Slashdot Mirror
Survey Reveals Americans Support Blog Censorship
renai42 writes "A new survey has revealed that Americans overwhelmingly support strong censorship for blogs, even though a substantial amount have never actually been to one. Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. However, more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves."
I don't think it has nearly as much to do with the fact that the
respondents have never been to a blog, but more to do with the fact
that the question is worded such that they are bound to answer in a
given way. Mark Blumenthal points out:
"The error is the incorrect belief that there is a "right" or
"unbiased" way to ask a question about any given public issue. There
is no such thing. Everyone who works within the polling field is well
aware that small changes in wording can affect the ways in which
respondents answer questions. This approach leads us into tortuous
discussions of question wording on which reasonable people can
differ. Further, as you have pointed out many times in the past,
random variation in the construction of the sample or in response
rates can skew the results of any single poll away from the true
distribution of opinions in the population."
Given the question in the survey: "[do you] believe that bloggers
should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal
information about private citizens?" Of course they are going to say
no. They would say so regardless if it were bloggers, firemen or
priests. It's like asking if you think children should have enough to
eat, everyone is going to say yes, even if it is attached to some dumb
bill raising taxes on golf balls.
What should we do then? Mark Blumenthal goes on to say, "The answer is
NOT to find a single poll with the "best" wording and point to its
results as the final word on the subject. Instead, we should look at
ALL of the polls conducted on the issue by various different polling
organizations. Each scientifically fielded poll presents us with
useful information. By comparing the different responses to multiple
polls -- each with different wording -- we end up with a far more
nuanced picture of where public opinion stands on a particular issue."
Makes sense to me.
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
Yeah, it's easy to say blogs need censorship, but how is official going to censor blogs.
Are we going to see a rating on each blog? G, PG, M, R, and P? For PG Rating, mothers will have to read blogs for their innocent children.
It a blog's breaking laws, then there are already venues to take action.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Blogging anonymously is the only way to go. Hide your tracks. Say what you want.
However, nobody wants their personal infomation listed on the internet. I think we all agree that we wouldn't want that. Just posting somebody's email gets them spam.
I know that if somebody posted my son or daughter's picture, address, and phone number... I would want it removed. What if somebody posted your address and said, "They are always gone by 8:30 in the am."
We all want freedom... and that's why we hide ourselves on slashdot and in blogs. The things we say can hurt us. However, it can be used for evil too...
Kinda like everything else in life.
It's pro-personal privacy. It wouldn't matter if you replaced "blog" with "Tv news" or "newspaper" or "radio" people would still say they don't want their addressed published in the media.
what would their response have been if the word instead of blogs would have been "freelance journalists" or "independent newspapers"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just because someone hasn't heard of or visited a "blog" doesn't mean they can't be of the opinion that "home addresses and other personal information about private citizens" shouldn't be posted online, whether it's on a "blog" or what we colloquially call a "web page".
More from the survey:
Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27 percent did not express an opinion.
[...] most respondents classed bloggers in the same category as journalists when it came to free speech [...]
[...] most people used blogs to obtain information about politics or current events.
This isn't about "blogging". The personal information bit was about what usually constitutes harassment, that just happens to come in the form of a blog.
God I love these misleading, scare-tactic titles. "AMERICANS SUPPORT BLOG CENSORSHIP", which of course brings to mind nasty, ignorant, redneck religious right wanting to censor Common Dreams and DailyKos. No, morons. They do not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. All of a sudden that equates to wholesale BLOG CENSORSHIP? And yes, I realize that any censorship - even of that information - is still censorship, but let's get a freakin' grip, here, before people start talking about the "good little sheeple doing what Monkey Boy Bush tells them" etc., ok?
Personally, I'm in favor of my home address being posted on the Internet. These results are shocking.
Is that a statistically relevant number, given a) the number of people on the 'net, and b) the percentage of these respondents who either don't know what a blog is or have never visited one???
The consumer-drone sheeple strike again.
Most Americans believe bloggers should not be allowed to publish sensitive personal information about individuals
Web hosting company Hostway this week released the results of its poll of 2,500 respondents on blogging.
We all know Hostway's stellar reputation for high quality surveys.
Just because of what they're called.
Survey says: highschoolers across the country think NEWSPAPERS should be censored. I'd be astounded, frankly, if these same people a few years later decided to support freedom of speech on all mediums.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Ah yes, nothing like an austrailian news organization (the writer not ZDNet), quoting a survey by some webhost (alot of people have probably never heard of) of 2500 people to tell what the 292 million Americans favor.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So what you're saying is that the majority of Americans polled have no frigging clue what "Freedom" is all about, even though they support elected leaders that use it as a pro-word? As a citizen soldier, I think I'm gonna be sick.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I think the word "censor" when it comes to blogging should be used carefully. It depends on what is being said. For example if it is secret company products being announced (ex: Apple and ThinkSecret), it might make sense to try and keep it secret, as it is a product that was bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
But if it is simply censoring for censorship sake about whatever the censor deems unreasonable, then that is a whole different ballpark. Then it is a infringment of First Ammendment rights.
I'm not sure how I feel about John Q Public's address being posted, but certainly I think it's a bad idea to post a judge's home address (and maybe even other elected officials). Note the Lefkow case recently ...
really only a fairly small percent of humans are actually any good at writing and reading, or at least good enough to make it enjoyable for them. We are talking maybe 10-30%. Then only some fraction of those are skilled enough at the computer to be able to deal with blogs.
So what is going on with the political blogs thing is people trying to percolate ideas up into the sphere of journalism and media. Some of blogger ideas and writings do make it into the mainstream, at least if they are business-friendly enough (for the most part).
But when broadband gets cheap enough, and gets seperated from cable and phone line enough so that a majority of Americans just have a data line, then people will probably start feeding streaming video (or auto-downloaded video) into their digital TV sets from the Net. That is when videoblogging will really start to allow the bloggers an avenue into the minds of the masses of Americans. THat is when the real education can start to take place.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I feel the same about people who read blogs as I do about people who read tabloids. If you don't want to read it, then don't look. If the information is a little too personal for you than never go back, it may be informative for somebody. At the very least blogging is a strong personal expression and in that sense they should be held in higher regard than tabloids.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
Are you sure these people understood the questions? Maybe they thought the survey takers were asking something more like "Do you think people should post other people's personal information in a blog?" Or perhaps, "Would you post other people's personal information in a blog?" Or even, "Would you like a cookie?"
People are generally stupid, after all.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
"It's like they're trying to trap you: 'Have you ever tried sugar, or cocaine?'" -Mitch Hedberg
Digital Sailor
Many Merkins don't know what bloggers are, but feel that they should have the same rights as mainstream journos. Many 'Merkins are also less likely to trust bloggers than other journos.
What's the problem? Why am I wasting time writing and thinking about it?
it seems to me the headline could have been just as easily:
americans overwhelmingly support privacy of citizens
but doesn't fly as well with the america-haters...
In this post 9/11 world we need to be very cautious about what words we speak and hold others accountable for theirs. Anonymous blogging is not only irresponsible and dangerous it's downright anti-christian (Read Luke 8:14-29, John 4:20-13:37)
Of course not.
People are willing to censor blogs? Does this surprise anyone?
I saw an article (sorry, no reference) where the researchers took a poll to see if people thought certain things should be allowed. They rewrote the Bill of Rights to they'd be unrecognizable to the casual reader, and they asked people if each amendment should be allowed. For each amendment in the Bill of Rights, many (if not most) thought that the right need not be constitutionally protected.
It's not that people agreed strongly with the idea of preventing the government from forcing the quartering of soldiers. It's that most people are so ignorant that they don't know why we have certain protections in place in the Constitution. Freedom of speech? Naw, the government should be able to censor. Freedom of the press? Naw, the press should be required to get government approval for items published. The results were amazing and disturbing!
The point is too many people in America are so comfortable that they take their rights for granted. When people spend more time worrying if a certain entertainer is wearing slutty clothes than they did considering whether the government had given enough (or even correct) justification about going to war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you know that a country has its priorities screwed up.
It's sad but patriots have died to protect these freedoms and most people don't give a damn. But that's why we have our Constitution: to protect the public from its own shortsightedness.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I detect a bit of bias on the part of the submitter. Who cares if one third of the respondents hadn't visited a blog? They still wouldn't want their addresses or phone numbers published on the Internet. Who would? Would the submitter? I think this is an attempt to stir up the masses with references to "censorship."
It could be argued that publishing such information is a violation of a person's privacy. Free speech extends so far that it does not violate the rights of another person.
Oh No! Naked Words! Think of the children!
Because blogs are so fucking gay.
Google > Freedom!
If any of the above three apply to someone, they have asked for a place in the public eye. I believe that personal information needs to be published about at least the former two types of people.
To be clear, I don't mean "here are pictures of their kids, their license plate numbers, and their last known trip to a public bathroom".
What I mean is that it is inane to have a place in the public view and expect that no one will talk about you.
Insofar as celebrity status meriting protection, can you imagine if Michael Jackson were able to wave his hand and have all discussion of his alleged improprieties vanish?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
Notice how the poll questions are essentially asking the poll respondents about PRIVACY issues (bloggers spilling PERSONAL data online about politicians, judges, and celebrities). But this article is trying to sell those results as evidence that the public supports cracking down on political blogs using campaign finance laws.
You have here a first rate example of the economic elite using mass media propaganda.
They have been doing this for over 100 years here in America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Dude1 : Hi there, would you like to particapte in a survey?
