Slashdot Mirror
Law Student Web Forum: Free Speech Gone too Far?
The Xoxo Reader writes "Today's Washington Post carries a front-page article on the internet message board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." The message board has recently come under fire for emphasizing a free speech policy that allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name. Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?"
Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?
Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is slashdot trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the slashdot community?
*heh*
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Sitting behind a computer, typing, you don't hold back as much as when you talk to a persons face ... (I've seen a study about that, but i can't find it anymore) so yes, we'll have to accept trolling, it's inevitable.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
There are laws that deal with free speech going too far - they're called 'libel' and 'slander'. You'd think law students would know about this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
That really is the most god awful website i've seen in years, and putting aside the fact that the presentation is horrendous, I'm concerned that this is what passes for my fellow law students.....
freedom without responsibility leads to abuse. It's like the old saying 'your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose starts'.
also, open message boards arent really free speech, because the most privileged (that is, those that have the time/resource) can sit around all day flooding the messageboard, effectively shouting over other peoples speech.
What's wrong with that? Are people not allowed to talk about other people in public anymore?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Like any forum, if they let the trolls take over the forum stops being read by anyone who actually cares because it's too annoying to dig through the junk posts. They can either take care of their forum and protect their free speech, or they can let it spiral into a troll-fest. Either way, the trolls eventually loose since they get filtered or the forum becomes sub-par.
There is a fine line between expressing one's opinion and slander. IANAL, but if I would bet some of the free speech will cross into the "communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation." (wikipedia).
Won't it be ironic if lawyers discussing lawsuits start slandering each other on a lawyer based blog and end up suing each other.
People should be free to speak their minds, and should be held accountable should they use their name or position. However, anonymity should be respected for the tool it is, while unsigned comments should receive the respect they, individually, deserve.
Personally, I find affluence and authority to be the least open and receptive when it comes to respecting feedback and the rights of others. Indeed, I find that it is the people with the most to lose, who most try to suppress anonymity and the freedoms of others.
"The cure to bad speech is more speech,"
can anyone say 'flamewar' ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
This is about 0% different to any other forum on the web. Law students might kick up a stink about it, but that's what they do. They want to change the world. But I have one in the extended family... the thing about them is that 95% of the way they change the world is for the worse. What can they do? They can break down the laws that hold society together. They can even (*gasp*) help to make new ones. It is their job. If they did it well, they get a pay raise ("hey... I can make PARTNER one day!") and a slap on the back. And society is generally the worse off for their efforts. Their shortsighted personal run for glory helped them, so everything is fine. Good for them if they get upset. The only difference between them and everyone else is that they naively think that they can do something about it. The forum should just make all posting anonymous and move their servers offshore, just to stick it up them. ...and yeah.... there are a few good lawyers. But the vast majority of people on here, as in real life, don't respect what you do...
Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?
I have not read the article so I'm taking a blind shot at this.
If the "free speech" takes the form of slander or threats it has gone too far. If not I don't think there would be a problem with it.
Blind trolling of message boards can devalue their legitimacy, that's something any administrator of such a forum has to deal with in his own way.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Experience has shown that anonymity on the Internet does more harm than good. Of course there are a few cases where you MUST be anonymous because your job/life is at risk, but unless you're a paranoid über hacker, they will eventually find you who are (IP, logs, ...). Otherwize, it's at best an incentive for trolls, at worst an easy tool for libel.
/.), think as if you were publishing an article on a newspaper : everybody may read your stuff, even people you don't expect to read, so if you hurt someone you have to deal with the consequenences.
So kids, when you're posting something on the internet (even here on
If,
A) You're talking about an forum (electronic or otherwise) designed to promote freedom of expression, and holding that as one of your primary ideals,
and
B) You ask whether this is freedom of speech gone too far,
The answer is always, "no". Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Article = dumb. I RTFAs, but not in this case.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
When I write letters to my local newspaper I have to provide a name and address, and they verify I am who I say I am before they publish my letter (and my name is attached). Another example can be found in the television/radio media where commercials have to specify who paid for them. Free speech is one thing, but anonymous free speech is a whole other matter. I believe that if someone is criticized (or praised for that matter) in a public forum, the name of the person doing the criticizing/praising should also be public.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Discussion of others is fine. Criticism of others is okay, too. But I thought lawyers were taught good argument techniques, and that ad hominem attacks aren't part of making a good argument.
But maybe that's why I'm not a lawyer.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Someone anonymous can blast you all day and you shouldn't care, because you should know that nobody else really cares what the asshole thinks. An anonymous person has zero credibility. Now, if there's very general concensus about someone or something, even amongst an anonymous crowd, you MIGHT take what they say into consideration. And that's completely after using your own brain to figure it out for yourself.
You can't throw names and "facts" in the wild and hide behind anonymity.
