Slashdot Mirror
Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls
palegray.net writes "Two female Yale law school students have used the courts to ascertain the identities of otherwise anonymous posters to an Internet forum, with the intent of prosecuting them for hateful remarks left on the boards. At a minimum, the posters' future legal careers are certainly jeopardized by these events. While I'm not certainly not supporting or encouraging hateful speech online, these controversial actions hold potentially far-reaching consequences for Internet privacy policy and free speech." According to the linked Wired Law article, "The women themselves have gone silent, and their lawyers — two of whom are now themselves being sued — are not talking to the press."
....is serious business.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking
I don't feel comfortable posting a comment.
This is not a free speech issue - the posters made threatening and offensive comments, inlcuding suggesting that they would assault/rape the female students.
These comments would not be tolerated in any other setting so why should they be tolerated online?
Hateful speech is not illegal. False claims that substantially harm a person ARE illegal under slander/libel law. This law applies whether the comments are online or on the playground.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
TFA makes it sound like these women are all upset because some asshat on the internet made a comment about how some women should be raped. Now, granted, that's an asshole thing to say, but if that's all that is going on here, they have no reasonable grounds to be suing. It's someone's right to be an asshole, for better or for worse.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
This is a pretty straightforward bit of libel...Even on the internets you have to be careful if you're explicitly slandering someone by name.
Illegal is illegal, and if these monkeys were dumb enough to put up all this crap under handles that they accessed from their homes, then they're screwed, and it's hard to see how they ought not be.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This will almost certainly keep them out of the state Bar for a long period of time if not indefinitely. Even legally protected speech can be grounds for denial of bar membership.
You do realize the way /. moderation works, right? Are we all, then, responsible for uncensored hate speech?
Hmmmm?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Internet privacy policy
Expect none
Free Speech
Slander and libel are illegal
Just about covers those two concerns.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Slashdot sucks and all it's users deserve to be raped. Before you mod me flamebait, consider the implications of such an action. Ordinarily, on the internet, people are able to ignore the trolls. And we've all seen how many times non-troll comments get modded troll for reasons only apparent to the moderator. Although this comment is clearly flamebait, there are other cases where it isn't so black-and-white. I think this kind of decision by the court could allow abuse by anyone who wants to supress speech critical of them. I could see Apple's lawyers trying to use this as precedent to unmask people complaining about their iPhone development policies, for example.
This sort of "speech" should not be tolerated anywhere. Womens' rights and their safety is far more important than the "right" for misogynists to remain anonymous. Allowing them to remain anonymous is a tacit acceptance of allowing hateful speech and the fostering of anti-women attitudes (at the school and in society as a whole). The concrete harm done to these women (and women in general) trumps the abstract "harm" to the troglodytes who posted the messages.
Hmm. How about you post that under a real Slashdot handle? Or maybe /. can identify your IP number and, by extension, identify you if someone in law enforcement desired it.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
This classic "slippery slope" argument is baseless.
Calling for the rape of two women is hateful. There is no gray area here. There's nothing sacred about this "speech" that deserves to be protected, nor do the authors deserve any protection. Racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression need to be rooted out of society. Allowing these hateful ideas to be propagated anonymously is harmful to society and the oppressed minorities they target.
Revealing the identities of the authors isn't going to lead to the widespread revocation of people's free speech rights. However, it might just teach some neanderthals to keep their disgusting mouths shut.
> a reply claiming "she has herpes."
That's per se libel so long as it counts as a "loathsome disease" and identifies a specific person. Which is, per my understanding, the case here.
I thought these were law school students? They're screwed. They have no defense if they can prove who made comments like that.
Gee..that sounds like hip-hop!
Since when is a *hateful* remark a crime?
Sure you cant claim false facts about a person, or threaten them, but just being hateful?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Defamation allows you to sue for money, or a court order to stop/remediate the wrongful statements -- but it is not a crime (in the U.S.), and hence is not "illegal."
Some actions allow you to sue for money AND are illegal, such as punching someone in the nose. That's battery (a crime) AND an act that allows you to sue the perpetrator for money.
Using that logic I can make any speech illegal and exposed to retribution. Either Free Speech is an absolute right, or it is no right at all -- there is surprisingly little gray area in -between.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Even before Autoadmit was around and he was in HS and college. Talk about someone who should be sodomized. If you can get the stick out of the way first.
When this came around the first time, I was not at all surprised he was involved.
I mean, people hate lawyers on the intarwebs...coupled with lack of 'respect' for women...this could cause a critical mass of internet angst that will be released as attacks on the women, their lawyers, and who knows who else.
Blar.
"you're an evil bitch and i hate you"
perfectly legal
"there's a fire in this theatre! (snicker)"
not legal
whatever was said, if it resembles the latter rather than the former, then there is nothing wrong with what the women did, and the trolls should be found, prosecuted, disbarred, etc.
that the case got this far, it is probably the latter. because if what was said resembles the former, they would have never have been able to get this far legally
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're an idiot. Slander, libel, and threats are illegal. Sounds like all three were present in the postings. No civilized person would think that these things shouldn't be illegal. And if they are legalized, it should be e.g. their father/brother/boyfriend/husband's right to mercilessly savage the person who did it. So OK - let's make all speech of any sort legal. Let's also revoke rights of protection from physical reprisal from the speaker in cases of threats, libel, or slander.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some one mod me down, so I can sue. But about the article, this seams like a case were some one had a fit about what some idiot wrote in the internet and then let it get WAY out of hand.
Fuck you, Lawyers.
Love, AC.
"I will pay anyone 100 dollars to rape either of those girls" is quite a bit different than "If they were raped, it would not bother me at all" as far as intent goes.
I might have missed it, but didn't see where there was overwhelming indication that the intent was to incite violence. Granted, hate speech is a somewhat subjective issue, but at the rating this situation gives speech, most of /b/ is in big trouble, not to mention countless others.
I don't believe that trolls express themselves well, but the first amendment is not limited only to the eloquent. "They should be raped" and "just die now please" are not far apart, and context has a lot to do with the meaning... semantically speaking. What body is going to decide what exactly is hate speech on the Internet? How will they determine exactly when to break privacy practices based on that?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm all for free speech, but society has deemed slander, libel, and direct threats of physical harm are not free speech. I agree, oddly enough. The alternative is people say what they want, and if someone tracks them down and beats them to death for it we, society, will just decide not to protect you. Maybe that's the ideal world. People say what they want where they want, and other people are free to murder them for it.