Sample#59822 : sure
dude1 : Question one, do you know what a blog is?
sample#59822: a wha'?! i gots no idea'r whatcha's talkn' bout
dude2: should we censor their speech?
sample59822 : right as rain, these here blog'eis is undermining ours rights.
end of conversation..
With 1/3 of people not knowing what a blog is, i suspect that the margin of error should be +- 30 points then... making this a very innacurate deal
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
This has nothing to do with censorship and who ever wrote the title should be ashamed of themself. People, whether celebrities or politicians deserve to have their personal information kept private when it has no bearing on their ability to do their job. I don't care what a politician does in his or her personal life, I only care what they do when they're dealing with the issues of the day. All these people seem to be saying is that personal issues should be kept out of the public eye. That's not censorship that's just common decency.
(Note I don't actually think that the survey people are at fault. But it's just a bit hard to get the phone numbers of every person who voted for cencorship...)
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
"Are you still beating my wife?"
Censoring blogs makes about as much sense as censoring postal mail.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
Turns out that the majority of respondants were against the idea of of creating new constitutional ammendments ensuring these rights, and the majority were ALSO unaware that there was ALREADY a set of ammendments ensuring these rights.
Thank God we actually live in a Republic and not a Democracy...
The problem isn't me reading a blog entry about me. I already know where I live, what my ID numbers are, etc. etc. The problem is that I can't stop somebody else reading that.
This issue is bigger than just personal info valuable to strangers, too. I've had a bitter ex-g/f post intimate personal e-mails on her blog from the time we were going out, and with a large dose of editing, taking out of context, and outright lies thrown in for good measure. She knew damn well that several close friends of mine also read that blog, and would think less of me after reading what she wrote (or her adapted version of what I had once written).
The real killer is that despite the blog host being a big name, they didn't give a shit. In fact, after the ex made the post "private" (which didn't stop our common friends from reading it) when I wrote to her and asked her to remove the comments, the LJ admins then claimed (in response to my formal complaint) that they couldn't access that area of the database, and therefore couldn't do anything about the post. All of which helped me and my relationships with some formerly close friends not at all.
So, what am I supposed to do? I live in the UK, so I'm hardly going to pay hundreds of $$$ to hire a US attorney and pursue a defamation suit against my ex in the US just to get LJ to take the post down, am I? But without any official, international regulation of this area of the Internet, the damage was done all the same, and it hurt a lot more than posting any credit card number would have.
Freedom of speech is a valuable thing, but it is not the only valuable thing, and it is far too powerful to be an absolute.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Project: Write ten loaded questions that will prove jabberwocky is a great fire hazard. Analyze: Draw up enough survey results that will show beyond reproach 82.4 of all statistics are false.
Here, lets do our own poll. Should be just as accurate as theirs.
I agree very much
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
I guess your post does have some merit. Most polls are inaccurate, as anyone who's done politics/government studying may know.
You have:
- biased pollers (So, do you want vulgar, gross, and potentially terrorist-related information disseminated on these pages or do you wish to protect the helpless children?)
- Herd mentality (Ooh, all these people are voting for censorship, I shall also do so)
- Poller affiliation, although it seems ironic that Hostway, the runner of this survey, has the option for a personal website with a 'catch line' of "I use this website to express myself."
and some others. I don't trust polls, I think for myself.I find it weird that this would even be put to a question. Might as well ask if people should be allowed to advocate violence against minority group N on their blog, and then wrap the results up into a free-speech issue.
The really nasty part of censorship isn't whether or not the worst stuff gets censored. You can argue about that one on ideological levels until the cows come home. The REALLY nasty part of censorship is when actually newsworthy stuff gets censored -- American soldiers coming home in coffins, for instance.
I think Americans just love the spirit of the fight, and the more unwinnable it is, the more people (and especially politicians) are willing to throw weight behind it as a rallying cry.
You'll have to host your blog in Norway to state your opinion online!
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
These sky is falling articles always make me roll my eyes. The public in general has always been shortsighted about things they don't know much about - and the public doesn't know much about anything (if you take it as a whole).
I bet if you asked "should everyone be given $10,000 by the government", they'd all say yes to it too! On the face of it, it sounds like a good deal. This is because they do not look deep enough to see why it is foolish.
The wisest thing government founders have realized over the years is that democracy is good but you need to avoid the tyranny of the majority by putting in protections and have a representative system. It's a careful balance that tends to swing one way or the other though.
-
Most Americans are unaware of how much of their information is public. You address and phone number are public information and most efforts you can try do not prevent it from being accesiable to the public. The problem is most Americans think that their information is private, it isn't. You want to start a flamewar on /. Just do a whois on someone's website and post it in a /. story. Dont believe me I did it here
The replies show how other respond to items like this. This is not about bloggers rights or whether or not they are journalists. They are about the fact that most Americans continue to revel in their ignorance about what they think is their right to privacy.
Can we please get a user moderated article posting system going?
I have seen way too many front page topics get posted that should be moderated -1 Troll/Flaimbait. Sheesh, the headline is misleading to say the least.
This should not have made the front page, it's stupid poll FUD.
I agree with several posters that not being able to publish people's personal information is not the same as 'strong censorship'.
... Yeah, like I'm going to get any recourse that way. Do I think privacy trumps free speech for ordinary citizens? Yes, absolutely. If you haven't made yourself a public figure then you deserve to be left alone even if people might not like how you make your living or who you are married to.
There has been a misuse of this kind of thing. Publishing someone's name and phone number with the almost certain knowledge that this will enable a bunch of nut cases to make threatening phone calls is nothing short of malicious. The free expression of ideas is not the same as facilitating hate crimes. Of course, if you publish my name and phone number and address and somebody throws a firebomb through my window maybe I can sue you
I love bloggers for they raise issues that the main stream media chooses not to raise. However, my issue with [some] bloggers is that some of them know nothing, and to make matters worse, they do not know that they know so little or nothing at all! Some of these bloggers to the extreme, I am sorry to say, know so little to even know that they know nothing! We live in interesting times don't we?
...and Transparent Society. It's pretty unreasonable to assume with the rapid advances in technology (both communication and surveillance) that we're going to retain the level of privacy these survey respondents seem to feel entitled to.
Then again, a lot of people seem to be their own worst enemy in this regard. A couple weeks ago I received a forwarded email from my shocked mother informing me of this frightening fact: if your address is listed in the phone book, someone can Google your phone number to find out where you live! [gasp]
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
that, in america, surveys don't translate to laws. that whole constitution and bill or rights thingy keeps (to an extent) the tyranny of the majority in check.
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org
Here's the answer: EVERYONE is a private citizen, for at least some portion of the day.
Until you wouldn't mind having your own personal information and home address posted to a blog, it wouldn't seem appropriate to do it to someone else, would it?
Whether a person is a CEO, a politician, a school board member, a church official, or an AC slashdot poster, your home and personal life is just that, and people shouldn't be harassing you and your family in the supposed privacy of your own home.
If you want to protest, protest at the town hall, the corporate headquarters, the local campus, the church.
But not at a person's home.
It doesn't matter if the information is available "publicly" somewhere. When you post it in the spirit of "let's harass the fuck out of this person" or "let's scare this group of people so we can feel big and powerful by having this information" it's a little different from the fact it happens to be in someone's local phone book.
And let's try to focus on reality here, instead of bringing up some fringe example of how a person's home could also be their office.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6888837/
Get a grip. Shame on the silly "journalist" who wrote the article, with it's in-depth scientific survey carried out by Hostway *laughs* Shame on the silly submitter who thought this was somehow newsworthy (this just in - Americans horribly opposed to their social security numbers and phone numbers being printed in blogs, newspapers, and subway graffitti!!!!) And shame on the silly editor who allowed it in... though I guess it does give us yet another article to rag on.
How about purposely excluding relevant information from blog entries to popular, online tech-related news sites? No sooner did I scroll past the ads before TFA when I saw this in bold letters:
Most Americans believe bloggers should not be allowed to publish sensitive personal information about individuals, according to a new survey.
Wow, does that change the tone of the discussion.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
This survey is more an indication that blogs are part of the moment's zeitgeist than a meaningful barometer of attitudes. It conflates the status of "blogs" with "privacy publication" in the amorphous public mind, so it's not really scientific. But it is telling that Americans have some kind of attitude towards "blogs" (rather than answering "I don't know"), which indicates a niche in the broadcast media that is defining them. And the survey itself indicates both the interest in funders of surveys, and the survey's own addition to the buzz, working to define blogs right now.
;).
The appearance of blogs on the media agenda is important to people who care about blogs. Because the broadcast media inevitably distorts, especially when its corporations and personalities perceive a threat. Associating blogs with privacy invasion indicates which way their propaganda will go, though this one tiny datapoint is a drop in the bucket. But the inevitable storms of public opinion, especially as people gradually grow more connected to interactive blogs than we ever were to broadcasts, will partly be formed by these butterfly wings flapping in Hollywood. We who consume blogs, especially we who hope blogs can replace the failed broadcast media in the essential task of journalism, rather than mere infotainverts, ignore these early warnings at our peril. You read it here first
--
make install -not war
Why do they bother qualifying it?
It's not just fellow Americans that will be seeing your address and those foriegners don't have any reservations about mailing you a pipe bomb.