There's simply no balance in this, and open to abuse. If you wanna call names, put your name behind your words, and if this is free speech, the laws will protect you from further repercussions.
Of course, laws aren't perfect, but total chaos is a lot less perfect.
No trolling isn't necessary to have insightful discussions.
PS. Macs suck.
:(){
... my fellow students are about all that keeps me sane. I can't imagine attacking them.
Penny Arcade covers this with this comic.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
The inference in the article is that the protagonist got minimal call-backs and no offers as a result of what was said in postings (possibly anonymous) about her on the AutoAdmit law school admissions discussion board.
Goggling an applicant and finding pictures of them on their myspace site, smoking blunts and self-copulating is one thing.
If law firms reject otherwise stellar applicants on the basis of anonymous postings on a cheesy discussion forum, then they are stupid beyond words. Can you hear it?: "Oh she's top of her class at UPenn, just *blew* the doors off the interview, goddamn articulate, but I heard an anonymous rumour she cheated on her LSAT".
She best start looking for other employers, 'cause you don't want to work for people that have their heads so far up their ass that they'll pass up on the next Clarence Darrow because of what some anonymous shill said on the fscking Internet.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Why wouldn't they be allowed to make truthful, but pointed comments, about others? In general, the sort of people who can't deal with this sort of thing are not big fans of freedom of speech. Given the fact that there is a law professor at Uni Wisconsin Madison who is being attacked for "racist speech" when no one even has any direct quotes yet of what he even said, let alone any context, I think the legal profession and education system need to be opened up to the real world where hurt feelings are your problem, and you have to respond to others instead of crying to mommy bureaucrat. How about all free speech fans start a new movement, a new underground movement to thicken up people's skin or terrorize them into not attacking free speech? Everytime someone gets teary-eyed over hearing someone make a "bigoted" comment, says something they don't like, or anything else like that and they seriously try to stop that person from working or having an otherwise peaceful life... *POW* right in the kisser. Do it again, *POW* right in the kisser.
I'm not entirely joking. I'd love the irony of a "brownshirts for the first amendment" >:)
That website is not about "free speech" in the slightest. It is about generating ad revenue for its owners: revenue which would decline if users who deliberately set out to act like cocks were not offered safe harbour.
Really, it just combines a few popular online subjects - law career discussion and outlandish bigotry/racism/general abuse. Go look at any extremist forum, for example. You'll see hundreds of thousands of posts, each one serving up Google adverts.
And the site owners aren't championing free speech in fear of what all those law students could do if they felt their rights were collectively infringed - they are worried about traffic leaving the site. Simple as that. Applying strict moderation isn't going to bring out Gary Bupkis from Moronica State University all aflame in anger about his constitutional right to call Sheila Labiastein from Jeronimo College a filthy cock-sucking kykecunt who couldn't get into a university as prestigious as his which he pretends is Harvard or something...he's going to toddle off to some other online forum and passively boost ad revenues there.
Don't attribute to nobility what is clearly just commercial greed.
First off, discussing/criticizing/attacking others by name isn't necessarily trolling. Sure, even a reasonable discussion criticizing named parties will be viewed by those parties as not just attacking but also trolling. That doesn't make it so. The LACK of names and specifics is what makes many discussion boards so meaningless; without real-world examples, most discussions are just the proverbial angels dancing on the head of a pin.
If there's any crowd that would both benefit from and be able to not get too insulted by gloves-off commentary, it SHOULD be lawyers.
You can't really think that freedom of speech has gone too far. It can't go too far. It is either FREEDOM of speech or no freedom of speech at all there are no mid points.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community"
Possible answers which suit the FA:
1.Yes! And anyone who thinks differently doesn't understand what the internet is all about!
2.Insightful discussion? We're on slashdot, for gods' sake!
3.What' you mean; legal community? Their are online illegal communities too?
4.Goatse rulez!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Having read the article, it seems more like its a case where a bunch of guys who happen to be in law school talking about who they think is hot or not than it is about free speech. I've not been to the site in question, so I don't know what other kinds of conversations go on there, but the article seems to mainly be about sexism and objectification of women than it does about first amendment issues.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
It's good to see the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world" producing such gems as this thread.
So this has made it all the way to law schools?
If the speech does not libel or slander then who should care what is said?
If people on forums are worried about what is said about them then they need to either get out or shape up.
Pretty soon it will be a hate crime to say anything bad about anyone, then what right to speech will you have?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The thing that has always fascinated me about the American judicial system (really, any truly established judicial system has this problem.. such as the entire EU, Japan, etc) is that the decisions are often not made by the judges at all. Yes, it's the judge's name on the decision, but the work is done by the law clerk, who is often still in law school. We see who the poor advocates are and since no lawyers ever get disbarred (unless they do something truly horrid, like lie on the stand. See e.g. William Jefferson Clinton), we get annoyed at how bad some attorneys are for their clients. Until you've sat in the court room and watched some attorney put on a show for his client and completely blow the case (which anyone who has spent more than 1 week in a court room has seen), you cannot understand the desire to out the person as a bad advocate.