Saying "X has herpes" sounds like a factual misrepresentation and not just a matter of opinion. It would probably be considered "slander per se" in many jurisdictions as well.
It's never safe to judge the merits of a case from what is reported online or in newspapers, but if the right facts are there and can be proven, the "opinion" defense might not be all that promising.
Fucking bitches.
If he's allowed to say those things, then her father/brother/boyfriend should be allowed to brutally murder the AC to protect her from rape (he did say he'd rape her). We (society) afford you rights and place limits on those rights, in exchange we protect you from your fellow man. Them's the rules. "God" didn't give us any rights, your rights are, in practice, what society decides your rights are. Often I disagree with society, but not in this case.
Dear Sir, We almost have your identity. Sincerely, Nosy Lawyers
www.purevolume.com/martyd
I mean, one more article repeating the free speech made by the trolls is nothing when google cache exist.
It's dishonest.
Blar.
...please be careful with phrases like "womens' rights to not feel threatened."
No one has the right to not feel threatened. Under most circumstances you have the right to not be harmed, and under some circumstances you have the right to not be threatened. But there is a lot of jurisprudence about "true threats" that suggests a threat must be credible (among other things) before you have a right to silence someone or claim damages against them.
I don't know the context of this "threat", not having read the forum in question, but what do these women do when someone says "Fuck you" to them at a party or driving a car? Do they go running for a lawyer? In both cases, the threat would be much more credible than some anonymous net poster.
Infuriate left and right
The Washington law professor mentioned in this article, should be familiar to /. users from a previous work of his: "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy"
I think you are missing the point. This isn't about suing for being offended, or using the law to hit back at someone for saying something mean. The anonymous postings in question clearly meet the legal threshold for libel (accusing someone of having an STD is automatically considered libel without proof of damages in most jurisdictions, I believe), and may meet the legal threshold for threats. These are actions which have been illegal, and legally punishable, for centuries. That they take place on the Internet makes no qualitative difference, and shouldn't.
It is standard and reasonable for courts to issue subpoenas in order to ascertain the identity of someone who has broken the law.
The main differences here from printed libel to online libel are 1) that the publisher (owner of the web site) is, in many cases, likely to be off the hook, because hosts of online forums are not usually considered responsible for what those forums contain unless they control their contents (or fail to respond to DMCA requests); and 2) the reasonable expectation of damages is actually higher than it would be in print-- consider that, say, a New York Times op-ed that appeared only in print form and accused you of something vile and damaging to your reputation might be read by a few hundred thousand people and remain forever unread by all 6 billion or so people who never happen to encounter that day's paper. With the expectation that any potential employer will Google your name to see what turns up, however, the audience for online public libel is unlimited.
I don't see anything unreasonable or controversial here; the only thing wrong was originally including the host of the web site in the lawsuit, which probably was an understandable mistake given that we don't have many years of precedent yet for who is responsible in what sorts of online offenses.
and AOL, WebTV, grandma.....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I would submit that you are the new poster child for the pussification of America.
You have a right to free speech but there is no right to "not be offended". If I make comments that are not appreciated by everyone (these comments for example) I have excersized my right to speek in a public forum. I now have a responsibility to allow others to respond. Some of those responses will likely be offensive to me but I have accepted that I might not like what I hear when I spoke in public. Threats of physical violence must be credible threats before they break any laws. If someone says "I'll bash your head in!" the only way to determine that the threat is credible is after the bash my head in or are caught outside my house with a brick in hand repeating the threat. I think this steps over the bounds of free speech. The best response would have been for the moderator to terminate the accounts of the offenders (if they had accounts) and to delete the comments from the forum if they did not meet the standards of the forum.
I swear I didn't know it was loaded...
If it was Princeton then I'd be shocked. But Yale? I expect that kind of behavior Yale and the other clown colleges.
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
The fallacy is the perception that there can anonymity on the Internet. Earlier this year, a woman was accused of violating Federal law by using a fake MySpace name. If you make false and injurious comments, it really does not matter if you try to hide behind a fake user name.
Statesman
The author is an I.P. Address. Now if the plaintiffs slander a specific individual person on the basis of an I.P. Address in their lawsuits, they will be ironically and foolishly sealing their own fates on the exact same grounds upon which they were complaining. Then they will be slandered, dumb, have slandered others themselves, and without any future career in law.
Somebody contact the Duke University faculty to send a letter of support for the Jane Does and a writ of Guilty on a couple people behind some random I.P. Address.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Do you think all forums work like /. ? The site owners were alerted to which posts were offensive and COMPLETELY off the wall, and were asked to take them down. They did not, so wouldn't you hold them accountable? Or do you want to spout more straw man bull shit?
Interestingly, in most of Europe that would be just what they would be doing to you under "incitement to violence" statues. Which mostly were enacted due to fascists' actions, since they were famous for making such statements - and acting on them.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
I think the blame here is going in the wrong direction.
Blame the posters? Idle threats and childish insults have a longer history than the intarweb. How can anyone think that the internet should be open to everyone - even the irresponsible - and somehow not contain irresponsible material?
If the article is correct, and these girls suffered because of the online information about them, then wouldn't the people to punish be those who acted on incorrect / inappropriate information? Seriously, what employer denies someone a job because someone called the applicant a bitch online?
Professional decisions made based on personal information found online shouldn't be ok. Not that that's any more enforceable than preventing children from calling each other names. If you want to blame someone for irresponsibility blame the person who was supposed to be responsible - not someone who is clearly just spouting off.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Well, it was. Now, of course, it's fucked...
(1) This case is in civil court. This is not a criminal case, so the police probably weren't involved.
(2) If someone was caught writing libel on bathroom walls, the person being libeled would have grounds to sue.
The internet is new ("virgin" somehow doesn't seem appropriate here) technology, but laws still apply. Weaving campaigns of lies against individuals is punishable in civil court. A person is naive if they think they automatically can say anything they want on the internet, without accountability. Unless you take serious precautions (pay cash at random internet cafes?), your IP address is recorded, and you can be tracked.
I'm not certainly not encouraging even half-way hateful speech half as much as I use it myself, but I'd certainly sport it against half of you slashdotters more than half as often as you deserve.