1. does the "slashdot party line" support the publishing of personal information on politically active websites? the addresses of judges involved in cases concerning controversial social issues?
probably not
2. does the "slashdot party line" support the censorship of blogs?
definitely not
but y'all should work out what the overlap is between question #1 and question #2 before everyone here starts crying "the sky is falling!" because there is concern for freedom of expression, and concern for privacy rights, and sometimes they overlap
then there is this sort of hypersensitive kneejerk "censorship bad!" on issues that, according to question #1, the "slashdot party line" would in fact be all for censorship
imagine that
because it really isn't censorship according to all of the censorship issues we are really concerned with... it's censorship in the broadest definition of the term, encompassing a form of "censorship" that most here would support
so please, less kneejerk, more thought
or otherwise you erode the fight against those who would censor you and violate your privacy in ways that are genuinely evil, because you are hypersensitively kneejerk about issues without examining what is really being talked about
it's propaganda at work: presenting a half-truth, a fact out of context... because, indeed, we are talking about "censoring blogs"
insert kneejerk reaction: "censorship baaaaad!"
no, it's not bad, if you examine what is really being censored: publishing the addresses of judges, for example... then you would agree with the censorship in question in the end, because what is really being censored is a violation of privacy
so when slashdot, or zdnet presents an issue in a propagandistic way, we all lose, because privacy rights and censorship are serious issues, and you water down the discussion on a serious issue and only make yourself look like a fool, and so you lose more important fights for the sake of kneejerk propaganda instead of prudent thought
so please, slashot crowd, this is a serious fight, don't waste your energies in braindead kneejerk reaction
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So this whole entry and bandwidth killer is one big non sequitur?
Wow, people don't support the breaking of privacy laws therefore they support the censorship of blogs? Thats a pretty giant leap of logic.
If they wanted to be able to say that Americans support Blog Censorship, perhaps they should have asked "Do you support the review by a government panel of opinion and discussion material prior to it being released on the internet ?"
Now that would get you an honest opinion. And would send people running for their aluminium foil rolls so they can start making their hats.
Are traditional media 'allowed' to publish citizen's addresses or other private information?
(and presume an implied 'without the individuals express consent', since I would assume that no one would have a problem in that case).
Obviously, the above is a lot of rubbish, but you read the whole thing, so it was probably good, wholesome rubbish.
Americans are becoming a country of superstitious control freaks.
As Bill Mahar said... "When did we become Utah?"
There are a large number of people in the US who are very willing to eradicate the opinions of others given half a chance. (These are also the same people who will winge loudly if their opinions are supressed or doubted in the slightest degree.)
It is all explained in my new book "I'm OK, you're a unpatriotic terrorist". On sale at Christian bookstores and gas stations everywhere.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
In one corner
A silent hall, dry echoes
The dark man claps
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
George W. Bush 1600 Pennsylvania Ave DC oh no! i released someone's address :)
[insert lame joke here]
The right to free speech or the right to privacy.. If you can't keep both, which would you rather have?
and stop printing sensationalizing headlines.
/. in an untrustworthy gutter publication....
There is a vast difference between Cencorship and not allowing Names , Addresses and othet private information of private people to be printed in a public forum without prior consent.
Please stop trying to make
Wanted : A Signature.
Anyone got a link to the original poll questions? Polling method (e.g. was it self selecting in any way)? Expected error rather than just the headline figures?
Without any of the above we're in still "8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas" territory.
No, you're right, it's much better being overrun by a brown hoard. Yay!
This is just one more point in the long long slide downward of /. editorial. This "survey" with it's pathetic (and just plain incorrect) headline is easily the most annoying thing I've seen posted here in a while. I'll take the duped stories over these dubious stories anyday.
------ How can making people laugh lead to bad karma?
1. These rights already seem to be pretty well-protected.
2. Mucking about with the Constitution is usually Bad.
So if a person thinks that provision X is not currently in the Constitution, and don't perceive a pressing need to add it in, of course they'll say no!
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Now that is trolling with style. You people need to take a lesson. Anyone want to take bets on who responds to this like it is a real post?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Home addresses?
Aah, has anybody on
"Personal information"? WHAT personal information?
Your phone number? Phonebook.
Your address? Cross-reference phonebook.
Your kid's names? Your local school paper. The kid next door. His teacher.
Just because it's on a blog and therefore on the Internet doesn't mean you are automatically going to be kidnapped and murdered - or even spammed.
This survey is bullshit for two reasons:
1) It's obviously an attempt to link blogs with "things that are bad" - like child kidnappers or terrorists - in other words, anybody who isn't under TOTAL CONTROL.
2) Second, ANYBODY should be allowed to post ANYTHING about ANYONE ANYWHERE. Period. That includes your IQ, your bra size, your waist size, whether you use Grecian Formula (and WHERE you use Grecian Formula), whether you wear ladies' underwear (whether you are female or male), who you sleep with, who you used to sleep with, and anything else that somebody can find out about you. If you don't like it, take security measures so that people don't find out what you don't want them to find out.
Telling people NOT to find out things about you - especially if you're some kind of asshole that people want to know about - and then telling them NOT to publish it is simply fucking stupid and fascist to boot.
You morons REALLY DO want the Federal government to tell you how to take a shit in the morning, don't you? You REALLY have no personal responsibility and no conception of same, right?
No, I KNOW what your problem is - you're monkeys who, as William Burroughs once said, just HAVE to be RIGHT. Because if you're not "right", you're scared (to death - the death of everybody else but you, apparently) you'll end up dead, so everybody else has to be "wrong" and only you can be "right".
Which means any fucking little picayune trivial issue that comes up that you can use to establish your fucking superiority in the eyes of "the gods" over somebody (and everybody) else, you'll seize on it like it's free pizza and beer. Never mind the economic or social or historical or any other consequences - damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead to you're being RIGHT!
Read my lips, monkeys.
Fuck you.
You got worse problems than bloggers coming down the track when we Transhumans get it together.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The survey reveals nothing of the kind. It reveals that people do not believe there should be a "right" to post personal information about others on any website, the fact that they may not know what constitutes a "blog" makes no difference.
/. is being run by a 6th grade intro to journalism class.
I've been around here for a while, sure it ain't a 3 digit slashdot id but I've posted my share of comments and generally hit this site a few times a day. Between this kind of crap, the story about Torvalds with the misquote, and the constant misleading stories it is seeming more like
Seriously, I should not have to scan down through the comments in every story to find out if the editors got duped yet again by a clever troll or simply did not understand the material they were posting. Some supermarket tabloids have better track records than this.
Finkployd
I want TV movies about decapitation and evisceration. How about cannibalism? Why is this apparently censored? Why is scat-eating confined to a few porn sites? How come this isn't more prevalent? I'm sure there are plenty of people that would really like to get up every morning to a nice cannibalism story in the newspaper with lots of neat pictures.
We are headed down the road of lowest common denominator, if not worse. We can certainly celebrate our freedoms.
Quad-yearly national survey concludes americans support George Bush.
What's new?
-
Would it have been that much harder to say "Survey Shows American Oppose Online Publication of Private Information?" 'Cause that's all the survey really showed.
Here's a poll: is unbiased reporting of news better or worse than biased reporting of news?
...but is it art?
Can someone help me with the home addresses of the people who were against providing home addresses on blogs please? I'd like to mail them a followup question on how they feel about phone books.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The solution to bad polls like this is easy. If the pollers refuse to ask more straight forward questions, post their home addresses on your blog.
The solution is to publish the exact wording of the actual questions. (also might be good to publish the exact method of choosing the pool of questionees)
But the exact wording of the questions would, to a certain degree, "open-source" opinion polling.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
In a survey to find how many americans support Gay marriage, overwhelming majority opposed the idea - even though majority of them never had a 'gay' experience before!
if someone wants to post an individuals home address, then require the POSTER to list their own address & phone# just above- in the same font and size....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If you grab all the studies in the area and look at them in search of truth, all you are really doing is rewarding consensus. If all studies were your golf ball example, then looking at ten of them with that phrasing would be *less* helpful than one. As soon as this becomes the common way to do this, the guys wanting to raise golf ball taxes will simply commission more studies (months in advance, unpublicized) and they'll all come out over the course of two years, gradually swaying public opinion.
You would be a fool to believe that this is not occurring constantly.
Generalization Level: Extreme Predjudice Detected Please report to local statistics class immediately.
Paid for by the citizens for a benevolent American dictatorship.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Judge first. Ask questions later.
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.-Asimov
inre: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146008&cid =12229592
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/f irstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx? id=13575
http://www.
The First Amendment Center regularly polls Americans about their feelings about the First Amendment - and as the second URL, an assessment of the 2004 report reveals, it's an exercise that reveals that as a population we are ambivalent and conflicted about the freedom of speech, often asserting contradictory opinions about related topics. I think this is an example of the same issue. We overwhelmingly support the First Amendment in principle... but when it gets to the specifics we get sketchy. And I can sort of understand this: when asked about freedom of speech we think about general principles, abstractions. When asked about something like posting personal information on the internet we imagine personal scenarios: our own information or the information of our loved ones being made public (of course we're not talking about information that is otherwise truly private, but the question focuses attention on a specific scenario), bad things happening as a result. It's not surprising we're conflicted.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Yes, how a question is worded often provokes a certain response. So, it's not surprising that people who object to invasion of privacy might answer in that direction. Just like how mentioning Ashcroft here always seemed to get the same mindless reaction.
and what's more:
From TFA:The US of A is losing ground rapidly in the game of attracting and keeping the smart people. The more the US heads towards being a right wing Theocracy, the more people like myself are just going to stay the fuck away from the place. I mean, I have family there and stuff, but there is no way I'd willingly submit to the insanity that the citizens of the US are inviting into their lives.