As long as you can back up your trashing of people, I think it's ok to do it. Why is doing something that's "not nice" such a horrible thing? Sometimes you gotta be not so nice in order to get a bad attorney to stop being an attorney (or even become a not-so-bad attorney).
MEF
This sounds like just an effort to become a popular site by being a drama-fest, a "Jerry Springer" site. I'm sure they'll be branching out to other areas (different jobs) soon enough.
Single Female Lawyer, Fighting for her clients, Wearing sexy mini skirts, And being self-reliant ...Single Female Lawyer Having lots of sex...
as with everything freedom can go to far. your freedom ends, where the freedom of someone else begins. remember? there's only so much room for one person and there's billions of others too, that deserve some freedom.
does you definition of "freedom of speech" include the freedom to break laws/oaths too? like a doctor who's breaking his oath telling everyone of his funny patient stories, because he feels he can go as far as he wants with his freedom of speech? if it would harm another one's freedom you are not entitled to use your's. there's always compromise, even if some americans seem to be completely blinded by their constitution. remember, after all it's just a piece of paper with some words on it written by some other human, who lived ages ago (like the bible). just because it says so, you're not allowed to go rampage on others. that 's what common sense, ethics and morale is all about. think before you speak.
which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world."
After being on Slashdot it is.
As a lawyer and as someone who runs a message board (not related to law though) I have to say there isn't a free speech issue here. "Freedom of Speech" only applies to public fora. A private forum such as someone's message board is not a public fora. The owner of a private forum generaly (sure, there are exceptions) has the right to limit speech as he or she chooses (i.e. to stop trolling, off-topicness, etc. etc.). On the forum I moderate we occassionally get people proclaiming their "free speech" rights are being infringed when they are warned or banned. However, its a private forum and they have every right to go to any public forum or to simply find another private forum that allows their conduct.
use meaningful descriptive words that describe the story. tags aren't your personal humor section
I'm not trying to ring the bell that says "Think about the children," but I wonder what everyone's opinion of this website would be if its discussion group was a middle-school and a majority of the kids were calling out the fat / poor kids...
While this site might take libel comments to an extreme, it is not as if this is the first site to publicly post negative (and likely false) statements about named individuals. Consider: http://www.myprofessorsucks.com/. Some of the bad reviews of professors are really bad; "he suggested I come over to the grad dorms to talk about raising my grade," for instance. Any employer reading that might think twice about hiring that professor.
Of course, this issue will go away soon enough. We just need to wait until law firms realize that these postings cannot be taken as a reliable source of information about prospective employees. I suspect universities already feel that way about MyProfessorSucks.com.
If your a law student, and you are having a serious problem with another student that is documented and you have witnesses, most States have character & fitness committees that you can complain too:
i tness/Page_03.htm
http://www.pabarexam.org/FAQ/handbook/Character_F
Taking this action would prevent them from becoming licensed to practice law.
In case you don't already know, Attorneys don't have full free speech rights. Attorney's have a Code of Professional Conduct which limits the things they can say, since they are Officer's of the Court. Any sort of behavior or speech which would tend to cause the entire legal profession to be seen in a bad light, would probably be grounds for punishment by the disciplinary board.
Before you jump on the "obvious" answer, take a look at this thread (found only after 2 minutes of looking... I'm sure there's far worse on the site).
9
http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=51069
Names, pictures, personal information, and enough sexist and racist comments to make my head hurt. Now tell me you'd be happy if that thread was the first thing that came up on Google for your name.
Free speech is one thing. To my untrained eyes, that looks like sexual harassment, and I'm sure there's some slander in there to be found. Even worse, from some of the comments I got the impression this type of thread is a popular "sport" on that forum...
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
Ooooh! That's a good question.
I'm only going to dash off a quick response here because if I take the time to explore the topic fully I won't get any work done today. To be fair to the spirit of your inquiry, I'm not going to look at Wikipedia before I write this.
My working definition of trolling is "deliberate ignorance." To me, a troll isn't really a troll unless they (apparently) deliberately ignore obvious facts in evidence that contradict them. Admittedly, even this is a fluid definition. In an anti-gun-rights forum, saying "Guns kill people" isn't trolling because everyone agrees. In a pro-gun-rights forum, the same statement (out of any clarifying context) is a troll because, obviously, no gun can pull its own trigger.