That was an idiotic comment. If the posts costs them jobs, then they aren't meaningless posts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now there is no such thing as anonymous coward... you will still be coward, but now you are a known one.
I'm all for free speech, but allowing someone to say something that affects my career and livelihood is not cool. If I was convinced that a forum posting was going to cost me my job and career, I would sue too. That is real damages being inflicted to me. It would be better if employers would take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, but for some reason, no one does that.
Shutting down hate speech opens the door to shut down religious speech as offensive.
A free society cannot be harmed by hateful ideas.
Anonymity should be protected, _especially_ for speech.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
With respect, I disagree. Law firms, particularly "prestigious" corporate firms, are notoriously risk-averse and likely would not hire someone who had "achieved" net notoriety, no matter how smart or otherwise qualified. I would assume that most potential hires are vetted at the least through a google search, if not a more detailed Lexis investigation.
If you were a blue chip firm, would you take the risk of hiring one of these women? Imagine your multi-million dollar client does a search on your new associate's name -- even just looking for phone number -- and comes up with a sordid sex story instead. Wow.... there's a real risk that you have just damaged the relationship with that client. Just as one example -- look at the Department of Justice's search on potential attorney hires. Now the DOJ was illegally considering political affiliation, not net fame, but the principle is the same: defamatory net stories would likely have prohibited these women from being considered.
That big firms are risk averse is hardly surprising. In fact, risk-aversion/paranoia is what -- in theory anyway -- is what makes an $x00 an hour lawyer worth paying for.
Note: this is also why I left a wanna-be big firm after a couple years. Who wants to work in an environment like that? But certaintly these women have the right to experience the hell of Big Firm life for themselves, and should not have had their careers permanently damaged because of a couple of idiots decided to slander them for fun.
-5 Flamebait
If you leave a bomb anonymously we'd all want you tracked.
Both hate speech and the bomb are an attack. So why not, freedom of speech shouldn't really enter into it unless what is said is true.
So if they posted something true as a judge that would be my requirement. Show me that it is a lie in which case I'll pass the order to bring them to be held accountable. Otherwise if it is truth well pants you can't sue over the truth (can you?)
Besides when was it freedom of anonymous speech?
I think they'll have problems getting jobs as ditch-diggers now, because what employer would want to hire someone that would sue someone else over insults?
Lawyers
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Presumably, the women were as anonymous as the trolls
RTFA
Right. I'm never going to hire Jane Doe I or Jane Doe II, ever. I don't want to be sued if I say I want to rape them. Riiiiight.
"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
This has nothing to do with democracy. If the voters don't believe in free speech, it won't be protected.
Rape is not a fucking joke. It's a violent crime. Threatening to rape someone is just as heinous as threatening to kill them. If someone left a message on your voice mail saying that you should be murdered, you'd call the cops, they'd find the motherfucker, and he'd rightfully go to jail.
But when it's rape instead of murder, suddenly the right to free speech is more important? Sorry, no. If you threaten to rape somebody, you're a violent piece of shit and need to be dealt with by the police.
Sorry, this is a bit OT but...
So you are saying what? All women are weaker than men and less able to defend themselves, automatically?
Talk about a BS blanket statement. I know feminists who might come to blows with you just for implying that.
Heck, any number of women boxers or martial artists in general could (at least) surprise you or I in a physical confrontation.
The tone and timber of your voice scaring a 3-year old has nothing to do with whether or not your wife has trained with Rorion Gracie for 5 years. Do you think women bodybuilders or powerlifters need (or want) a 110 pound rent-a-badge walking them to their cars?
Just because some women have not taken the responsibility to learn to defend themselves does not mean that they are without fault if they choose to take a shortcut to their cars. The case is no different if you or your wife walks through a dark alley and get mugged. You both made a bad choice. Period. The question is, do either of you know how to handle yourself in that (or another possible) scenario?
"As for thinking of the children", well I have several kids ranged around 8 & 12 who can choke an adult male unconscious.
It is made all that more easy because the adults never see it coming. The element of surprise for a woman or child makes it that much more effective. Choosing to live your life thinking "it will never happen to me" does not entitle anyone to play a special "victim" card if they are ever in a confrontation. If you don't take some responsibility for your own safety then that is your choice and it has nothing to do with you being weak, strong, male, female, young or old. You are free to ask some of my adult women students for their insights. But I suggest you don't raise your voice when you do it...
assertion: a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
The women already have been refused jobs based on the controversy generated by the trolls comments - seems like a fair ballgame to me.
I'm not sure those two are analogous. Without having reread the case, I seem to recall that the women in question did not seek out the forums in question. Their pictures were put on the board, and then the comments started flying. When they then joined the board, (again, afair) seeking to have the pictures removed, they were then subject to even harsher comments, including the rape ones.
You, on the other hand, have joined the game yourself, and aditionally you have joined the chat, which is an optional extra, of your own volition. Aditionally, while "I'm going to rape you" might be a breach of conduct on Xbox Live (I don't know if this is the case), in most fps' this is the 'norm' where you attempt to psyche out your opponent. No adult of a reasonable mind will expect the speaker to seek out your address (is this even possible through Xbox Live?) and hunt you down.
However, on this board, not only were the women's pictures posted, their names and addresses were posted, and considering the vitriol spewed forth on the boards, even I, being a VERY common sense kind of guy, would not put it beyond the assholes and idiots* on the boards to actually following through on their threats**
Of course, I'm not in any way, shape or form a lawyer or had any law training. Hell, I'm not even from the US.
* In my humble and non-medical/-psychological opinion, since I am not refering to mental retardation
** Considering the writing, the constant agitation by the other posters etc, I do not consider the comments "innocent", "joking", "ironic", "sarcastic" or even "humourous"
Just as important - the court found in favour of the plaintiffs, so obviously the judge (jury?) found the threats to be credible and the derogatory comments to be libel. If you do not like that ruling, you need to write your congressmen and tell them why. Don't email, don't fax. Send them a physical letter, preferably handwritten. At least that's what the usual comments on the subject around here advices.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
They did not, so wouldn't you hold them accountable? Or do you want to spout more straw man bull shit?
I would not hold them accountable. I realize not all forums work like /., and please learn the difference between a "straw man" argument and an example.