Scared. Little. Children.
Compare it to: 39 percent said they found semaphore-relayed messages less credible than those transmitted by telegraph, while 32 percent said they either did not know or had no opinion *sigh* When you group the NY Times and the Washington Post with Weekly World News and the National Enquirer, you might get skewed results.
It should come as no surprise that a majority of American High School students believe there should be strong limits to the first amendment. I'm talking limits like what newspapers can print, what people can just say, etc. It's a rather scary precedent to be sure. Luckily it is well covered and our mass media (no surprise) thinks these kids are lost. Which they are.
I'm happy to live in America and proud of the great things my countrymen have done in the past. I also recognize the many failures we have had as a nation. But lately it seems that our constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence are simply pieces of paper that any politician or judge can simply ignore. Not to mention the vast amount of people here that believe in things that are rather unconstitutional, but yet clamor about the USA liberating all these people everywhere, screw Europe mentality, etc. It seems the wool is over many peoples eyes and I fear they cannot change.
Maybe when oil crashes in the next 25 or less years, people will wake up. But I doubt it. I'm sure the blame will be passed elsewhere by dubious forces and the people will eat it up. I never really thought it could happen, and it is avoidable, but it seems Orwell's "1984" is almost a manual for what is to come.
Oh well, I can't change a thing and even if I could they wouldn't listen. Maybe I'm wrong and really everything is OK. I don't mean to complain so much but I don't understand people (both major parties btw) that want to take away their own rights. Why would I want to take away reasonable things from myself?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
"Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents..." So we have a survey comprised of less than .001% of American population, and clueless as even the post implied. Now, if i'm not mistaken, the title reads:
"The survey reveals Americans support blog censorship."
Oh, yeah. It really "reveals" the truth. Would this post have made the front page of /. if the title was really what it's about?
"An insignificant and unconfirmed survey done by a company craving attention may suggest that Americans don't support publishing their private information."
By the way, why is it linked to ZD Net Australia? Shouldn't it link to the original survey? Because I can't find it anywhere.
sorry for the bad handwriting
Survey Reveals Americans are idiots.
Next thing you know, folks on Slashdot will be posting comments without even reading the articles!
Yes I support censorship, repression and outright destruction of the Blog. We must destroy this menace before it gets out of hand.
An unleashed Blog on the loose devours everything in its path! Trundling its huge, slimy form across the land, swallowing up people and animals for the soul purpose of increasing its ever expanding girth!
We must stop the Blog!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Sensationalist news? NEVER!
I understand your point that over the long haul, history is cyclical. But I'm not so sure that the same *exact* cycles are repeated endlessly over and over again. The notion that a nation's rulers exist to serve the needs of the people is firmly entrenched in a far greater percentage of the world's population than it was 100, 500, or 1,000 years ago. The Magna Carta, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the French Revolution have had effect not only on the development of Europe and America, but on nations across the globe. The notion of hereditary leadership lives on in only a small number of marginal states.
Do I think that the United States will last in its current form forever? No. Do I think that the representative governments of Europe and the United States are the best possible forms of government? No. But I do think that on the balance as the world shrinks, representative government is becoming the de facto standard.
Perhaps it's because I'm an American, and like many Americans I have been indoctrinated to believe in the notion of progress. You may perceive my opinion as typically unsophisticated American wishful thinking, but it might help you to understand how Americans can get so hot and bothered about things like their Constitution.
In my opinion, cynicism is absurdly easy, because it requires nothing of its adherents. Optimism entails much more work, in that it contains a built-in call to work for change.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
People are morons.
News at 11.
Boy, it's going to be great when you have to register with campaign finance people if you say anything political on your blog.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
sheesh... people should know what they are talking about when they form an opinion on them... Bloging is ment to be cencor free... I'm sure these people that said that, also voted for Bush... >_>
If you don't believe this, go to your local courthouse - who has purchased what property and how much they paid for it is a public record and anybody can access it.
"other personal information", depending on what that covers, may be worth protecting.
Personally, I would suggest a privacy amendment to the constitution. Just take a national referendum and protect what the majority wants protected. Oh, and no special provisions for corporations, politicians, law enforcement, or the wealthy - everyone gets treated equally.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/31/193025 9&tid=146
Land of the free, home of the brave. Indeed.
And then you have the balls to claim that most other countries are "socialist" and "fascist" and whatnot, implying that they have even less freedom -- say, freedom of speech and publication -- than the 'states. Ha!
All information lies in a public sphere or a private sphere. The private sphere is larger for most folks, smaller for politicians and similar public figures.
Hunting licenses for the publisher should be granted to anyone whose private sphere information is published. This will also tend to improve data security of personal information brokers.
Think of it as evolution in action...
once they get up to say 250000 - 500000 respondents let me know. then maybe we will see some actual figures.
Americans seem to be good at having strong opinions about things they know nothing about...for example, the war on Iraq.
...a majority of Americans think Geo. W. Bush is suitable material for Leader of the Free World despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
If you want a stupid opinion, go ask America. Heck, I got plenty of 'em myself.
So, Censorship is one thing and this isn't even talking about it. This is saying that the majority of American's value their personal "Right to Privacy". The poster of the story got it completely and totally wrong.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Dumb survey, dumb methodology, dumb people.
And not that anybody's asked, but "Hostway"? Reminds me of "Safeway"...which quickly makes me think of Bon-Bon eating, Oprah-watching people who buy those magazines at the grocery checkout counter.
In other words, move along people; nothing to see here...
Not.
The Rest of the World(tm) has had to endure that piece of shit banner for decades...but the second a manufactured threat to The American Way appeared, US citizens -- sorry, consumers -- queued up to throw away their rights and privacy.
The fact that the threat is entirely home-grown and mostly bogus means nothing other than that the vast majority of Americans are gullible and cowardly losers.
Now that you've let the Bush Regime flush the Constitution and Bill of Rights down a whitehouse toilet, will you please stop claiming to be free and brave, since you're obviously neither.
Thanks.
There are ALREADY laws against criminal harassment, threats, and other crimes. Additionally, there are always civil options for suing over any damages you wish to claim. You only need to convince the court to agree with your case.
The medium for these crimes ought make no difference. The logical processing of electrons should NOT be a "special case".
I suggest you read Slashdot
How does "bloggers should not be allowed to publish sensitive personal information about individuals" equal "strong censorship" ?
I want to know what Hostway's demographic was on this survey. 2,500 people is not enough to be an adequate sample of Americans. There are currently 295,877,596 Americans according to POPclocks. A sample of 2,500 people, some of whom might not even be Americans, is about .000084494% of the American population.
Take this "survey" with a grain of salt, but put on your rain boots, it's going to be a FUDdy day for the media.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Find out who paid for the poll! Then you'll know which party's agenda is behind the slant.
Wasn't Senator Clinton recently asking questions about censoring bloggers?
If you want legitimacy for your zine tell the guy who owns zines.com to get off his ass and rebuild the site editor@zines.com and yeah, it's me.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
You weren't modded down for posting "private information." You were modded down because the way you provided the information implied that people should harass the site operator. "Hey everyone! Mr. Smith at (555)555-6547 is a complete ass." "Hey everyone! Jon Doe at (555)555-4578 Lane is a registered sex offender." Are you going to call up Mr. Smith and ask him for a cup of sugar? Do you plan on asking Jon Doe to baby sit? Do you expect to have any kind of meaningful dialog with these people? "Is it true you're a sex offender?" "Yes." There is no use for that information other than to bug those people.
You weren't modded down for posting "private information." You were modded down because the way you provided the information implied that people should harass the site operator.
"Hey everyone! Mr. Smith at (555)555-6547 is a complete ass."
"Hey everyone! Jon Doe at (555)555-4578 Lane is a registered sex offender."
Are you going to call up Mr. Smith and ask him for a cup of sugar? Do you plan on asking Jon Doe to baby sit? Do you expect to have any kind of meaningful dialog with these people?
"Is it true you're a sex offender?" "Yes."
There is no use for that information other than to bug those people.
----------------
This comment re-posted for your viewing pleasure. Now with 60% more carrage returns!
Sigh. Yes.
.us domains.
But then these same people who are trying to enforce some rules (such as this) on blogs turn around, and are for forcing you to publish your own address, and aren't you also a Private Citizen? It's already happened for
That is what I call "backwards", if you ask me.
For context, click Parent.
Fortunately what these asshats think is of no consequence. Unless Congress can rally/bully the states into repealing the First Amendment these surveys don't matter for shit.
We don't live in a democracy - something you should thank the gods for.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Sorry, I don't believe that any whiny moron with a web page is automatically God, and can do whatever he damn pleases to other people. Privacy _is_ an issue even if you're a "blogger".
And sometimes it's just that: privacy. I don't care about "slippery slope" theories, you just have no business giving away someone else's data. I'll worry about "freedom of speech" issues when it's about actually censoring political opinions, which is really all that that ammendment was supposed to protect. Bullying your boss or your ex-girlfriend via publishing their life on the web, is one "freedom of speech" I'll be quite happy to do without.
And it's not even just about bloggers.
Companies too _are_ bound by some privacy laws, and doubly so in Europe. If anyone published my details, even in a newspaper or company brochure or as "customer of the month" on their games e-commerce site, they could get their pants sued off. That data is, simply put, mine not theirs in the first place. If they published children's addresses and schedule to go to school, I _think_ they may even run into some criminal laws.