For another example that moves beyond the realm of religion, I once had a discussion online about appropriate speed limits on the highway. I wanted to be open and genuinely communicative, so I tried to define terms and find common ground. I made a simple statement that two objects could never collide if they traveled the same speed and stayed on parallel courses and that traffic accidents could only happen if one of those two conditions was not met. This is so simple that it should be no more controversial than the notion that gravity makes things fall down. Yet the person I was talking to staunchly refused to agree to even this most basic statement and continued to wail emotionally about the human cost of traffic accidents. At that point, because he was unwilling to stipulate to obvious facts that would give us a common ground from which to proceed with discussion, I could only brand him a troll and abandon the conversation.
Trolls don't listen. They put their fingers in their ears and hum when presented with facts, as opposed to logically arguing their points by showing how my interpretation of those facts is flawed. That's deliberate ignorance and the hallmark of a troll.
Yeah, there's more to it, especially the part about how you're not really trolling unless you're trying to elicit a response. But I gotta go to work, now. Thanks for the good question.
Having read the article, it seems more like its a case where a bunch of guys who happen to be in law school talking about who they think is hot or not
As a former law student I can assure you that was a VERY popular pasttime. On both sides of the gender gap.
Here's what I've found when you respect freedom of speech; either you have people debating other people's (sometimes by name) ideas, or you have people attacking other people. The audience will naturally lean one way or the other, and it is very difficult if not impossible to change things from a forum of personal attacks to a forum of ideas if that's already been lost. A forum cannot choose its audience before it arrives; they are stuck with whatever comes along. So if the law forum is using people's names when naming ideas and positions, that's fine. If it's naming names to destroy people's character and reputation, it can only be ignored by people of good will, until a new law forum pops up with a better audience.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
I don't think it falls into the categories of libel and slander:
What if I post some woman's home address or phone number?
What if I post the security-code to get into her garage?
Is that legal? anyone?
people need to watch what they do. some websites (including /.'s comment system) will not let you delete what you put. people have the right to free speech. they should not have it taken away. however, people need to realize that their words may come back to haunt them in the future. so they shouldn't comment anything that they might regret later. or they could just post anonymously (when possible). most employers hire companies which probably look up myspace, google, etc to find as much dirt on you as possible.
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
I'll have you know Daddy paid a lot of money to get an idiot like me into law school so that I could post on AutoAdmit!
It's not free speech, it's fecking expensive speech!
I doubt posting pictures of people and making rude comments about them is illegal. Dick move, yes. Possible target of legal action, very unlikely. However, posting their contact information, talking about how you're going to "hate-fuck" them, yes that person in particular, and encouraging your fellow board members to go stalk them is utterly beyond the pale, and it's retarded to defend it on "free speech" grounds. Threatening and stalking aren't simple expressions of an opinion or idea, and it demeans the idea to pretend that they are.
I just hope that the people who run the board get Googlebombed all to hell, and have to explain why they encouraged that shit to prospective employers.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Anonymity on the internet is a good thing. It protects free speech in a consistent manner. Yes, the downside is you get trolling, but it seems a small price to pay when the alternative is a knock on your door when you speak your mind.
There's no discussion. That's an accepted fact. Jack Thompson *IS* an arrogant ass.
Now, if you had said, "Jack Thompson Rapes Babies", there would be a discussion; I personally think it's unlikely that Mr. Thompson rapes babies, but without evidence to the contrary, who knows?
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
To understand AutoAdmit's law forum, you first have to understand how stodgy legal culture is. Law is an instrinsically risk-adverse profession, and this is reflected in both law schools and law firms alike. Several years ago, when I was interviewing on campus, a rumor had spread that one particular firm treated its associates quite shabbily. I remember that the rumor was never substantiated, but it was enough to drive away nearly every student away from the firm's corner of the recruiting event.
Likewise, law firms are reluctant to hire individuals who'll rock the boat. It's quite easy to imagine the legal hiring department of a firm giving an offer to a law student who generates controversy. Why can't the firm simply fire a troublesome associate, you ask? Firms don't like to fire associates because it gives them a bad reputation among students at top law schools, and in turn, will generate a poor yield on their associate class the next year.
Thus, AutoAdmit's popularity is driven by two engines. The first is a backlash against the politically-correct nature of the law profession discussed above, where an errant remark can constitute an enoromous error and create problems years down the road. (If there's any doubt as to the truth of this proposition, look no further than Kiwi Camera, a legal superstar whose academic career was nearly derailed by a shorthand epiphet he used in his student outline at HLS). The second is that the forum has cultivated a group of highly-accomplished core posters (and former posters), who are members of law review at top law schools, hold extremely selective federal clerkships, work at the most prestigious law firms, etc. The core group also includes assorted individuals who have no relation to the law whatsoever, yet bring something creative and funny to the forum.
And then there are the trolls, who spam the forum with racial epiphets and virulent attacks against certain law students or professors. The trolls are relentless, almost like bots, and they almost always hide under the cover of anonymity.