There's actually a huge grey area. Time, place and manner are frequently taken into consideration by courts, as well as the content or commerciality of the speech, and the target of the speech, and the person doing the speaking. Free speech and first amendment rights are always brought up when a city wants to restrict sex-based businesses. However, since they're seen as commercial, that speech has less value in the public forum than a debate on our government's public policy. Governments can therefore, regulate the proper time and place for obscene or inappropriate speech (no adult bookstores within 500 foot of a school or church). Also, the manner of the speech can be regulated also. Public airwaves, i.e. radio and broadcast TV can be regulated by he FCC because the airwaves are a public resource and are leased by the federal government. That's why they can require mature material to be aired after 9:00. They also used to require a set amount of material to "benefit the public good", which is why radio and TV would air church services late saturday night and Sunday mornings, and why there were so many PSAs. Those rules have since been relaxed, but the rationale is still used. Public protests, even political ones, are frequently moved to protest areas, or required to have parade permits. This is to ensure that the protests don't cause a public nuisance or hazard. The same thing goes for the infamous "fire" in a crowded theatre.
There's whole books written on commercial speech - what's true (100 calories per serving), what's false (microsoft eats babies) , and what's puffery (Ford trucks are the greatest). Commercial speech gets less protection because it's used to sell things - not further the public discourse.
The New York Times Supreme Court Case re: Free speech held that when a public official was being criticized, the newspaper only had to refrain from saying things that it knew or should have known were false. Other cases have said that when the defamed person wasn't a public figure (i.e. a public official, a celebrity, or a person who sought the public eye), the bar against defamation was lower than when considering defamation against a non-public figure. And simply saying "Joe has herpes" may not be libel, depending on the context. Someone doing a comedy routine making jokes about Joe who says that Joe has herpes wouldn't be libel because no one would take it seriously - there's no "defamatory sting". You say that Joe has herpes in the middle of a medial report on NPR and it's probably defamation. That's why Howard Stern always has someone laughing at everything he says, to get people to thing it's a joke. And just stating that something's an opinion doesn't remove the slander - it's what people actually think that matters.
And don't forget, the truth is always a defense to a charge of defamation - if Joe has a cold sore and I write a story about how Joe has herpes, well, too bad for Joe, because it's true that Joe has herpes.
Regarding the threats, the common law varies from state to state, but you usually need a pattern of harassment or the imminent threat of harm. Standing in front of someone with a gun saying "I'm going to kill you" would likely be threatening, whereas saying it on the internet probably wouldn't because there's no imminent threat of bodily harm. (In New York, the person actually has to make some physical motion indicating that they are about to harm you - as my Torts professor used to say "words alone are not enough").
It seems likely that they were not anonymous. The first line of the article was this quote:
Even if they used the forums anonymously (or didn't use the forums at all!), someone drug their non-anonymous reputations through the mud.
No, I am not a lawyer or a student. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once! :-P
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
See, I find that interesting, because a person who threw boxes, bins of clothing, and weapons at *me* was found not guilty because he "felt threatened by me".
I was apparently guilty of being 6'3" and 280lbs. (as far as the jury was concerned) v/s someone nearly twice my age, a foot shorter, but with extensive weapons and self defense training.
You can go batshit nuts on someone, as long as you can prove you are paranoid, you will walk.
*sighs* what a county. (Yes, county, not country)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
A law firm with a heavy litigation caseload.
Says you, on a completely arbitrary basis. What's the standard for what deserves to be protected and what doesn't? Are we all supposed to just go ask you? I'm sure that the theoretical candidate or elected official Shivetya is talking about feels the same way about people who speak out against him. And he's certainly in a better position to arbitrarily decide that "there is no gray area here" and that "there's nothing sacred about this 'speech'" and that it "needs to be rooted out of society".
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Normally I would agree with you, but you are misinformed about what really happened (I admit the article doesn't say much).
This story has been on slashdot a few times. Here's what really happened, if I remember correctly:
- Guys posts pictures of women and comment on the forum (she's a 9! she's a 4! such a bitch i'd rape her! etc.)
- Women ask site owner to remove pictures and offending comments
- Site owner laughs at them, and informs posters that the women in question asked for the pictures to be removed
- Guys don't like it ; they literally start stalking these girls, take more pictures of them (at the gym?), and start posting threats.
- Women sue.
Read this again. These girls got stalked and threatened. I don't care if it's on the internet or elsewhere ; when someone stalks you, takes pictures, and threatens to assault and rape you, it is wrong, and these women have a case. The whole thing about it affecting their career etc was only true at the beginning (the first pictures and comments posted). This thing got a lot more serious afterwards.
This is probably the best example of the Streisand effect ever. They sued some annonymous posters for libel, which resulted the libel in question becoming exponentially more pronounced.
In hindsight, I hope they realize that they could and should have handled this differently, maybe turning the threats made over to the police and the university, maybe just handling it themselves by posting annonymous responses or maybe just ignoring it. They definately shouldn't have sued the site owner.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming them for what resulted. I doubt anyone could have predicted the results. But, after you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a bigger can.
Maybe they or someone else can figure out a way to reverse the google bomb. That would be better then trying to sue their way out of their predicament.
Bush, now this - Yale's the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it...
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
Sure, you have the right to free speech. However, if you're using somebody else's computer system to exercise that right, then the owner of that system also has some rights, including the right to impose reasonable rules, such as requiring people to be civil and stay ontopic. The fact is, griefers like this step on other people's free speech rights. To exercise my free speech rights, I need a forum. People who fill a forum with offtopic and malicious commentary make it useless, because nobody wants to wade through all the crap.
Spam is an example of this kind of abuse of free speech rights. Don't people have a fundamental right to tell you about herbal alternatives to Viagra? But you also have a right not to listen.
Anonymity is the problem here. The early Internet was a small, more-or-less cohesive community where anonymity was impossible. So they didn't bother to provide protection against misuse of anonymity. So there's no way to say, "I don't want to get any more email from that online pharmacy" or "This guy is not welcome in any forum I moderate." Eventually, we'll have some kind of ID certification system, and these problems will go away. In the meantime, nobody should claim a "right" to online anonymity — least of all, cyberbullies like this.
free speach on the internet? sure i'm all for it. what is free speach? surely not yelling fire in a crouded theatre. no more hiding behind the internet to spew hate,lible,and any other form of derision that would be actionable in the real world. go get em,and hang em high regards, mike
The public needs to know this information so they can determine if the courts acted correctly.
This smacks of the double standards given to those who cry rape, and I dislike it.
