Of course, having posted this story here, the
Maybe we could set up a 'payment' system similar to the one in Mah-Jong (sp?). Ie, the difference in points/karma/whatnot between different people dictates how much they should pay to each other.
A photography message board I once frequented was eventually killed due the the actions of one - ONE - extremely persistent, incredibly prolific and mindblowingly obnoxious, teenage troll.
When reason inevitably failed (and since when have zit-faced virgin trolls ever been capable of reason...?), the board ops appealed to their ISP, their local police, then finally -- in desperation -- the FBI, but were told by almost everybody in a position to help to essentially f*ck off and stop wasting everybody's time with such nonsense. The fact that the troll was probably breaking numerous laws didn't seem to matter.
When they invoked the specter of legal action, their ISP's so-called security team laughed and suggested they get "Mulder and Scully" onto the case.
The First Amendment only protects you from the government, not private entities.
If I tell you that you cannot pray in my house, you can't.
If McDonalds said you can't read your poetry in the bathroom to random strangers, you can't.
Because it was insightful. Some people who are intuitive, even about things they aren't officially experts in.
Most likely no one remotely understands the First Amendment. You get judges with conflicting interpretations, and judges handling the cases would be expected to understand it. But if they did understand it, there wouldn't be conflicting interpretations, would there? So therefore, anyone is justified in using some common sense in conjunction with the little they may know.
You don't have to know very much about something to make an insightful observation. Insight is seeing things not obvious. If this person understood the amendment, it would not be insightful, but merely + 1, Informative. Anyway, this comment, as well as yours and its parent, is an opinion of each respective author. Feel free to disagree.
Changelog: Parent>Paragraph[1]>Sentence[2]
Typo "...people who are intuitive..." changed to "...people are intuitive..."
...since this got posted on /., this board is going to get attacked by a whole army of crapflooders. Maybe this story should have not gotten through the submission process...if the poor devils who run the board think they had troubles with this one guy, just wait.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
So, free speech applies only to landowners. Got it.
Anybody else remember that National Lampoon parody?
Being a jerk should never be outlawed. It's so comforting to oneself when one sees a jerk acting-up...
Well, I'm going to get out of this thread, because I've become the target of a moderation witchhunt, and if I want to preserve enough karma to M2 abusers out of the M1 queue, I really need to shut up.
It's clear that the slashdot crowd believes that rights flow from property ownership (your suggestion of practicing religion on public land is hilarious - I could just see the protests if someone tried to do a revival in a national park), and that webmaster == indisputable master of the universe. Luckily, I am a landowner and a webmaster, so the irrestible tide of anti freedom hypocrisy won't affect me very much.
sue me noe sue me now! no you dont have to sue me now, take me home a sue me
Hey. I gave you your props for posting the article. But I started them trolling. And I gave you props for posting my personal info. Don't try and take credit for what you didn't do. Thanks.
Spanky
As so often happens, I was too busy making my point to make sure I was bringing the right facts into play.
:)
Thanks for the correction.
GMFTatsujin
OTOH, the Justice department will probably find that Slashdot has a monopoly on trolls.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
NEVER, NEVER LET USERS POST PICTURES!!
I mean, the pictures they put up make Goatse look like Pokemon pictures. And yes, goatse is up there too so you can make comparisons. This idiot company gets what they deserve.
do not click on any of the posts there, unless you like tons of gay porn popups.
A name you can trust.
The very act of requiring registration ends up cutting down the number of posts a web site receives. I know that I hardly ever post on a web site that requires registration, Slashdot is pretty much the exception for me. I wouldn't have even registered on Slashdot if it required me to put down easily identifiable personal information.
Even if the website in question did have people register, it would have needed a sure way to identify registrants, such as by credit card number. It said in the article that the troll's username was banned but the guy snuck back under other names. Unless they could find a sure way to identify the guy (such as Microsoft's Passport **shudder**), they couldn't stop the guy from posting.
It comes down to this: require people to totally identify themselves (thus causing them to ignore the site), or take the chance that you won't get trolled and leave the site open to all. Trolls are the ones that are driving stuff like Passport and national ID numbers, if people didn't abuse the privacy that certain forums provide then there wouldn't be a need to pin people down with big brother tactics.
Sapere aude!
i can see michael's lawyer serving me now...
Make trolls foes, and No More Trolls (544787) a friend; then in Comment Options set foe and foes of friends to -6.
If they took told this person to leave the store the person would then be tresspassing.
Now, if they are tresspassing and then take the markers and papers, it would be theft or conversion since they have no authorization to take those.
Fight Spammers!