The Washington Post article was a turning point in the evolution of this forum. For the first time, trolls on the forum began attacking individuals who had no prior connection to the forum. They rooted out information about this individual from the most obscure corners of the internet, and even appeared to use Westlaw/Lexis-Nexis to dig out personal details. In addition, the trolls threatened these individuals with rape; spread lies about their sexual habits; and connected the names of the victims with these defamatory statements through google-bombing.
Some posters above have inquired about the possibility of legal action. The policies of the forum, geared toward free-speech (which, as someone noted above, don't apply to private actors as a matter of constitutional right), means that the IPs of visitors are not logged. Furthermore, even if the IPs were logged, the trolls use proxies. Serving process on these offenders is unlikely at best.
This is a forum where neither legal recourse nor social norms have any effect. The forum's free-speech experiment has provided one insight in particular: unmoderated free speech usually degenerates into a shouting match, with the loudest voice winning. In this case, the trolls have the loudest voice, and have much less to lose than the credible posters that resist. By default, they win, and everyone loses.
Yes, of course, there are men who've been stalked and had their careers torpedoed because of the cheeto-stained warriors over at AutoAdmit. Would you be so kind as to mention them?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
People might say a lot of things that are mean and hurtful but that is part of having free speech. I agree you shouldn't be able to yell fire in a crowded building just for the hell of it. You should however be able to talk bad about someone and if it's slander the courts will decide, that is what they are for. As many people ahead of me already stated you can't have degrees of free speech either it is or it isn't.
WTF?
It happened to at least one student. This is the problem with them posting the full name (and sometimes contact information) of the women they attack. Note the sentence "Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases." in the Washington Post article.
Aside from that, I'm pretty sure it's considered some kind of threatening to post pictures of someone, post their full name and email address, and go on rapturously about how you'd really like to "hate-fuck" them. But I'll have to check with my legal staff to see if that's actually out of bounds.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The tags for this article (no, yes, maybe) are amusing, but completely unhelpful with regards to tagging. Has slashdot's potentially useful tagging system been sacrificed on the altar of smarm?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
and other such comments, stop being statement of fact. If you RTFA, you would notice that these law students post pictures about women without their consent, pose contests, call women as a whole "bitches," berate the women for asking their photos to be removed from the contests, call the ONE woman that offered a better photo insecure and the like, talked about how exactly they would fuck these women, etc.
And dude, they want to be lawyers. They are going to cost about $5/minute to talk to. They are under scrutiny of the Bar association. Etc, etc, etc. They should conduct themselves with a shred of dignity, and I don't care if this Jill girl is a bitch, back the fuck off somebody if they request to be left alone.
IANAL, but I would totally [censored] that [oh my!], though.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Smacktalker: "You're an idiot and your mother smells of elderberries!"
Smacktalkee: *reaches across the coffee table and slaps Smacktalker into next Sunday*
Smacktalker: "Attitude adjustment received. Message understood. Public behaviour modified."
See? No "study" necessary. It's called "Common Sense".
[End Of Line]
So... how many rape threats and instances of libel does that make up for? Is there some kind of exchange rate?
"You slashed that guy's tires!"
"Yeah, but I work at the soup kitchen on Fridays, so I think we're about even."
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Wait, wait... you're suggesting that the solution to someone who's had their career prospects yanked out from under them is to ignore it? What planet do you come from? Is it the magical planet of "we don't need food or shelter"? Do you really think that the prospect of taking petty revenge, however satisfying, makes up for losing one's job? If so, can I have your full name and work address, so I can send all kinds of fun stuff to your boss, then tell you to just "ignore it"?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The content of some of these posts is reprehensible. While I believe in free speech, AutoAdmit is behaving irresponsibly. It's clear many of these comments are by students. All universities have conduct codes that prohibit this type behavior. The administration at Yale should be reminding students that slandering other students is prohibited and will be dealt with harshly. If they can find any of students responsible, expelling them would probably put an end this end kind of conduct.
Unfortunately, it will likely take a lawsuit to get AutoAdmit reveal the ip addresses of the posters. Sadly, this kind of irresponsibility of AutoAdmit will likely lead to end of liability exemption for message board operators in the long run. How long to the daughter of Senator gets this kind of treatment and the Senator makes it a personal crusade to strip the exemption?
Fancy words from the site admins don't mean a damn thing. There are measures that can be put in place--rules against posting personal information, against libel and slander, and so on, enforced by bans--but the admins refuse to do so. The "spirit of the board" which they (and you) are so wedded to appears to be a spirit of utter lawlessness, which is pretty odd, given that it's a forum for incipient lawyers. The "spirit of the board" is apparently the sort of spirit that enjoys libel and stalking. I'm not really going to shed a tear if I see that violated. So... is there an rape-threat/interesting-content ratio that I need to be aware of? What does this ratio need to rise to for me to be able to complain? Apparently you or the site admins are arbiters of this ratio; perhaps you can enlighten me.