I dislike it enough, to automatically bias myself against these women. If they were so horribly wronged, they should stand up. Really.
Blar.
I noticed in my younger years that whenever I was trying to punch someone down I always felt some hate and anger at that moment. Race, religion, color or place of birth or age have nothing at all to do with it!
The point being that there are times when some really deserves your rage in this world and the last thing we need is courts getting all punitive about it.
The real answer to someone hating you is to hate them back. Who needs all this warm and fuzzy stuff that is all the fashon these days?
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The facts of the case are not quite as open-and-shut as they seem. The plaintiffs used the comments of a few to bootstrap their case against others. A few anonymous trolls posted most of the libelous and offensive statements. However, the plaintiffs chose to sue the operator of the web site and other posters (one of whom said something like "I want to lick whipped cream off the plaintiff") just to spite and out them. The plaintiffs intentionally didn't serve the operator of the web site to make sure he couldn't respond in court, while they negotiated with his colleague using the removal of the operator from the web site from the suit as a bargaining chip.
The plaintiffs and their agents also started a libelous campaign against the operator of the web site to try to get him fired. They falsely stated that he had written the posts, which was not true. The operator of the web site has brought his own lawsuit against the plaintiffs in the first action and their attorneys. The complaint in the second case is pretty damning, if true, and it's too detailed to be all made up.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:XFH9CX3EBhsJ:abovethelaw.com/images/IravaniComplaint.pdf+ciolli+v.+heller&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23920
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Most of the time the person who is drunk and naked at a frat party isn't the one posting pictures on the internet. It would be impossible to count the number of times an ex-boyfriend post a passionate private video to an online porn site, or a passerby post a youtube video of an embarrassing moment.
Of course, people need to be careful about where and when they get drunk and stupid (never?) and who they allow to video them doing the nasty (no one,) but that doesn't make it right to post private moments, nor does it mean that the victims of that kind of invasion of privacy deserve the consequences.
If anything, I think it's a problem with our society that we are so ready to ostracize someone for being human. Most of us have done some stupid things we regret. Those that have not are either lieing or boring as hell. Few of us were caught on video doing it.
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Years ago, late '60s or early '70s, I was in the federal courthouse in Tulsa, OK. I remember seeing a sign on a door that read, "Prosecutors Will Be Violated!", and after asking around, I found out the office across the hall belonged to a a female prosecutor. At the time, it seemed to be a sophomoric joke, but I doubt that it would be tolerated today.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one has the right to not feel threatened.
Funny, because the Supreme Court has held that "threats of violence are outside the First Amendment" (citation). Now, I should clarify, that's not to say you have a right to not feel threatened. You don't. But you also don't have carte blanche to threaten others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The complaint in the second case is pretty damning, if true, and it's too detailed to be all made up.
From this comment, I infer you have never read, like, a book. After you browse some of the made up stuff you can find here, you might reconsider whether it is possible to make up stuff that's extremely detailed.
how real of a threat this poster really was.
People call for an end to "anonymous" slander without actually thinking through things rationally.
Jeez, I really do not know where to start on this one. This is going to turn into a rant but I hope to, by the end of it, reach somewhere sensible. Lets start with the most prominent point.
Nothing said on an online message board ( ESPECIALLY BY AN ANON.) means anything in the real world. If you say you are going to rape and murder a bunch of people on a message board it is more likely that you will not do it. You would not be posting about it, but instead be out raping and murdering except you are too much of a computer nerd to step out into the sun muchless kill someone. Certain forums will have different views on this. A forum for law students is clearly not a good place to do this as opposed to a place like off topic. That is where he made his first mistake. Law students would be the ones to take this stuff way too serious.
If the police started arresting everyone who makes a threat in a flame war half of us would be in jail. Hell I would have quite a few counts against myself. Who really means the shit they say on a message board when making a flame??
Thats just part of the "fun" you can have on the internet. Hell you do not even need to be anon, people just take shit too seriously. Once you log off, thats it. Things on an EZ board are only as real as you make them.
Once people realize that internet message boards are not to be taken seriously, they will probably increase their life spans by a few years from the stress reduction. People act as if getting flammed on the internet is going to ruin their lives, it means nothing. It means nothing to those who "get" the internet. Not everyone "gets" the internet. I thought most slashdotters understood this. But from the majority of responses they are talking about the legal implications of such threats. I see hundreds of said threats on message boards everyday followed by a LOL STFU NOOB ILL RAPE YOUR MOM AND BURN URE HOUSE DOWN. Insults continue to be thrown until the godwin rule kicks in. Everyone knows its just the internet that lets you say those dirty things. Its been going on for over a decade. Now the internet has reached critical mass and we have people like mom and dad using the internet that think every infomercial(read:flame bait) is the "real deal"
Do you honestly think he was going to rape her? I do not. These girls just got really mad that they had people bad mouthing them on an internet forum that means nothing. They most likely got rejected by some law firm because of their lack of qualifications and just convinced themselves the recruiter saw this post and took it to be truth.
Now, lets say the recruiter for these lost "prestigious jobs" sees this message board. If he reads this message whole and by the end of it decides that he does not want to hire her, he has failed on several critical levels.
I would go so far as to say I would not want to work with a company that displays such ignorance in their recruiting practices. The messages are firstly anonymous, so that is a red flag 1. The content and mode of discussion is not only untrusted and one sided, but clearly not professional. Red flag 2. Claiming to sodomize someone over the internet? Clearly a flame attempt to get attention. Red flag 3.
This again ties into the fact that people actually take flames written on message boards as truth. There is a skill we all learn growing up. The exact term fails me at the moment, but that is essentially filtering out what is untrue. If you assume everything you read to be true in this world, you should have about 500 products that will give you rock hard abs in just 3 minutes a week.
The same rules apply to the internet. They claim that the internet has evolved faster than the courts can clamor to moderate and control it. I believe this not to be true. The courts are making rapid advancement where money is at stake thes
If he's allowed to say those things, then her father/brother/boyfriend should be allowed to brutally murder the AC to protect her from rape (he did say he'd rape her).
Bullshit. Who made her father/brother/boyfriend judge and jury? Anyone is allowed to say those things. It's up to a judge and jury to determine what to do about the offender.
IANAL, but I believe you can say you'll cause bodily harm to someone, but if that person cannot show that you're in a position to carry out the threat, and that person cannot show that they could reasonably deduce that you were in such a position, self-defense does not apply.