That would be because the opposite is obvious. But let's say most people including you didn't know who Bush was, but because of certain circumstances (reading about his political stance and involvement etc) you correctly inferred that he was white, that would be mild insight, would it not? If you knew he was white, and you told others he is white, then it would be simply informative.
I don't see this as being any different than spamming. He was asked to leave, he kept coming back under different names. He's using other people's resources not only without their permission, but in defiance of their stated wishes.
The existence of public space doesn't mean that anybody's obligated to show up at your web site and listen to you, or that anybody's SMTP server is obligated to accept your requests to connect to their Port 25*, any more than the existence of public parks and legality of soapboxes means that anybody's obligated to stick around and listen to you rant about space aliens' plots to destroy us all with volcanoes, but if you've gotten thrown out of the pub because you were rudely yelling at everybody about why they should buy canned meat from you, the commons and the high seas are still public space. The internet works through cooperation, and if nobody wants to cooperate with you because you won't cooperate with them, well, perhaps their lives are drearier for it, or perhaps not.
There are ways in which private groups are trying to take over public space. Various proposals for "internet drivers' licenses" and various governments' restrictions on their citizens' free speech and freedom to read are obvious examples. Australia's attempts to extend local defamation law around the world are especially disturbing, given the number of regimes that make "defaming the state" illegal. ICANN's main objective seems to be to assert trademark-owners' control over the namespace, and secondarily to make sure that some service providers always make money on namespace, rather than to provide technical management and high-quality implementations. You can see this especially in their insistence that registrars get your True Name and True Subpoena-Delivery Address for whois records and publish them, rather than insisting that your Technical and Administrative email addresses go somewhere that doesn't bounce and maybe even get a human to respond. Some big ISPs periodically try to attract customers to a Walled Garden that doesn't really access the full Internet, and the market gradually tells them that people want more than that - that's why AOL now lets you fetch real web pages as well as AOL-provided content, and cellphone WAP systems aren't getting the respect their purveyors expected, so they're trying to find better ways to get real Internet content and not just newswires. The cable modem companies are the big exceptions right now, by trying to prevent their users from running "servers" from home (there were initially some technical reasons for this, but it was always basically the fear that they might not be in control.) That hasn't killed them all yet, though @Home's really dead, and their quasi-monopoly status and TV-content-pusher background has made it take longer for them to realize that they need active users to generate interesting content and develop the Killer Apps that will make everybody else buy cable modem, but they'll get there. The kinds of people who want to tell Google how to rank their pages because everybody uses Google to search the web are another example, not realizing that the reason that everybody uses Google is *because* of the way they rank their pages, and if they want to have a "politically correct web search ranking" system, which is really just an outlet for their own speech and ideas, they should use the Internet's public-space capability, set out their own soapbox with a big "politically correct searches here" sign over it, and hope the public shows up.
* There's a corrolary to Godwin's Law which says that all discussions that don't trigger the primary form of it will eventually devolve into discussions about spam.... But then Godwin also used to be an EFF lawyer...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Nice troll honey pot they have there
Looks like every "Elite" HARDcore troll is trashing the site now, multi popups with gay porn, Java popup hell (about 1000 java popups)....every trick a decent troll knows.
They will never be able to have a message board again.
Trolls sue YOU!
Why bother.
IANALBMFUTDO (I am not a lawyer but my father used to date one), and she said that the reason that people will sue for an amount less than $10,000 is that they're counting on the defendant to settle. According to her, it costs more than that to defend yourself, so it's cheaper to settle.
That you've resorted to trolling a pest-control web site?
Poor troll. Somebody told him about this "pest c*nt troll web site" and he thought he'd fit right in. A bit harsh to sue him, don't you think?
Chevette: Yeah, he was an asshole, but you didn't have to kill him!
Mercenary: Fortunately, it's not about who's an asshole, otherwise my work would never be done.
Guys?
Guys?
Free speech is not, and has never been, an absolute. Even on public grounds I cannot legally go up to a stranger and threaten him. Said person could have me arrested for doing so.
If I print outright lies about somebody I can be held accountable for libel.
Even without these directly actionable exceptions to free-speech, just because you CAN say something doesn't mean that there aren't going to be consequences for saying it. Some may be legal, others social, and many may have unanticipated consequences given the circumstances.
But put that aside for a moment. You have things backwards anyway. The right to free-speech is a right everybody has on PUBLIC property, with a number of fairly well defined exceptions.
What this person is doing isn't happening on public property. It's happening on private property - that property being the forum they put up.