Also, I'm going to feed you a bucket of fine wine that I've shit in. Just a little shit, though. The vast majority of the bucket has nothing to do with shit, but the philosophy that tolerates the shit is the same one that brought you that fine wine.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And THAT is why I am an evening student. I have a whole life outside of law school, as does everyone else, and that's what we bring when we meet every night for class. These are dedicated folks who manage to have families, jobs, and school and do it all very well for the most part (I say they because I don't have a wife and kids yet). For the most part, nobody in my program needs law school for the money and are not there because they have undergraduate degrees in philosophy or political science and are otherwise unmarketable. As a result, there's a whole lot less incentive to be anything but collegial, and that's TOLD to you your first night there when the evening students association takes you out to the bar for a few drinks.
I originally went to law school with the intention of transferring to the day division after my 2nd year, to strike a balance between ROI on the degree (no income + loads of debt is not attractive to me). I'm about to finish my 2nd year and will not transfer because the environment in the evening class is a ton more educational and rewarding. There are actually an abundance of good people in the evening program, and these are the people I want to work with later and call my colleagues. I don't put myself in the same group because I'm younger than most of them, don't have to balance a family in with school (a career, yes, but so do they), but the group dynamic is ENTIRELY different than the day classes I've taken.
If you want to avoid this crap, go in the evenings and be prepared to be a decent, mature person. Sure, message boards like that one will probably tell you an evening degree is worthless, but that just keeps evening school all the better. Law review pads a resume very well, as does a high GPA, but if you add an established career to those credentials anyone who tells you you can't compete for the top jobs is out of their mind.
Is it wrong and/or illegal to sit around in a coffee-shop talking about your opinions of other people by name?Is letting people do that letting free speech go too far? It seems to me that this question and the one raised must have one and the same answer.
Look, I'm sure they'd ban people who posted blatantly illegal content, right? So we've established that they'll block and ban based on content. The remaining question is whether or not one can distinguish libel, stalking and copyright violation from commentary and fair use.
It would be trivial to ban the posting of contact information (such as phone numbers, addresses, email addresses) without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. It would be trivial to ban the posting of photos taken from anywhere other than official (firm or school) websites without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. The fact that I could think of these rules in about thirty seconds shows that the Xoxo admins, apart from putting in controls to prevent crapflooding, really don't care about these issues.
But more importantly, it's not my goddamn problem. If the board is being used for evil, the onus is on the administrators there to put a stop to it. Whining about how hard it is to fix the board so it's not a haven for hate-fucking troglodytes doesn't cut any mustard.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What bothers me is employers are using forum posts to make hiring decisions. Have we (as a society) lost so much common sense? If you can't vet the authenticity of some information, or the identity of its author, you should never ever EVER use it to make serious decisions. I should think this principle would be obvious, but evidently it isn't. But...it's the intarwebs so it must be true!
As long as the person clearly dictates what's fact regarding a person and what's the writer's/speaker's opinions there shouldn't be a problem.
Of course - facts can be wrong - and if so, a correction has to be made.
And if the writer/speaker does incorrect claims it's more a question of credibility of the writer/speaker than of the targeted person.
And - of course - there are facts that are more pressing for a person than other facts. There are certainly answers to these cases too, and I'm thinking of two examples:
- Bill Clinton - In the Lewinsky affair - both YES and NO were the wrong answers; Correct answer should have been that whatever happened were a question between him and his wife and maybe Monica Lewinsky too, but nobody else. (The rest of the world did get a good laugh here!)
- Arnold Schwartzenegger - Clearly admit that he had done wrong. Even if he did admit being rude he was clearly taking the edge off every future accusations. It's worth some respect.
Misrepresenting facts - may it be through image manipulation or through incorrect statements will cause credibility questions in the end. It may not show up the next day or the next week, but it will show up. Only very few misrepresentations will be hidden forever. If an image is manipulated and presented as a manipulated image - then there will be no issue with that picture. Removing features from an image is far less critical in most cases than adding incorrect information. (of course it depends on what the image represents). An example is that a person may be cut from an image as a quick fix if a person leaves an organization and there are practical reasons for not taking a new picture. Or if the background doesn't fit it's better to replace it with a neutral background. On the other hand removing parts of a X-ray image describing cracks in a nuclear plant is never right.Of course - abusing the rights is never right.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
(IANAL; this is just some guessing.) Depends on the jurisdiction's laws on privacy. Depending on what's done with the information, stalking laws might come into play.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I haven't even been to the site yet, but let me get this straight: it uses forum software that's worse than Slashdot, and it's full of lawyers.
Oh, gee, where do I sign up for that?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
From what I have seen the forum is dominated by a bunch of racist brats who have serious issues with women and a lot of insecurity about whether they will grow up to be rich and powerful.