Which is to say, if you were drunk off your ass and proclaimed you were going to strangle your recently-acquainted female companion with a noodle, she might not be able to claim self-defense if she kills you or causes bodily injury to you. Now, if you skipped the noodle part, and you displayed the ability to strangle her with your bare hands despite being drunk, that's another story.
I think this lawsuit (and any such lawsuit) is meant to humiliate the trolls more than to lock them up. It's meant to expose them for who they are, and let them face the ridicule of their peers and the public.
Of course, if the trolls had been halfway intelligent, they would've secured themselves by posting anonymously, through TOR or some such.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
But there is a lot of jurisprudence about "true threats" that suggests a threat must be credible (among other things) before you have a right to silence someone or claim damages against them.
In this case, some of the posts included the girls' names, addresses, class schedules, gym locations, and times they could usually be found there, with exhortations to follow them and rape them.
That amount of detail makes the threat credible.
The challenge with this case is really about whether the trolling in question qualifies as a true threat. Presumably, the women were as anonymous as the trolls; is it possible to issue a credible threat against someone whose identity you cannot ascertain?
Presumably, yes, but in actually, false. The girls were named by name, and I believe there were even photos posted. The fact that they are named as Jane Does in this suit does not mean that they are unknown.
Thus the danger of the false presumption - the rest of your post, though accurate as a hypothetical, is wrong in this case.
The law is exceptionally narrow as the purpose and effect is not to criminalize hatred per se, but expressions of hatred towards a group. Nothing in the Criminal Code abrogates your right to hate others or your freedom of conscience, never mind that this would be impossible. Private communication is also excluded, so the Nazi groups or what have you can gather in their living rooms and hate people all they want. Essentially one cannot post a web site, march in a rally or distribute literature with the intention of spreading hatred towards an "identifiable group." Your point is well taken, however. What is an "identifiable group"? Britney Spears fans? Podiatrists?
I'd rather we not have this law and have hatred fight for space on the public forum on its merits, as all speech should. The only real way to fight intolerance and hatred is to confront it, not hide it.
This is not about privacy. It is also not, as the submitter wants us to think, about "Freedom of Speech".
Freedom of speech is the right to say what you think if you don't thereby infringe on other people's higher valued rights (by committing libel). It's not the right to hide behind a false identity and make libelous claims.
It is also not "privacy" to go out in public, use a fake name and yell something, independent of whether it's true or not.
Privacy is the right to decide for yourself how much of the "things you don't do in public" becomes public (that's a vague definition, given).
There is no reason to protect the identity of trolls. There is a reason to protect their right to say their honest opinion, however stupid it may be -- but not their wish to make libelous claims and go unpunished.
I don't know the context of this "threat", not having read the forum in question
There's your first problem - before passing judgment, it would be good to do at least a bit of cursory research.
but what do these women do when someone says "Fuck you" to them at a party or driving a car? Do they go running for a lawyer? In both cases, the threat would be much more credible than some anonymous net poster.
And there's your second problem - in spite of admitting that you've read nothing about this, including apparently the article, you're ready to make ad hominem attacks.
On the off chance you read this, the grandparent poster was wrong - the threats were graphic and specific, listing the girls' names, photos, and class and gym schedules. That becomes a credible threat.
No, you are wrong. People THINK they are anonymous on the Internet but they are not. And if they are leveling credulous threats against a person or damaging their ability to find employment by saying slanderous things then they should be prosecuted. I am a person who thinks that we have become way too politically correct as a society and I still believe that threats and libel should be prosecuted. This is different than some moron spouting off anonymously and you should be smart enough to recognize that.
On a side note...if you are going to call someone stupid, it is a good idea to spell "stupid" right.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Yeah.... and this kids DIDNT threaten to do ANYTHING.
NO SIG
Other people will put pictures of you, drunk and naked, on THEIR web pages.
The right way to keep your reputation clean is not to try to hush up everything you do, but not to do things that reflect badly on you in the first place... duh.
I piss off bigots.
Women named . . . Hillary should be raped.
I think "Not even with a stolen dick" would be the consensus of quite a few Americans.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Here's where the hypocrisy comes in.
We know illegal felonious comments (threats of rape and murder) were allowed to remain posted on the website. We know the website administrators (including Ciolli) claim to have allowed those messages to remain posted in order to "protect" freedom of speech of the anonymous defendants. But why is freedom of speech OK in that case, but not OK when the Jane Does bring lawsuit against him? Was it because he suddenly found himself being dragged into the mix? Did he find out it was an awful thing having people making false accusations about him? Did he find out libel is NOT protected by freedom of speech after all?
He got a taste of what it's like to be libeled, slandered, and defamed in a horrid way and then suddenly changed his tune. He wanted to deny the Jane Does the freedom of speech and their freedom to bring lawsuit, but he didn't appear to be concerned about the harm caused by the messages posted by the defendants.
That's hypocrisy.
Camping on quad since 1996.
12 angry men
"Nae Kin! Nae Quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!"
What's controversial here? People are being held accountable for the things they say. What's wrong with that?
The ability to attempt to disguise your real identity -- as most of us do here --- in no way absolves us of responsibility.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
But, if you identify the person who posted those remarks, they aren't anonymous. Why should the fact that software allows you to enter a phony name shield you from the legal repercussions of what he wrote?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Nuts. Speech has more impact than any other behavior. If you disagree, let me send email to the next person who's looking at your resume
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Actually, yes, freedom of speech DOES and always has meant freedom from consequences.
Freedom of speech means freedom from consequences when such speech does not infringe on other rights.
For example, your right to freedom of speech is trumped by my right to think you're an asshole.
Your right to freedom of speech is trumped by my right to not get killed in a stampede of people fleeing a theater because you yell 'Fire!'
Your right to freedom of speech is trumped by my right to not have knowingly false statements maliciously spread about me, especially if those statements cause permanent harm to my reputation/income/etc.
Your right to freedom of speech does not extend to telling the Chinese state secrets.
But, your right to freedom of speech apparently DOES allow you to trump my right to freedom of speech as long as you spend more money speaking than I do.
paintball
How does being drunk and naked at a PARTY reflect badly on somebody? Somebody who has never done that looks worse in my eyes.
... and then they built the supercollider.