But even in the USA, there are already laws covering that kind of thing. E.g., a newspaper can't publish your medical record.
So I see nothing wrong with asking that "bloggers" are bound by the same rules. Again, no, just being able to type a whine in a text box does _not_ make you god, does _not_ put you above privacy or common courtesy rules, and sure as hell does _not_ give you carte blance to bully other people ("here's my boss's home address and phone number. He's a fucking moron. Do something to inconvenience him.")
You're just a guy with a web page, nothing more. You're not above the law. And if something annoys enough people, the law gets changed to reflect that. Even if it involves bringing you down from the imaginary pedestal of blogger godhood. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves."
In other words, a bunch of Americans have an opinion on something they know nothing about.
Wasn't there a survey along the lines of "should capital punishment for serial shoplifters be abolished" and a bunch of people said "no"?
Surveys only catch those dumb enough to have nothing better to do with their time. Getting an inteligent response from a survey is like getting a steak recipie from a vegan.
This is news?
" and that's why we hide ourselves on slashdot and in blogs. "
/. and elsewhere I have
a hard held belief that I have every right to say
even if it sometimes dissagrees with what
my local government feels I have a right to say;
in those cases it is the government and the backwards plutocrats who elected them who are wrong;
and it is my duty to oppose them.
for the record
while mabye you can hide yourself, blogs are a public affair. They allow the world to see what exactly you are, and it allows you to say what needs to be said. Nothing about hiding. Everyone who ever hopes to have any sort of public life these days almost needs to have a blog, politicians, artists, you name it, because that is the way for the world to get to know you and for artists and poleticians you *want* to be known. Everything I say on
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
This particular thing has nothing to do with media censorship, freedom of speech, etc. etc. It is about data protection.
In the UK we have had a Data Protection Act for eleven years, and it has done much more for the rights of the private individual than it ever did for the government/spies/corporations.
The gist of it is this. If you give personal information to someone, they may only use it for the purposes you permitted them to, and after those purposes are complete, you must destroy the information. Additionally, if someone is collecting information about you and it is impossible for you to consent, they must warn you about it beforehand, and you may ask them at any time for a copy.
Here are some of the rights the DPA entitles me to:
I believe that this law also applies to the rest of the EU now, but I don't believe there's anything like this in North America yet.
Once again - guys, analyze the data: The small portion isn't even big enough to fill a small township nor correctly convey its opinion on any topic.
If 25,000 were surveyed, maybe an inch of credence would be applied. But in this circumstance, 2,500 out of a seas of hundreds of millions of people in the United States just isn't fair.
Brooklyn - The Anti AC
No, sorry, I think people are perfectly qualified to understand that they don't want their private data on the web. They don't have to even know what a blog is. They don't want you publishing _their_ data. Period.
Seems to me that they're perfectly competent to decide that.
Incidentally, though, you do also illustrate another problem with blogs, and why it _isn't_ some Earth-changing revolution. Why it's still just a bunch of whiny nerds, too busy patting each other on the back, to actually cause any social or political change.
See, it's just this kind of self-centered ivory-tower attitutde. Re-read what you just wrote. Basically it's "bah, I'm the important one. You don't matter. If you dare disaggree with me, then your opinion is worthless and you're a bunch of incompetent morons. Heck, you don't even really _have_ an opinion."
That kind of self-centeredness doesn't win many supporters, much less move the masses or challenge the establishment.
Additionally, most of the time it's not just that bloggers can't carry the message across, it's that they don't even _have_ a message anyone else gives a damn about. It's the self-centering again. Their world revolves so much around themselves, that their only issues are their _own_ problems.
See the whole thread here, or again, what you wrote yourself. The whole focus is "how dare those sheep want to censor _us_?" Ever stopped to wonder _why_ those people answered that way? What is the problem _they_ see? What public benefit could cyber-bullying someone in a blog possibly have? I.e. _why_ on Earth would someone in their right mind answer "nah, I really want every socially-inept whiner to publish my address and telephone number on the web"?
And I mean really trying to see the others' point of view, not hand waving and piss poor excuses like "waah, someone made them answer that way". Might be a new experience.
There's a lesson in there: the way politics works is "vote for me, and I'll do something for _you_." _Noone_ won or swayed an election yet with a message like "I'm the important one, and you're a bunch of sheep I don't care about."
The way it works is "I care about _your_ problems". It's not "I'm the important one here.
You should come solve _my_ problems."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Since when was being an ex-gf/ex-bf/neighbour/whatever an excuse for libel? Is there some paragraph in the laws that says that? Was there some precedent established in the courts that went "ah, ok, they used to go out together, so it's perfectly normal and acceptable for them to print lies about each other"? No, seriously.
I do believe that if said ex-girlfriend managed to publish those lies in a book or in a newspaper, she'd be looking at a nasty lawsuit. Methinks it's only fair that the exact same applies to blogs.
So noone's asking that the government explicitly goes and silences women, or some other emotionally-charged bullshit, but just that the same rules apply on blogs as in any other segment of the media. If you publish lies about someone, you damn better be sure you can prove that stuff in a court of law.
And just for the sake of going on a tangent, my advice to that ex-gf (or ex-bf that does the same, no need to single out a gender there) would be: grow up, get over it, see a good surgeon about having your head removed from your ass. Life moves one. Whining in a blog never solved anything.
Yes, maybe you've had a bad relationship, maybe he/she/it didn't deserve you, bla, bla, bla. You have my compassion. But it's over, so get over it already. From that point on what matters is what _you_ do with _your_ life. Learning from past experiences is ok. But living in the past and begging for sympathy because of what happened last century, that's just another way to be a loser.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
ok heres a nice little survey for you
..
.....
Q1: Which would you rather have
A: Blog censorship
B: Pins shoved through your eyeballs
This survay would clearly show that 99% of people are for blog censorship(1% margin of error)
Lies , Dammed lies and Statistics
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Go America, if we don't understand it, let our government regulate and control it for us, because they can do no wrong. They'll do what is right for us, yee haw!
Bunch of fucking sheep in this country.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
"Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens."
Newspapers do this all the time! Nobody censors them! Nobody slaps a restraining order on the Paparazzi, do they? Hell, they take naked pictures of celebrities and slap them on the front page of the gutter press! Yet these peasants are worried about their precious name and address getting stuck on some kids blog with a readership of all of 3 people a day?
I think this is a typical technophobe reaction - censor everything! Fear the unkown.
Like sombody's going to hunt you down and kill your first born in front of you because I told them to on my Blog? You stand more chance of being mugged randomly on the street by a cross-dressing nun.
Coding Monkey.org - Spanging the heavy spade of truth into t
Actually, the fear for most of us aren't some crazed serial killer coming to our house (although not knowing the address help). The number one problem with having personal info on the web is the chance that identity thief might use them to social engineer others to impersonate you. Also, the reason no one slaps a restraining order on the paparazzi is because their target have higher libel (forgot the correct term), which means that their targets are famous, so they should already have the reputation and mean to dispel any rumor unlike us insignificant, poor peasants.
For 1, I don't believe bloggers should have ANY need to publish personal info (other then stating names and such) or normal, private citizens (which would exclude the likes of politicians and celebrities).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Any law or ammendment is a _means_, not an end. The goal is fulfilling the people's needs and wants, and the law is merely an end to that.
If an existing law, or interpretation of it, does not actually serve the public good, it's not worth defending. Plain and simple. It has nothing to do with being sheeple, it has to do with having a brain. Namely, with being able to understand the distinction between "means" and "end".
Is the government attempting to stiffle your speech about how liberals are a better government than conservatives, or viceversa? That's worth fighting against. The government has no business suppressing a mature political speech, even if it doesn't like the ideas in it.
Is someone stiffling your libel or cyber-bullying campaign against your ex-gf/ex-bf/boss/etc? Well, actually that's something worth supporting. The libel kind of "free speech" does _not_ actually serve society in any form or shape. (No, allowing some whiner to verbally masturbate on the web is not really some greater social good.)
For a people so proud of their "freedom of speech", I find it appalling the way the average american doesn't even understand it. Your average idiot whining about how, in the name of "freedom of speech", he should be allowed to cheat in an online game or troll a bulletin board, doesn't even know wtf that ammendment says.
For starters that it only applies to your relationship to the government. E.g., that the government can't stop you from saying that Kerry would have been better than Bush, or viceversa.
It does _not_ however apply to your relationship to anyone else. It does _not_ mean that any particular site has to carry your bullshit. It does _not_ mean that any game has to tolerate your anti-social behaviour on their server. It does not mean you're free to rape someone else's rights, such as in this case their privacy. And it does _not_ mean that your ex has to just bend over and let you libel him/her/it in your whiny blog.
It's that simple.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Of course people can't say or write anything. If it's slander, or lies, they can be held responsible for their writings afterwards. If you don't want other things to be published, make it a crime so that people can be sued afterwards.
Censorship means checking everything before it is published. That is draconian. I'm not sure it's what you want. I think the problem with the questionnair is probably that they suggest that censorship is the only solution. That is bullshit. The judicial system is about punishing people for their crimes, not making it impossible to permit crimes.
Constricting a US citizen's right to Free Speech is a violation of the US Constitution. Why (or, politely, on what grounds) is this *EVER* permitted? I am a very law-abiding citizen, but I cannot understand why my rights (*ESPECIALLY* to free speech!) must be *constantly* abridged. I doubt that the US Supreme Court would accept this in any way.