I dug through numerous threads and read a few other reports from women who have been targeted by that forum (google and you'll find several accounts). It's abundantly clear that many people on that forum have engaged in harassment and stalking, neither of which is protected by free speech.
I personally think hate speech is protected by the first amendment but there are currently laws against it in many places, that forum has a very large amount of hate speech. Most of it is your garden-variety white supremacy that can always be found among the spoiled children of the privileged and "prestigious", although I also saw fair number of posts from Asians that were explicitly anti-Semitic and anti-black. Regardless, the forum is completely dominated by racists.
It seems to me that a lot of racial and sexual harassment is planned and orchestrated from that forum, I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising prosecutor comes after the forum owner and perhaps members as well with some kind of conspiracy charge related to a hate crime prosecution, or perhaps even a rape prosecution since many of the men visiting that website post regularly about their desires to rape female law students. If I were a woman and I found out that I was the subject of a thread on that forum I would be terrified and carrying a gun with me everywhere I went. I read one account of a female law student who became a topic on that forum (including discussion of how she deserved to be raped) and people from the forum were in her class at NYU and clandestinely took pictures of her and posted them to the forum. Imagine how utterly horrifying that must be to know that a bunch of racist men are talking about raping you and then finding that they aren't just on the internet but are physically able to secretly take pictures of you. This is not free speech.
Personally, I am totally amazed that these kids are America's "best and brightest". This forum is the most popular place for kids in America's top law schools, is it any wonder that everyone hates lawyers?
This mus be a first. We've got slashdotters advising lawyers on what to do!
If someone is worthy of attack, attacking them isn't trolling.
Sure, it permits trolling. But it also permits legitimate conversations that you otherwise could not have.
If someone wanted to attack me for being, say, an anti-semite, they would be full of shit. But if they wanted to attack me for being an arrogant ass, well, I'd have a hard time assembling a coherent counterargument :)
Perhaps I'm just sensitive about this particular word. But then, people accuse me of trolling all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the legal community has a need to issue rape threats, stalk women and ruin their careers, the legal community can go fuck itself. I may have a need to eat babies, but that doesn't mean that when I'm hauled before a judge, I can whine that I needed to eat them and get off scott-free.
The blogger I linked to provides examples and quotes from the AutoAdmit boards, as well as other verifiable pieces of information. If you want to believe she's making the whole thing up, that's your prerogative, but the weight of the evidence is against you. So yeah, there's a bit more credibility there. You'll also note that I didn't take issue with any of the facts you presented (e.g., there are good and useful threads on the board), but rather disagreed about the interpretation of those facts. So if I apply the same standard to the blogger than I apply to you, then yes, I take her seriously.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"Free" should cover *all* speech except threats and substantial disruptions of "the peace", i.e, don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Any constraint on other speech, including lies, means that the govt feels it is smarter than the citizenry at filtering out the noise from the signals. I'd suggest that our gov't's faux pas in filtering garbage from intel on wmd shows a lack of govt ability to discern truth and value in information.
As soon as govt starts thinking in terms of "how far is too far", the govt has gone too far.
The problem cited in the article is not with the speakers, it's with the listeners: A Yale law student tries to get a job, but prospective employers are believing things they read on the bathroom wall ^H^h^h^h internet.
The problem isn't people speaking too freely. It's people listening too freely. And no amount of law blocking free speech can solve that problem.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If not, then its not 'free speech gone too far'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You're constitutionally guaranteed free speech.
You are NOT guaranteed free ANONYMOUS speech.
You have a right to privacy.
You, arguably, do NOT have a right to anonymity.
If you have the right to post a blog criticizing a site and/or the people on it, then you must support THEIR right to CRITICIZE YOU!
To quote some hick or dumb blonde...
"I'm all for free speech, just not THAT kind of free speech"
The government can't make a law against speach. A forum or private party can make any sort of conduct rules they want.
Whats the diffrence? well.. jail mostly.. the forum can't put you in jail.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
This is all JMO:
... ...
... and will never have any
... areas we must use our personal private ...) remarks that would directly/intentionally contribute ...
Ignore all beast/bastards/bitches
until injury value requires
then sue for max-damages.
The anonymous/alias-source never has any credibility in
private, public, internet
reasonable credibility in any court.
The reality, on the internet, we all make ourselves public
figures in a public environment and must accept the personal
responsibility of a public figure and get on with our life.
All community/social commons/websites on the internet allow
everyone to be themselves in an Avatar Populated Experience
Simulation (APES). Incognito-persona/Alias-anonymity
is essential to the internet APES social dynamics.
Privacy on the internet is always yours to create (self-defense).
On all community/social commons/websites, abusive/free expression
is part of the commons environment and cannot be avoided/controlled.
