Find a friendly lawyer who will help you research this.
I don't need to. I am one.
Legal harassment is something one can sue or countersue over, and it is done often. Abuse of legal process can lead to sanctions against the attorney. It's a shady practice, no doubt about it.
And if the spam harassment is actionable -- it's hard because you have so many people making a small contribution, so you'd probably go after any organizers -- then it's probably a good case under a theory of tortious interferance with business relations, etc. Paralyzing someone's email could clearly cause business losses. Yeah, that's what spammers are doing to others, but not in a focused way designed to coerce.
In judging the propriety of something like harassment, pick a cause you're sympathetic with and picture their enemies doing the same not just to them, but anyone they sought out. My concern is not so much that that sort of thing is illegal, as it is crass and uncivil. Send an email or letter of complaint, but don't orchestrate an anonymous game of doorbell ditch. As I said, the moral high ground is worthwhile.
I didn't say they weren't responsible; I said that harassment was clearly the wrong way to communicate. Rationalizing it doesn't help.
And as for an opinion of an entire profession, you can't do it with some very rough stereotypes of a group of hundreds of thousands of people. Stereotypes of the tech professions are pretty crude, right? Same thing.
Harassing the lawyer for doing his job is another step altogether. If he himself is harassing people, that's one thing; if he's just protecting the spammer's rights, he's doing his job. For that matter bear in mind that the law frowns on self-help generally.
Remember that excessive harassment will make the antispammers look every bit as contemptible as the spammer. The antispam effort needs the moral high ground. I'm talking about the perceptions of 3rd parties.
Please don't bother to tell me how terrible spammers are; I agree. But I don't think it wise to trample everything in our path to take what we believe to be ours. That's what the spammers do, after all, and "but we're right!" is nice but does not authorize disreagard for the rules of the game.
What's next? Spam anyone who even makes a gesture at fair play that might somehow benefit the spammer? That's one of the reasons I'll never post my email address.
I figured as much. The only near-perfect solution would also use an encrypted sig.
I brought this up mostly as a reminder (to myself?) that although opt-in is talked about as the most conservative option, it is not in fact adequate. Snail mail advertising hasn't really needed this kind of protection.
Also helpful would be a global opt-out, though that could create problems for those of us who do want to subscribe to a thing or two. So there could be a central registry.... Hmm, messy. I don't know if this could even be explained to the average user.
And good luck getting the spammers to "opt-in" to the plan. Also, they fo have limited free speech rights, I'm not sure how that would factor in to the complexity and security of the scheme.
...from this adolescent spamming (notice I don't say I disapprove -- it qualifies as poetic justice) is there's a weakness to even conservative opt-in spam -- 3rd party abuse. It's been done, to mass-subscribe a target -- even nice guys -- to multiple irritating lists at the click of a script. This could also be used as a cover for spammers to play dumb when someone complains.
This kind of stunt has been done for years, as by filling out lots of those "tell more more!" business cards with the victim's info. Again, the internet takes a little problem and magnifies it 100-fold. This can be used for evil as well as "good."
So... if opt-in is to work, there has to be some add'l layer of caution such as a practical methods of authentication. Suggestions? The snadard now is to send a single email requesting a reply before the opt-in is confirmed. Is there a way to spoof this?
I make a polite effort to deflect the nth silly slander of lawyers, and that's overrated? Goes again the party line does it? Or just too subtle without a smiley?
Remarkable for a group that beats the First Amendment drum so ferociously.
This is even worse than I gave the OP credit for! This letter could lead to the next Nuremberg trials! Bigger than the Pentagon Papers! The smoking gun!
What is this crap? Score -100; Improvidently Posted Article
If you think this is despicable conduct from a lawyer... you've never been to court!
Ah, the stories I could tell...
Anyway, not revealing the bias (I wouldn't elevate it to "conflict of interest") is marginal. But the FCC should evaluate the comment on its own merits, which is garden-variety badmouthing... nothing new. OK, "should."
I second the endorsement of the EFF... but shouldn't we be above throwing money at a problem?;-)
-- the real problem with "adults-only" is that it only inverts the debate over what's adult and what's not, while retaining all the aggravations of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, plus the inevitable court fights.
I respect what they're doing in principle and see no harm in it. Beats censorship and filtering, if it works.
It was also not reported (hardly?) that there was a memorial ceremony for 9/11 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (that's in Canada) attended by 100,000 people. All that was in the American news was gatherings of a couple hundred people in Europe.
I have no idea what was in our news. I live in DC and was numb.
Has he ever actually had an IQ test?
Not a job requirement. Nor is being elected. The Constitution just says you have to be 35, born in the U.S., and some other trivia.
Q: What country is the top foreign supplier of Oil to the United States? A: Canada. (1.7-million barrels per day)
OK: correction, if you had oil the U.S. was even faintly worried about losing access to. Also, there are much more readily exploitable (cheap) reserves out there, and unfortunately we've shown a certain willingness to go after them militarily while claiming to be something else. But I lapse cynical.