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
What exactly is wrong with believing that personal information like home addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses etc should not be publically published? that's not censorship at all. Censorship is when one is forbidden to publish his/her opinion on a subject.
Web logs are a nice 'invention' for communicating ideas, opinions etc, but since the pen is mightier than the sword, blog content must be 'politically correct' in the sense that it does not harm others. If revelations about scandals are to be published in weblogs, they better be accompanied with evidence, otherwise it is yellow journalism.
I totally understand the fear of identity theft but people have their priorities way out of wack.
You don't see people up in arms over the fact that 'whois' domain searches tend to reveal peoples names, addresses and phone numbers, nor do you hear about people complaining that the local government are sending out passwords in the mail to e-government sites with 6 digit numeric passwords.
My point is, blogs are a small threat, if any threat at all. There are far more and serious flagrant breaches of personal security out there that people should be worried about.
I agree, slapping peoples personal details on a blog is wrong - but so is slapping an upskirt shot of some 17 year old tennis player on the front page of your newspaper or telling people on the front page what street a *suspected* peodophile lives in.
Blogs are a forum for free speech and we need that.
We need 'terms and conditions' not 'censorship' - there's a difference.
Coding Monkey.org - Spanging the heavy spade of truth into t
With increased international bandwidth and often faster networks outside the US (less congestion etc) it becomes easier and easier to host in countries that have more relaxed laws.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
"Survey finds Results it Expected"
Shock.
Can we see the survey?
What actual questions are asked?
It is very easy to weight a survey towards a prefered result. A good one on "Yes, Minister" about National Service.
Without context, all these results say is that the population surveyed is willing to answer questions and can be manipulated by survey-writers.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
I know it's a little late and so this will probably not get much attention, but having read through the list of comments I'm surprised not to have seen more about how easily accessible home addresses and phone numbers already are.
You've got the phone book, sure, but remember you've also got Google out there. Type in someone's full name and city (sometimes city isn't even needed) and pop! there is their address, and, unless it's unlisted, their phone number.
Now, one can play the game, saying that posting information like that on a blog somewhere is a lot more like pointing a finger directly at the person in question, highlighting their information, but to me the difference is slight, if tenable at all. All you need is someone's name to get an address out of Google, and it is still legal for bloggers to post a name.
Besides (and I have seen this posted above), personal addresses and phone numbers (unless specifically requested) are not private information at all. So we're talking about intent here. The intent to misuse this information.
The focus is supposedly on people's ideas of censorship, in whatever form you want to take it, but what we're really talking about here is discrimination.
I don't really want my information highlighted on the internet, public or private as it might be. But I want even less to discriminate against those who are exercising a perfectly legal right to publish public information. *That* is where the slippery slope begins, and we don't want to go down that road.
Oh wait... we already are.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Most people rush head on into censorship without even reviewing the thing they are censoring. Right now, I'm doing the history of book banning. Alot of my research shows that some people who ban books haven't read them and just hear they should be banned by word of mouth. Others only read a offensive page and not the entire book. So the same could apply blogs. They could search the indivual pages (depends on the blog) on Google, see it, get ticked off and then decide to censor it. This is another example of how stupid people can be.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
So what these statistics really say is that somewhere around 80% of Americans are idiots.
I don't really think that the 20% of Americans who are not idiots or the rest of the world will be too surprised.
MMMMmmmmm. Government by the majority. Tasty.
Deleted
The same people that re-elected Bush? Oh... Ok, that's all I need to know.
This is how the Propaganda Machine works. The media tell you what you should think, then they conduct polls using questions based on false premises with answer sets designed to exclude dissenting opinions.
Goebbels would be so proud.
Have you stopped hitting you're mother yet?slashdot broke my sig
Lies, damn lies and statistics. Nothing in the article supports the conclusions drawn in the squib, and the survey might not even support the statements in the article.
Surveys ask particular questions, and when properly conducted under certain assumptions, can yield statistical inferences about the behavior of a defined universe with respect to the questions asked. Done properly, they can offer remarkably good insight about a population at large.
Strike any of the assumptions, however, they are meaningless numbers, reflecting only a census of the narrow population that was actually polled, permitting no meaningful inferences about larger populations.
But in any case, even where the survey is properly conducted and permits inferences about the attitude of a broader population, the results of the survey are only the inferences concerning the QUESTIONS THE SURVEY ASKED.
And even so, it is as important to consider questions not asked and to measure the impact of the question on the sample. Are there adequate controls.
Here, the article suggests that persons were asked, among others, whether bloggers should be permitted to publish personal information. Is that a question about privacy law or about blogs? Would the same persons, asked the same question answer the same or differently if the medium was a home newsletter, network news or a newspaper? Perhaps the censorship sought here is merely the publication of personal information regardless of medium. Would it matter if the material were itself newsworthy?
Absent scientific control questions, we'll never know. In any case, I saw nothing to suggest that a poll of consumers of a particular service using the questions asked without more would support the far-flung suggestion in the headline, the squib or een the article itself.
Everyone who works within the polling field is well aware that small changes in wording can affect the ways in which respondents answer questions.
Such as "Would your opinion of John McCain be different if you knew he fathered an illegitimate black child ?"
"Joe, I don't do 'nuance'."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Realistically, no, I can't. I have neither the knowledge of how the legal system works where LJ are based to know who to hire, nor the kind of money that this sort of case usually seems to require.
I think you're missing my point anyway: a law suit would have been mostly irrelevant by that stage. The point is that I told LJ shortly after my ex posted her comments that they were inappropriate and why, and asked them politely to remove them. Over the next few days, after they refused to do so (claiming that they couldn't read their own database as a rather poor excuse for this), several close friends of mine came across those opinions. Since I was also blocked from posting a rebuttal comment in the same place as the originals, which might have been an adequate remedy, the damage was done. No trivial amount of financial compensation could make up for months of upset that those comments caused to me and some other people who were involved, whatever the result of a law suit.
I'm not asking for people to be silenced "just because". I'm providing an example of what happens when free speech and an unregulated Internet are allowed to over-rule established legal and/or regulatory principles that apply in similar areas outside the Internet.
If they'd said they wouldn't take the post down without some sort of proof/court order/whatever, that would have been a reasonable answer, if not one I think is ideal. If they'd said they'd take it down for a short period pending delivery of same, that would have been better. I can understand a service provider not wanting to play judge and jury, too; overall, I'd rather they didn't (and indeed couldn't). But that means there has to be some effective means of taking legal action in a timely and affordable manner in cases like this.
Right now there isn't, and that's my point. Paying hundreds of dollars or whatever for a lawyer to successfully pursue a law suit that says "Yes, you were right" six months after the post was made is too little, too late to deal with this kind of crime. Perhaps in an age of instant mass communication, the rule needs to be changed so that the benefit of the doubt goes with the accused until the accuser provides evidence to support their allegations. It's a new idea, I know, but maybe it's better than encouraging a culture where damning someone publicly is an effective means of hurting them, whether or not you have any right to do so?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I wouldn't want someone else handing out personal information about me either.
I have a pretty strict 'interpretation' of the first amendment.
Thus, I support Nazis, Skinheads, KKK, Anti-Abortionists, Abortionists, Greens, Communists, and etc all being able to say what they want, believe, etc without fear of governmental reprisal. It's when their conduct crosses the line from words to action that I'd come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Blogs are not so much journalism as they are opinion/editorial pages.
So, yes, I support the ability of Bloggers to post whatever they want. If they do post something libelous, then they can be sued, just like journalists. On the other hand, most of them are not 'professional', thus don't fall under the same standards as professional journalism.
I don't read AC A human right
"Have you ever tried sugar, or PCP?"
Maybe pedantic but PCP is funnier in delivery.
(Source: Strategic Grill Locations, Mitch Hedberg's first album)
And in a side note, I'm sorry to see Mitch go, he was an incredible comedian.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
It's about time some people stepped up and took my side against the publishing of names and personal addresses. I've been looking to take down phone book publishers for years. Now my evil plot is finally coming to fruition.
Today the yellow pages, tomorrow the world! Mu ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Actually, you'd get marked as 'pro', as a taser is considered a gun in some municipalities. ;)
.22LR round. It's a plinker/squirrel shooter.
As a pro-gunner, I'm personally amazed as what gets shoved into the 'assault weapon' category on the news. Per the expired AWB, an SKS* is not an assault weapon, but I've seen it called such on the news. I've also seen a ruger 10/22* called such. And what's the heck with listing a bolt action or single shot rifle weighing 15 pounds without the scope, that has to be fired from support an 'assault weapon'? At least 'assault rifle' is a well defined category.
*SKS: Yes, it's a former military firearm from just after WWII, predecessor of the AK47, and features an internal 10 round magazine fed from stripper clips. But as it doesn't take removable magazines, it wasn't covered by the AWB.
*Ruger 10/11: A small, light semi-automatic rifle that is chambered for the small, cheap
I don't read AC A human right
Isn't the mere (self-imagined?) threat of legal repercussions enough to dissuade people from posting others' personal data on their blogs? I don't know what laws would be broken specifically. But I figure there's a line to not cross. If I have to think if this may or may not be legal, chances are I better not post it.
VOTE!
We American's often do stupid things. We, as a people, don't fully appreciate the value of the rights we have and consistently try to forfeit some or all of them.