The right to STOP free-speech is limited to those who have property, or rent it. I may escort you off my property should you enter it without my permission, even if you don't say anything. If I own a restaurant, I can make a rule that says no swearing, and if somebody breaks it, I can ask them to leave.
If that person doesn't leave, or persists on showing up on my property, I can take legal action. Having that person arrested for trespass, for instance.
I've seen at least one person state that taking them up in civil, rather than criminal court, shows they're just out for money. The amount they're suing for, $5000, certainly won't make them rich. It's merely meant as a deterrent to this pest. It probably won't even pay for their court costs should this go to court.
They could've, possibly, attempted to have him arrested if he were threatening or directly harassing members of his board, but that would probably be overkill for the offense, and should they win such a case, probably bring a chilling effect to message boards everywhere.
Based on the options they have, and the fact they have tried a number of ways to stop this person, suing him for what amounts to trespass isn't unreasonable.
And if he kept sneaking into my business to do his musical number, I have the right to have him charged for trespassing
Yes, and I think the key point is that if they want to sue him it has to be on the basis of sneaking in without permission, not on the basis of his troll comments. This seems to be what they have done, I quote from the article:
GIE is alleging trespassing, breach of contract and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Of course, this could be quite complicated, legally speaking. While you can stop the homeless guy at the door, what to do you do with this online troll? If you block his user ID, then he can create another. This is hardly illegal. If you make users register their true name and address, then he can state a false name; I am not sure whether this would be illegal or not. I guess you could say that the business has to demonstrate that they had clearly communicated to him the fact that he was not welcome, and that he came anyway afterwards.
Tor
Slashdot controls trolls through democratic moderation (and other means previously mentioned). Perhaps the "positive goal" that we can achieve here is some time from a geek or group of geeks that can help PCT set up a slash-site. This would get the word out on how great slashcode is, generate some publicity, I imagine, and help out the poor bastards to whom /. has unwittingly brought such harm.
/. could implement: Every new post would have to pass one well-established karma-positive random member's crap-test (Is this post crap?). The poster could appeal if they didn't post anonymously.
I had another idea in moderation that
Rank comments and posts against each other at We-Rank.com
You might be the biggest idiot ever.
No, I'm just inexperienced. I'm learning fast, though. More on that later.
I'm glad you're getting down moderated and I would join in if I hadn't used all my points solely to shut you up.
Don't sweat it. I have moderators chasing down days old comments I made in other threads to shut me up. Whatever effect you wish would be underway is definately occuring. I am honestly quite surprised. I'd never imagined someone could say something on slashdot which would be so offensive to the core community that a massive counter-response would be launched against me personally via not only moderation, but against comments in other threads. Especially when the issue at hand is a simple difference of opinion.
You continue to defend your wrong position (note that it can't be an opinion if it's disproven by fact which a ton of people have pointed out to you) either because you're trolling (quite well, since I bit) or because you can't admit you're wrong.
My point has been that suing people for trolling Internet fora is unreasonable. That is opinion, not fact, and I am very much aware at this point that, although I don't think of myself as doing so, speaking for trolls is verboten. There are those quite violently opposed to what I am saying, so it makes little sense to keep saying it. Very few respondents want to discuss this rationally, which is pretty much impossible from wihin this moderation shitstorm. I want to stop the disruption (based on the sheer number of mod points expended against me )my comments have had on Slashdot.
I've participated in the /. community because I like it, and because I believe in what /. is about. Before today, I hadn't gone more than one point away from the karma cap since a few months after I started posting around here. (This is the only /. account I hold.) I would like to apologize for what I've said and ask forgiveness, if for no other reason than to put forth some effort to restore order and calm folks down. I'm really shocked over what's going on here. That said, however, I can't honestly say that I'm too terribly ashamed to find myself looking at Slashdot from a perspective I've never had before, and looking at a very dirty underbelly for the first time. I've never personally found that people who have something interesting and insightful to say enjoy very much popular response to their saying it. (The numb emptyspeak of politics would seem to indicate that an inverse relationship exists) Therefore, I simply cannot summon the shame to say whatever needs to be said to abate the attack on my /. account. No apology is forthcoming. If this situation amounts to my excommunication from /., my only regret will be in not realizing what /. was about until now.
Reading this article and its respective replies and discussions made me think of watching some films or news stories about some individual(s), group(s) or system(s) versus- or in relation to- (an)other individual(s), group(s) or system(s), where I might question, disapprove of, understand, and/or empathize with, the actions, styles or attitudes of both. Considering groupthink, deindividuation, dehumanization and a whole slew of other social/interpersonal dynamics- and chaos of course- it's often little surprise that groups & individuals get what they do- both on the internet and in real life.