For work, business, legal
information in a hopefully secure intranet where any anonymous/alias
post should never be possible/allowed. However, that does not preclude
the existence of a more public unofficial APES commons where personal
private names, known publicly available information (what job type
not where, what car type/color not VIN/TAG, When/Where past never
present/future
too the endangerment/harm of life/nature/property should be illegal, but
embarrassing, insightful, informative, abusive, funny
comments/interactions with an APES persona on the internet/intranet has
no significance/credibility (unless made by god-connected televangelist).
IOW: If you embarrass that easily, then grow up, get over it, because APES
bullshit/comments will never make/break anyone anywhere ever. Well you could
just stay off the internet, not use email, get rid of your cellphone, become
a god and prevent all personal insults and critics (Oh, GFL).
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
"making comments about raping and hate-fucking me"
These people really really need to get a life on both sides. Turn off the computer. Stop "blogging" (the most useless human timewaster ever. It makes Suduku look like a great use of time). Stop thinking that anyone in real life cares about it. They don't. It doesn't matter, and I mean that both ways.
"hate-fucking"? What does that mean? As if someone making of them is the equivalent of a violent act. Please. These are all middle class coddled kids who think that every bruise and bump to their ego is something that requires a congressional inquiry. I hate the Post article because it validates their weird warped viewpoint.
Seriously, there are no good guys in this. Everyone involved is a immoral ego-centric idiot. And I'm sure they'll blog some more about it. These are all people on the wrong side of the equation in case "Atlas Shrugged" comes to life. If this was a "Brave New World", these would be Betas pretending to be Alphas. They are the equivalent of 5 years olds playing house.
I do not wish any of them future luck.
I am not sure some of you understand what kind of damage this particular board can do. First, this is a very very small community. In some cases there are as few as 100 students per class. In law school, much like high school, everybody know everybody. It is very easy to identify people, and many students know lots of students at some of the other schools. Everybody knows where everone else is working that summer, and who is dating whom. Also, a lot of you fail to realize how law firm hiring works. If you fall outside the 2L hiring system, you are essentially in serious trouble. It is very difficult to find a good large law firm job if you did not summer in your 2L summer. Trying to find a job as a 3L is exceptionally difficult, even if you go to an elite school. It is like a dented can in many ways. Imagine having 180k in debt and be completely outside of the hiring cycle because of the anonymous comments on a website. Particularly if you have spent most your adult life working towards that point and now you find yourself at the mercy of some kids that think their actions are funny.
It's a damned if you do, damned if your don't issue. There are so many things about people that other people should know before they get involved. IMHO privacy for the most part is abused for people to hide their more evil intentions and generally being assholes, in some domain, economically, business, etc.
I sure as hell would like to know about all the professional dealings of lawyers to assess just who and what types of persons they are because of the power they wield and general bullshit that goes on in the legal field.
Only a problem if your the one caught being an bea tch and criticize.
now aint it bout time a place where truth shines on evil doers.
"I want it to be a place where people can express themselves freely, just as if they were to go to a town square and say whatever brilliant or foolish thoughts they have," I think he meant to say:
"I want it to be a place where people can express themselves freely and anonymously, just as if they were to go into a toilet stall with a pen, and write whatever crap they wanted to on the wall while they were taking a dump."
The difference between the town square and Jarret's site is that, in the town square, people see your face and know who you are. TFA shows a few examples of stuff that wouldn't happen "in the town square":
in the Yale student's case, one person threatened to sexually violate her.
And in the town square: "I'm gonna rape ya', bitch!" *immediately gets beaten up*
One chat thread included a sexual joke about a female Holocaust victim.
And in the town square: "Hah! I fucked the dead Jew in the oven!" (or whatever) *immediately gets beat up*
Another Yale law student learned a month ago that her photographs were posted in an AutoAdmit chat that included her name and graphic discussion about her breasts. She was also featured in a separate contest site
And in the town square: "HEY! LOOK AT THESE TITTIES!!! HEEEEYYY!! TITTIES!! BIGGUNS!! LOO-" *immediate kick to the groin*
Jarret Cohen, the founder says:
"People would not have as much fun, frankly, if they had to worry about employers pulling up information on them."
Yep, that all looks like a bunch of fun. Like I said, toilet stall.
Look - Jarret claims that he and his cofounder are:
"very strong believers in the freedom of expression and the marketplace of ideas . . . and almost never censor content, no matter how abhorrent it may be,"
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?Of course. What kind of blockhead would think otherwise? Stupid poster and all those other knee-jerk republicans.
I'm just kidding Slashdot, I love you all.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
That is simply wrong. NDAs, A/C privilege, A/P Tarasoff privileges, etc. The list goes on and on. These all fall on a spectrum, and for good reason.
And yet, your mother had no problem finding him and humping his brains out. Life is funny like that.