So you find an IP address. The RIAA would just love it if somehow it were possible to conclusively prove a connection to an individual. It isn't. So I don't see how it is possible to connect anyone with an action "on the Internet".
Yes, this means that pretty much you can do, say or publish anything you want without any consequences, as long as it is on the Internet and you don't go bragging about it. Just about all of the hackers/crackers/script kiddies that have been caught were caught because of bragging. The few real RIAA victories have been because a tracable email address was connected with uploading music files to others.
I HATE TO DO THIS:
I managed to find the whole legal document this girls sent.
I still think its stupid, but I also think that, hey, if you explicitly threaten to RAPE someone (and yes, the girls do acuse a couple of ACs of it and yes, they did post explicitly that), then youre open to be law-fucked all over.
I appologize to anyone that might have felt offended by my initial knee-jerk reaction.
NO SIG
After going beyond the wired article, I withraw my initial position of this being a free speech thing.
They DO DESERVE to be exposed.
They actually DID threaten to rape with her FULL name.
Now that deserves some serious spanking.
NO SIG
Okay. First of all, you realize that the Bill of Rights is actually the first ten amendments, right? The fact that there even are amendments should be enough to show that nothing in the Constitution is absolute!
:-)
Actually, the Constitution is considered a "living document." There are some that believe the Constitution to be enduring (Scalia being an example), but they are in the distinct minority. And even those extreme cases accept the use of amendments.
You may disagree with the unmasking of the punks that trashed these young women, but to deny that Freedom of Speech is not absolute is a bit odd.
Oliver Wendell Holmes' quote about "yelling fire in crowded theater" is the most common example of why these rights are not absolute, and rightfully so.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
The police are not involved in this case. This is a civil case, not a criminal case. There is a huge difference, you see, you have the FREEDOM to say what ever you want. And I have the freedom to sue you for it. Welcome to america!
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
This is not a free speech issue [...]
and yet claim
[they] made [...] comments [...]
I think you need to get your story straight. Oh, and those comments would be tolerated in other settings, and you saying otherwise is meaningless.
-- arstchnca
--
Fortunately a man called Samuel Colt made it so that one's defense no longer relies entirely on physical strength.
You really need to read up on some WWII history if you think the reason Okinawa turned out the way it did was because the locals were trying to karate chop soldiers, especially considering the locals (Okinawans) weren't entirely happy with the Japanese pinning them between the proverbial rock and a hard place of the Japanese and American forces and their poor treatment by the Imperial forces.
I take it that you posted this AC because you don't agree. It's interesting that you mention employers and the state - groups who have disproportionate power over us. If we ever have an equal society, we won't need anonymity; the consequences for our actions will be precisely as they should be: eg people who behave loutishly may be shunned, but not condemned to poverty.
Yea, vanquish all the trolls! (hope I'm not modded troll)
The fundamental issue at the very bottom of this mire that is internet trolling and harrassment is not whether to protect the privacy of citizens or whether freedom of speech is more or less important than anything else. Instead it is one about basic human behaviour - what one could call 'secular moral'. This is things like trustworthyness, reliability and a certain measure of willingness to fit into society.
In the case of trolling I think we are seeing important principles, like freedom of speech and right to privacy, being abused to take away people's right to assemble peacefully. So, is the privacy and freedom of speech of a single bully more important than the rights of many to go about their legal business?
In some jurisdictions, a threat to cause physical harm is considered assault. It's not about free speech, it's not even about the right to slander (which is not legal, though some free speech advocates may wish it were), threats are an act of violence. If somebody threatens to physically harm you, and those threats are creditable, it's not psychologically very different to actually being harmed.
You changing the subject and altering history a bit doesn't change the facts.
Women (and men) are responsible for their own defense.
That was my "thesis" and if you don't like it then that is fine but that doesn't automatically make it wrong.
I used martial arts and bodybuilding as an example that women can be equal to men and you changed the subject.
Your appeal to patriotism was pointless.
If you want to play with the statistics then I'll give all 100 women (on the island of yours) handguns and tell them it is ok to kill any man who makes them feel threatened and make sure they are mentally equipped to do so.
Now what do you do to change the subject or odds? We can do this all day. In fact, I often do.
It is my job.
Your idea of what happened in Okinawa is mistaken as well. Look into it more before you make more references to "cartoon ninjas". I'm talking about reality, not fantasy, here.
The nature of your comments seem to make a case that you've never been exposed to real violence.
The "20 years younger" comment leads me to believe you haven't been in any of the wars (real or fabricated) that we've had either.
For the record: I *have* had a buddy blown in half in a Humvee. Fortunately I also had some make it home as well.
I'm talking from experience. Where are you talking from?
assertion: a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
The internet CAN be used for serious purposes, but it can also be used for less serious purposes. The internet is like a baseball bat; you can play games with it, or use it to bash someone with.
From TFA: "Women named Jill and Hillary should be raped."
I'm wondering under what law anybody could be prosecuted for that? Yes, it's beneath contempt, but it's also protected speech. If my bank pisses me off and I say it should be robbed, I should be prosecuted? And if there was no prosecution, why should the trolls' victims be allowed to unmask them?
If I was the pathetic asshole who posted the offending phrase, I'd counter sue for invasion of privacy. I would have posted this anonymously just for effect, but I don't want to wait a "slow down cowboy" hour.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yeah, this was an attack of this guy personally. That can be pretty damaging stuff for a person to have happen to them and it's not right for people to just mindlessly attack other peoplelike that.
No more morality, no more sense than that?
And we expect you guys to become respectful lawyers?
Burn anyone down who, under the veil of anonymity, commits foul acts!
It's the old "You can get away with it because only you and the lord can see you doing it" crap....
I don't know these women, they might not be very kind individuals, but trolls must be put down.
But this is being brought beyond the realm of reality....
Stop the anon postings, period.
Want to post? Register...false info given? Banned. Finito.
But I understand that we have to overcomplicated this to encourage job creation...
For the same profession that it's about (The courts and lawyers)....
These Trolls are the same guys that would have their careers cut short from a bar fight
or hitting a traffic cop...So I don't care about their "investment" in education...
They're jerks....
Don't do the deed unless you're ready to face the music cowards!
Peace out.
End of Line.
The Federalist and anti-Federalist papers were originally anonymous broadsides and newspaper articles. Sometimes the ONLY way to express a controversial opinion in a closed society is anonymously. Considering the con-gress just eviscerated the searches must have individual warrants clause of the 4th amendment I think the U.S. is increasingly becoming a closed society. This is just another example IMO of our rights being stripped from us right before our very eyes.