1 45529,00.html
1 0/culturecl ub.html
Take for instance these legal efforts to dump the Fourth and Sixth Amendments:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,
Or how half of all high school students think all News should be censored:
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2005/02/
The founding fathers knew what they were doing. They realized the people would do stupid things and slowly give away their liberties. Its why they made it so hard for us to shoor ourselves.
Sadly, it just seems like were getting better and better at it as time goes by.
Here's a tidbit from the article: No shit?
People tend to put more stock in reputable news agencies than some guy publishing his opinion on the web?
I know blogs can do many things, like uncover scandals, expose bad reporting, etc., but since I don't have the tools to investigate myself (or I'm too lazy/don't care enough.) I'm going to take the NY Times (even after their slip up with fabricated articles) word for it unless a serious amount of evidence mounts, which is what happened to 60 minutes. Blogs are good for getting people to look into abnormalities, but at the end of the night I have less reason to believe that my newspaper is fabricating evidence than some blog.
It doesn't say they support STRONG censorship. It says they support censorship, defined as not being able to publish address information of private citizens.
It isn't exactly the case, but it is similar in a way to forbidding free-speaking citzens from yelling FIRE! in crowded movie theatres. Maybe your contact information IS a matter of public record, but by splattering it all over a blog, the bloggers are usually trying to encourage some sort of behaviour, which facilitates stalking, harassment, etc., etc. But it's a fine line...if they have a list of "hey, here's a list of where all the Hollywood stars live", that isn't much worse than "maps to the stars' homes". However, when they start listing private citizens, you have to wonder why...why are these citizens being singled out for listing, and why do you need to list them...?
I don't think encouraging responsible behaviour is censorship. I don't think forbidding publication of contact information for select minorities of private citizens in necessarily a bad thing...either list them all, or don't list *some of them*.
All of this goes out the window if you have their permission, of course.
What a horrible survey, and to some extent, shame on /. for posting the tag the way it did. I blog. And given those same questions, I'd have responded the same way. Chock full of statistical errors and misrepresentations.
Wow. The public really is blind.
- Nobody can stop anyone from posting information on the internet. It's simply impossible.
- The internet isn't governed by the US government. There's nothing the governement can do to stop people posting information, except to lock down the entire internet like the Chinese do. That won't happen because the media in this country is too powerful.
- It doesn't matter if bloggers are journalists or not. If I write something on a piece of paper, photocopy it, and give it to 100 people, am I a journalist? The socially acceptable opinion would be: "No". The real question is not over journalism, the question is over trust. And nothing, absolutely NOTHING on the internet can be trusted, because it's damn near impossible to tag any piece of information definitively to a person. So the answer becomes: choose who you trust carefully.
The big piece of all of this is the slow realization that it's becoming no longer necessary to go to school for 20 years to learn the "proper" way of doing something. Not when people have a resource like the net, and can quickly become an expert in nearly any subject (highly technical subjects still probably require degrees.) Where "journalists" are getting pissed off is simply a lack of acknowledgement that the times have changed and the barrier to entry has become much smaller then they would like to admit.
Jaynie Dixon lives at 1225 W. Clayburne, Chicago IL 60651, now sue me Bitchez!
I think I speak for most people who have taken the time to read this sub-thread when I respectly submit that the problem may be that you need to grow a pair.
... right.
If you "say some things in confidience" in a note you give to your girlfriend (or a co-worker, or the girl sitting behind you in study hall), it is almost inevitable that she will, in fact, share some of the juicy bits with her friends (or another co-worker or the girls at the lunch table). And here "note' would include a letter or email or conversation. Perhaps you should have exercised some discretion about who you shared these things with or what you chose to say? Talking behind peoples' backs can come back to bite you. You were forced to be a man and stand behind some uncomfortable things you said. Must have been awkward. Surely you didn't try to weasel out of it and pretend you didn't mean what you said when you said it. "Taken out of context"
Regardless, others have already said better than I that it is not the government's role to step in and regulate the private speech of individuals. Period. I just wanted to say what a lot of us are already thinking. That you could stand to be more of a man about this and own up to the words you obviously said. The ex choose to be immature and vindictive about how she got back at you. Looks like she hit the target dead center. You aren't going to stop her. Let it go and move on.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
I must disagree with your arguments. You speak from the position of enlightened hopefullness - you hope anonymous bureaucrats won't take things too far, since you would not yourself (you feel). This is the sort of cowed, wishful thinking that got us the Department of Homeland Security.
This is, at heart, a question of scale. In how many cases is the release of "private" information by bloggers 1) possible, 2) not remediable under existing laws? Answer: damn little. Potential for rediculous escalation and abuse of power? Certain.
Let consider some examples: some disgruntled employee goes and whines in his blog about his boss, and publishes his home address on the page, with the implication that someone should go and egg the boss's house. Ok. How many people will seriously do that just because they read that on the web? Maybe a few - but they would be looking for trouble in any event, and this is simply a different focal point. Vandalism is an offence. If they get caught, there will be some legal trouble, and the boss has to garden hose his house for a bit. Case settled.
Another, more serious case: someone with access to medical records finds info on a person they don't like and publish it. Now it's on the web, i.e. for everyone to see. This is serious. Serious enough that the offended person can have recourse to full strength of laws about privacy and god knows what else (IANAL). The person is sued, fired from his condifential job, and probably become unemployable. Troubling for the victim - yes. But if they take action within the civil, personal scope, ultimately self-correcting. It's true that the person who would think of violating their professional ethics to this extent is already highly unbalanced, should not have been employed there, and the Internet facilitates (but by no means is the sole cause/avenue) for such behaviour. However, that's the reality of the changing world - more info available nearly-instantly to everyone.
Now your solution. "'checked' censorship". Checked by whom?! "Who watches the watchers" isn't a new question - it's as old as sin. The Romans even knew about it. As you have pointed out, the censorship is difficult. Read: unenforceable. How in the world are you going to do this: hire more federal employees to check every online forum and post? Have the Department of Online Blogging? Only blogs hosted by the Feds are legal? Signing up to their account? What are you talking about? This is about as rational as Argentina requiring IP records for 10 years on all connections. It's beyond delusional.
The most disturbing thing is that people are in favor of government supervision in things that they don't even know about. This is "Big Daddy White Father Knows Best" attitude at it's finest. This is what the pioneer descendants of Lewis and Clark have turned into? A country of savage surviving badasses that hacked and slashed their way across the country, worked, sweated and died as rugged individualists, *this* is what they've become? A people in favor of having some pencil-neck bureaucrat in a Washington Office Ok-ing the publication of even the garbage that they post online? What next? The Office of Bathroom Permission? Yes, Citizen 8849393, you may visit the bathroom now. Citizen 4921993 - you have made 3 unauthorized bathroom visits in the last 2 days. How about you explain that behavior?
Oh my country! What have you done to yourself!
Me, too. My wife and I think of him every time we have baked potatoes.
I already know that my name and address and phone number are out there, and I've already had my identity stolen twice (wonder if I ever even got it back? :-\).
Welcome to the information age, I guess.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I live in Falls Church, VA. There, now we both have our information out there. :)
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Say hi to my Alma Mater for me. :)
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The McCain-Feingold act really hurts third party candidates, to whom publicity is very expensive. Dems and Reps already have all the publicity they need, but if you're coming in from the side, you'd better have a lot of financial support. This act stop that support and effectively chokes out all but the two major parties (big surprise it's a bi-partisan law, huh?)
Then, there's the fairness doctrine. It makes radio stations devote equal time to both sides of every issue. Therefore, a liberal talk radio show would have to give equal air time to conservative hosts, and vice versa. Obviously, if a station is predominantly liberal or conservative, it will lose viewers and thus advertising dollars. Since conservative talk radio stations are more common than progressive ones, you will see Hillary Clinton support this act because it hurts them.
People have a view of censorship that the men in uniforms will swoop down on you if you say or write the wrong thing, but hitting peoples' wallets is far easier, more subtle, and less likely to be resisted.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Send complaints to: Joe Sixpack 324 Patriot Lane Bumblescum, TN 44125
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Your ignorance is not the government's problem.
Your lack of money is not the government's problem. Besides which, I find it hard to believe that you have the first idea of how much it would actually cost when you have already admitted to your profound ignorance of the legal system.
There are no additional legal and/or regulatory principles which would apply if this had occurred outside of the Internet, and as you have made abundantly clear, you wouldn't know it even if there were.
It should go without saying that they do not have to take down any post without a court order.
There IS. The fact that you have misconceptions about the time and cost of pursuing a small claims civil case is no one's problem but your own. The fact that you are so unwilling even to entertain the idea of paying for legal counsel tells me that you really haven't suffered any significant damages over this.
It's not a crime. It's a tort, at best. And you don't have to wait for a verdict to obtain a preliminary injunction.
That's the way it already is. Your ex is the accused; you are the accuser. You are alleging that she is guilty of some vague "crime" which you can barely even articulate. She deserves the benefit of the doubt until you can provide evidence for your claims in a court of law.
No, I prefer a culture in which it is not so easy to silence someone without due process of the law. If you had your way, then every ex-boyfriend would have the power to harass every ex-girlfriend into silence, independently of the actual merit of their claims.
In fact, in a deliciously ironic twist, it would give your ex-girlfriend the power to have your posts about her removed from Slashdot!
As /. posted yesterday some "mainstream" news media (e.g. NY Times) have backed bloggers. The Case in question is the one of the "Apple Bloggers" who reported tech specs of Apple's new machines in advance.