Online, we have the technology for each person to be able to filter out what they don't want to see. Post ratings are one scheme.
If you can eliminate what offends you from your sight, and I can still see it (if I choose), it's the best of both worlds, no?
If McDonalds said you can't read your poetry in the bathroom to random strangers, you can't.
;)
Found THAT out the hard way, did you?
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
Basically, you can only post on advogato if some trusted users claim you are ok. It is all backed by a complex web of trust algorithm which makes it hard to attack.
This makes Advogato an "invitation only" club.
Obviously, this only works when the people you want to use the forum know each others, at least by reputation.
They can get pretty rough. :)
Have they tried some sort of community moderation system?
There is a way of getting back at trolls - through comments, and moderation.
Point out why they are wrong. Or moderate them so that those who don't want to see troll comments won't.
If you yell and scream in a public place, other people have no way to filter you out. But on the internet, it's different...
I would like to see the company try a moderation system, so the troll would be invisible to those who don't want to see trolls, but visible to those who want to read everything.
If you are a company, you might want to avoid the appearance of censorship (because people might think you are censoring anyone with negative experiences with your company's products).
A solution: the forum could use community-based moderation. Trolls could be invisible by default, but visible to those who want to see everything and won't be offended by the language, etc.
It might be in their best interests to avoid the appearance of censorship of people who have had negative experiences with their products.
Why don't they try moderation? So that the troll comments would be invisible to all except those who aren't offended by the language, etc.
Yes, I agree that voter or user moderation would be the best solution for the company in question.
The difference is, no one gets physically hurt by troll comments. Sticks and stones, etc.
Technology exists to filter out troll posts for those who don't want to see them, while still making them available for those who do.
Moderate him into invisibility for all those who are offended by trolls.
There's a difference: in cyberspace, the technology exists to allow you to completely ignore the troll (make his comments invisible to you).
In cyberspace, you can completely ignore the troll, by making his comments invisible to you. In real life there is no such option (yet...).
There exist means to allow users who don't want to be bothered by trolls, to ignore them.
This is how cyberspace differs from real life (so far...).
Technology can make crying fire in a crowded theater ineffectual. Fire detectors, for example.
In cyberspace, you can make the troll invisible to those who don't want to see him, yet still remain visible to those who do.
Freedom of speech is limited now partly because we don't have the means to allow people to completely ignore or filter out speech they don't want to see. But technology can give us those means.
They could just moderate him so that people offended by trolls wouldn't have to see him.
Why don't they just use moderation, like slashdot and kuro5hin do?
One element if "freedom" you seem to forget is "I" also have the right to ignore you and not listen to you.
Exactly. On the internet, we have the technology to give you this ability, without abridging anyone's right to free speech.
Why is this marked as a troll!!!!!! Does the thought of alarmed trolls nervously reading this article (others weeping) not fill you with murth
No, though I don't know that it would've made much difference in this case, or that they should be forced to do this. The troll was so pervasive that he would've noticed he was being modded down. I'd guess he'd just try to open enough accounts that he could use his own mod points to mod up his posts. Besides this, the site isn't really a general, post anything you want style site. It's a site for professionals who probably have a low tollerance for putting up with childish junk. I'd guess that the extermination company has a small IT staff, and neither has the time, nor inclination, to try out half a dozen or more ways to stop a troll. Since the Slashdot story went public I hear that they have several "professional" trolls trashing their site. I'd guess in this case they have a number of options, none palatable. They can invest more time than it's really worth trying to put up enough technology to knock out a troll once identified, though this is tougher than it may look for a determined troll. They could use up their resources by having a moderator decide what can go up on the board. They could go to the time and expense of tracking down as many trolls as possible and open a civil suit on all of them for $5k a pop, or more. They could try abandoning the site to the trolls in a hope that eventually they'll tire themselves out. Or, they could just take the site down. What they did try doing was canceling his accounts. They may have even tried blocking his IP, I don't recall. What I find sad is that they have to do anything to fight the trolls. I find trolling to be a very sad thing to do, and it wastes TIME, which is the most valuable commodity anybody has, because he can never get it back.
The point is, what is the most effective way to deal with trolls? 1) eliminate their motivation to troll (which probably involves changing a lot of fundamental things about our society, starting with why chicks don't dig geeks...) 2) let them have their say, and include technological methods to allow anyone else to filter out their posts.
If the troll could defeat a user-moderation system by opening up new accounts and modding himself up, perhaps they could use some sort of "trusted user" moderation system (like k5).