And no INAL, but I think any reasonably intelligent person can parse words well enough to engage with laws and in fact ought to if "democracy" is to mean anything at all.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Tell that to the founding fathers who wrote the Federalist, and anti Federalist papers in a 100% anonymous fashion.
"The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius," and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus, in 2002, the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
These long-standing rights to anonymity and the protections it affords are critically important for the Internet. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the Internet offers a new and powerful democratic forum in which anyone can become a "pamphleteer" or "a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox."
http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
See also:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_n11_v26/ai_16763603
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I didn't change the subject at all. You've lost the point. You argue that equality is based on physical strength and it isn't. So, in your mind, you have to conjure up some arbitrary list of ways that women can be the same and they aren't. Celebrate that women are different. Pretending everybody is the same is not necessary because you don't need to be the same to be =equal=. Equality is a spiritual thing, it's about us having souls and being possessed of some shred of free will. And you've completely lost the point.
If you want to play with the statistics then I'll give all 100 women (on the island of yours) handguns and tell them it is ok to kill any man who makes them feel threatened and make sure they are mentally equipped to do so.
Again you lose the point that women need to be defended by men, from men. There needs to men that police men, and protects them from other men. If you can't recognize that basic need then, I can't help you. But, if you say that women do not need to be protected, then I'd say that's great because as a rule, I agree with you on self defense being a personal responsibility and to that end I think police are not capable of "protecting and defending" and at all and I question the need to pay for something that cannot do what it says.
The "20 years younger" comment leads me to believe you haven't been in any of the wars (real or fabricated) that we've had either.
No, I haven't. There weren't any long wars when I was younger so I didn't see a point in enlisting. I grew up during the Cold War anyway, so if there was going to be a war, civilians would wind up getting killed in droves from nukes and other stuff.
Your idea of what happened in Okinawa is mistaken as well. Look into it more before you make more references to "cartoon ninjas". I'm talking about reality, not fantasy, here.
My point is that the entire martial arts and ultimate fighting and wrestling is a fantasy. You have all of these people being prepared for entirely the wrong kind of conflicts. You said it yourself... the easiest way to be prepared is to know how to use a handgun.
But with respect to the "warrior" spirit...In a knock down drag out war, ultimate fighting, martial arts...those things don't matter in a world where rifles are accurate, artillery is accurate, bombs do not miss, and the radioactive radius of a single 10MT bomb. Fortunately, the USA has been very fortunate to not have to fight a power that has the same sort of weapons that we do. But, there will be a time, if we are not educating geeks such as myself to stay ahead, when our soldiers will be on the receiving end of cluster bomb drops, JDAM munitions and everything else science has given to the fighting man... and, they will be shooting back at robots in the sky that can be massed produced.
If we took all of these martial arts and fighting things, and replaced them all with calculus, we'd be a lot farther ahead of the game. Math is useful. Karate is not.
And yeah, you could kick my ass, for sure, but I'd still be right.
This is my sig.
Let's see if I can follow your logic here. Pseudo-Anonymous people on a blog post photos, home address, email addresses, telephone numbers, and full legal names, of women accompanied by death threats and rape threats. That's perfectly ok.
The women seek to have the identities of the people who posted their identities revealed, that's horrible and makes them asswipes?
Can you explain where you're coming from here, because honestly I'm not following you. Why is it ok for the "let's rape the bitches" crowd to post the names and other personal information of the women, but it isn't ok for us to know the identities of the people doing the posting?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
For the record: I *have* had a buddy blown in half in a Humvee. Fortunately I also had some make it home as well.
I'm talking from experience. Where are you talking from?
By the way, even though I disagree with you as to the linking between equality from physical fighting prowess, I am grateful for your service. I'm an old geeky man that can't hardly see and has slow reflexes, but yes, if I were younger and Iraq were there, I would go, if I could, not for the flag or anything stupid like that, but because, there are too many good people over there in Iraq and it seems to me that this country has hung them out to dry. It's like, you see an old lady lost in the city, and you help her. You see somebody trying to move a thing, and you help them, and you see your country is sending a lot of good people over to fight a war, and I'd think, jeez, that in some way you would want to join them and help them. It's not about the cause of freedom or george bush and from the vets I know, unit cohesion is way more about just keeping your buddies alive than it is about cheering on the red white and blue.
But as you come back from that, you need to remember that freedom and equality comes from the idea that we each have souls. It doesn't matter if a woman is as strong as a man or even if people have the same utility. A man in a wheelchair has just as much equality as someone who can bench 500lbs and run a 5 minute mile. Race, sex, all of the human markings we create to label and create people with is entirely outside of what equality is. Equality is to say that we are all judged by someone some day, which I call God, and that, we have freedom in our lives in recognition of the idea that we be held to answer for our lives to some higher power.
I could babble on endlessly, but do read the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said it best:
"We hold these truths to be self evident. We are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Get it? You don't have to have people be of the same physical or even mental skill or -any- human unit of measurement to be equal. It's God's call, not yours, and not mine. All you can do is measure people by their utility to some particular task. So, you can say that women are equal to men, and men can be stronger than women, and, actually women have better stamina. It might be the case that women make better fighter pilots because they are physiologically more adept at dealing with g-forces and they weigh less on average, and it might be the case that men might make better infantry because they are bigger and can probably carry more stuff on average, but, it doesn't mean that men and women are not equal.
This is my sig.
You can choose whether to be a basket weaver, make plastic key lanyards, play the bass or apply lipstick. You can't choose your race, gender or sexuality.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Solove is not nearly as sympathetic.
"Part of reason people were so upset with Anthony Ciolli was that they believe he stuck to his guns and defended things on free speech grounds," Solove says. "People want to see some sort of contriteness."
In the fantasy world of this guy "people are upset" because sued person is some kind of sympathetic hero, AND NOT BECAUSE HE WAS NOT INVOLVED IN ANY RELEVANT WRONGDOING, SO ATTACKING HIM IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG. I am truly impressed with the amount of twisting the facts in a single sentence. He teaches future lawyers -- no wonder those lawyers then proceed to troll message boards for lawsuit material.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yeah, I think it's clear that the (effective) statement "I'm going to rape you" goes beyond just "feeling" threatened...