See here
I think that you'll find while the head moneybags at CNN or even the NYT may fear competition or the rise of blogs, the real journalists understand the value of their protections and understand that, far from diluting it, it would be better to extend protections. Consider it this way, if Bloggers are banned because they "are not journalists" then who decides who is and is not a "journalist?" Who gets to make that judgement and thus decides who deserves protection and who does not? That's the real slippery slope. Far better to let everyone be anonymous than establish some bizarre protection for existing organizations, especially with said organizations trying to move online.
This is especially an issue when you reflect on hoe many journalists are, esssentially, contractors. They may submit columns to a known organization but many of them must also publish books or blogs on their own. A daily beat reporter (such as a whitehouse correspondent) is not that different from a blogger, one just does it on paper, and one online.
This may seem like a weak example but keep in mind that the case which "started it all" was a gossip columnist (one of the early female reporters) who went to jail rather than reveal her source. The star in question was, I believe, Maralyn Monroe.
I have to agree with you, but it's a puzzler for me. It gets into very ugly territory.
If the person doesn't explicitly advocate violence, how do you judge that? How do you seperate hyperbole from an actual threat or exhortion to violence?
I mean, a guy got into trouble with the hate speech laws over posting a correction over what military munition(specifically: Cruise missile) would be used against a scientology enclave. The previous poster had a 'poor choice'. From what I read the guy was railroaded as the judge, prosecution wouldn't let his defense put the remark into context. He ended up winning political asylum in Canada, which tends to make me believe his story.
Which is why I think that judges should be forced to explain the concept of "jury nullification" to juries. This is where if the jury believes the law to be unjust or unconstitutional, they can find the guy not guilty no matter how obvious it was that he violated it.
Of course, as a libertarian, I feel that it should be difficult to convict people anyways.
I don't read AC A human right
It all depends on the Supreme Court justices appointed. Any system can be broken.
Freedom of Speech.
And it isn't just for Americans, the constitution doesn't apply just to Americans either, it applies to anyone on our soil (Inalienable rights).
In other news... a survey conducted after lengthy interrogations by state security agencies in China shows that 80.0% of the enemies of the state genuinely regret their crimes. The other 20.0% were unable to participate in the post interrogation survey for medical reasons.
Another Chinese survey shows that people living in even the remotest mountain villages keenly desire Taiwan's return to mainland China.
A survey conducted by the RIAA shows that Americans do not stand for copyright infringement.
A survey conducted by the Bush campaign showed that most Americans believe the elections are not rigged.
Yawn... I'm running out of stupid analogies..
I'm providing an example of what happens when free speech and an unregulated Internet are allowed to over-rule established legal and/or regulatory principles that apply in similar areas outside the Internet.
What established legal or regulatory principles? If you have been slandered, your recourse is to sue the person. It doesn't matter whether she did it in a newsletter or by phone or by painting it on a board and holding it up at the SuperBowl or put it online.
But that means there has to be some effective means of taking legal action in a timely and affordable manner in cases like this.
How would you know--you haven't even tried. If you wanted to take legal action, you should talk to an attorney.
Paying hundreds of dollars or whatever for a lawyer to successfully pursue a law suit that says "Yes, you were right" six months after the post was made is too little, too late to deal with this kind of crime.
In a lot of situations, all you need to silence someone for is a few weeks, and their statements become pointless. And you want to do that on your say-so.
the benefit of the doubt goes with the accused until the accuser provides evidence to support their allegations.
As the AC pointed out, you're accusing someone of lying. You want here silenced without you providing any evidence to support your allegations.
OK, it seems some respondents in this thread don't understand why I feel that this wouldn't really have fixed the damage here anyway, and hence I didn't pursue legal action at the time. There is an implication in some of the less constructive replies that this was out of laziness, but this is true only in as much as I didn't see what good it would do and therefore didn't do what I viewed as wasting my time.
My argument here is that a traditional court case alleging defamation is not an adequate remedy here. Let me change sides for a moment and play the "you should have sued" game to try and illustrate a few reasons why.
For a start, in what jurisdiction would you suggest I file suit? I am in the UK, as is my ex. The blog site is (AFAIK) run by a company based in the US, and (AFAIK) also hosted there.
Same question: an attorney in what jurisdiction, and experienced with what area(s) of law? Defamation? International disputes? Technology issues? Family disputes?
Please read my posts again. More than one person has inferred that from what I've written, but I've never actually written it, at least not without major qualifiers. In fact, I have written explicitly that on balance I wouldn't want service providers to take on the role of the legal system.
I repeat: my point here is simply that the existing legal framework within which the Internet operates is lacking in this area (and, for that matter, many others). The world has never seen a system where massive and almost instantaneous distribution of information is possible. This creates a whole new context in which our moral values must be applied to determine law, and whole new ways to offend those values that are qualitatively different to anything the justice system has had to deal with in the past: viruses and their ilk, P2P copyright infringement, spam and phishing, and of course the kind of widespread and immediate defamation we're discussing here.
There is an implicit assumption in many of the comments in this discussion that the same balance between the individual's rights and freedoms and the restrictions on them for the good of society is appropriate in the Internet age as it was before. This claim has yet to be proven, and certainly the case of the ex here is not the first suggestion that it might not be; see the other dangers I mentioned above.
And as I've pointed out, she was accusing me of much worse; as the kids in the schoolyard chant, "she started it". Any implied accusation that she is herself lying arises purely from my denying the accusations made of me. Trying to turn this around (as some respondents have done) and say that I'm somehow the accuser will create a chicken-and-egg scenario, except that here it's quite clear which came first.
And of course, in any case she was clearly distributing my copyright material: the altered e-mails. This allegation could be proved by simply reading a post where she herself claims I wrote the words, and my agreeing with this, whereupon the onus is on her to demonstrate that I assented to the distribution -- something that would have been rather unlikely given the nature of the material and the subtle but very significant differences between what she posted and the copy in my sent mail folder.
If any of the admins at the blog provider had even looked at the post I was complaining ab
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...because I have a nasty theory this is a push poll intent to show that there is a "popular upswing" in preventing "biased blogs" from distracting people from the "unbiased mainstream media". If you phrase the questions right in a push poll, you can show that people have an overwhelming support for three-way hot lesbian llama whipped cream sex with dwarves. IMHO, blogs are the greatest invention for free speech since the printing press-now everybody can own their own "press" and publish information out in the world. Some are very "yellow journalism" at it's finest, but sometimes yellow journalism has it's place. It brought down Dan Rather when he lied on-air about having "proof" that President Bush had shirked his National Guard experience. Here's a big question-who hates blogs? And who benefits from their supression and "control"? Answer that, and you'll start to wonder why they want control.
"Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens." Here's one for common sense! Please, does anyone actually think that someone else should be allowed to post your Credit Card address, home phone number, etc. online to everyone?
--Yoshiyahu ben Noach
Why can't they say..readings someone's internet page?!
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
in what jurisdiction would you suggest I file suit? I am in the UK, as is my ex.
A British person suing another British person for actions taken from British soil? I'd try the UK.
Same question: an attorney in what jurisdiction, and experienced with what area(s) of law?
I don't know; why don't you ask an attorney? If you have a question of law, ask someone trained in the subject.
for practical purposes a lot of laws don't apply in the on-line world.
I'm sure that's been proved by someone doing something online that they could have done offline just as well. In any case, you've repeatedly said that you don't know the first thing about what the laws are, you haven't consulted an attorney, or attempted any sort of legal action. How do you know whether they apply or not?
But the most important thing is to get the offending content removed, and that's based in the US. A British court can't order a US-based company to take down the post, and as so many people have so thoughtfully reminded us throughout this thread, ultimately it could require a court order to make them do so.
But with all of the problems I listed, including this one, the point is that they can't be done off-line just as well. There is no other remote, wide-distribution, instant-access communications medium in existence that is available to individuals.
Once again you infer something that I haven't actually said. I've said I don't know how to pursue a legal remedy in this case, because of the complications of jurisdiction. I'm well aware of what the basic provisions in law are, at least in my own country, and of what action I would have been able to take had everyone concerned been based here.
That doesn't change the facts that (a) since we're not all in my country, that approach isn't likely to work (see my first answer above), and (b) the remedies available in current law still aren't adequate, for the reasons I described before.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Nothing stops anyone from printing up pamphlets. As you say that the damage was mainly in her telling a few close friends of yours, carefully distributed bits of paper would have served her purposes just as well, at very nearly the same amount of effort. Distribution would've only been a little harder... not much.
As you said, law is slow; you consider it too slow for you. No matter how many laws you write about the Internet, law won't be -fast-; if anything, that would slow it down further, so I fail entirely to see why you're asking for it.
just like politics around the world, So the question is who actually cares enough to try to stop blogging, hang on isnt this about freedoms ,but whose, who wants to stop people communicating, nd why. its aworry but no doubt us blogg on and off for no particular reason types will find a way to recorrupt the corrupted,you cant keep good people down,as long as good people avoid doing nothing. now thats net chat for you, double negatives, or triple positives, its your choice, which is how it should be.
What??!!??? You actually completed a post without mentioning George Bush being a criminal for invading Iraq? You didn't call the American people idiots for voting for him? I am truely disappointed...it has become a habit of mine to watch you make an idiot of yourself. You can thank God for strong people...they protect your hit-and-run lifestyle.
btw..not a slashdot member...just lurk alot.