The point was that Stewart wants to be involved and is decent about it; Brooks does not and is decent about it (he prefers stage work, but DS9 paid the bills).
The U.S. get the critical last fourth of its oil from the Middle East, te expensive fourth that drives our policy. The other 3/4, mostly domestic, is taken for granted. We also import from Nigeria and Venezuela, getting caught up in their politics, too. Then there's the rising star of Kazakhstan. It leads to conflicts of interest, to put it mildly.
The Times published a map a week or two ago showing int'l reserves and annual production by country -- wish I could find it, they did a nice job. Iraq has 1/10 of the reserves, and Saudi Arabia far more -- all easily extracted oil. (Another DOE chart.) Kuwait has about as much as Iraq, or Iran, and so on. Here is some of the data. Canada, like the U.S., doesn't have that long a future at current extraction rates. The USGS also has a detailed int'l map of projected reserves.
The Middle East, meanwhile, has a staggering amount of oil untapped. It makes me wonder why Iraq's Hussein doesn'y just kick back and get rich, buying the affection of his people. He has the oil. There's something missing, perhaps just his sanity.
The U.S. needs some long-term planning. One of these days we should just invade an oil-rich country and make a colony or something out of it. It fact, I think such plans are in the works as we speak.
Obviously I have an opinion or two... none of this means Canada is irrelevant, it's just too peaceful for us to get all worked up about and bomb or something. Disappointed?
I don't know the work that went into this ill-fated mouse, but we do need a way to assure ROI. I think the Canadians agree -- just not using patent for the task. The test for patentability is quite so extreme as "new life form" anyway. It will be a while before we can invent new things genetically, but there's lots of interesting work in mix-and-match of what we've got, plus the occasional induced mutation. (Obviously I'm not taking an animal rights perspective at the moment.)
There certainly are trademarked strains of mice and rats, and I assume you have some contractual obligation not to start breeding them.
Nooooo.... I've read plenty about him over the years, and this is 100% consistent with his bad press. He's a stranger, but not a cipher.
So, imagine that person whizzing by your cube is someone you saw kicking puppies over their break.
He's not a personal blight. I just don't like arrogance much -- especially arrogance backed by so little talent. I mean really, this guy lucked out to get this campy role that panned into millions for him.
I'll throw in, just in case I'm "flamed", that I'm not a homophobe (and I'm quite sure liberal Wil isn't either) and don't think gays are funny, per se.
But there was something about the tone that just sounded so "Little boy, why don't you come here and have some candy?"
Keep selling the shirts, Wil. (He's had these crazy ideas about discontinuing them.)
I'm sensing a special episode of Crossing Over with John Edwards [scifi.com] coming up. And for the first time in the show's history, it would actually have something to do with the channel it's airing on.
(1) OMDB (Over My Dead Body) -- I least I respect Shatner for his past work;
(2) Edward (no s) and SciFi are a fit -- on the FICTION prong. Since they dumped Farscape it's nowhere but down from here.
There have been numerous dissections of Edward as a fraud online. Some of trick are quite blunt, like creative editing of the tape, and possibly shills or spies in the audience.
I do remember the bombing. We do bomb our own guys, too. I do wish the U.S. wouldn't act as though Canada were invisible, or just a big granary. I didn't know the #1 trading-partner thing until a few years ago -- it's just not talked about.
Top US officials have dropped to ball on the 9/11 investigations. There will be more finger pointing than fingers down here shortly. Canada's not being singled out, anyhow.
Pres. Bush gets called a lot of things, mostly by his subjects, er, countrymen. Remember the German official calling him a Hitler? After that you'd think moron would just bounce off. Or not. If you just had lots of oil, you'd get plenty of respect, like a bunch of unsavory nations elsewhere in the world the U.S. flirts with, regardless of our President.
I think Canadians make great neighbors. I never got used to that vinegar-on-french-fries thing, though.;-)
I think he seriously hates himself. It's a classic case of black self-hatred in my uneducated armchair opinion. It's a shame, too, he used to be a perfectly normal-looking African-American. Here is a chronology -- even if he'd stopped back at age 26 or so... It's not just the nose -- the skin-bleaching and other surgeries, too. And orangatans?
OK, he needs help for other reasons, but I think he does have the common social maladjustment, too. To the extent his fame has denied him the help he needs, I feel bad for him. He seems to be a nice guy; nice, anyway, these days.
And yet -- what was the deal with the child dangling thing, anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Find a friendly lawyer who will help you research this.
I don't need to. I am one.
Legal harassment is something one can sue or countersue over, and it is done often. Abuse of legal process can lead to sanctions against the attorney. It's a shady practice, no doubt about it.
And if the spam harassment is actionable -- it's hard because you have so many people making a small contribution, so you'd probably go after any organizers -- then it's probably a good case under a theory of tortious interferance with business relations, etc. Paralyzing someone's email could clearly cause business losses. Yeah, that's what spammers are doing to others, but not in a focused way designed to coerce.
In judging the propriety of something like harassment, pick a cause you're sympathetic with and picture their enemies doing the same not just to them, but anyone they sought out. My concern is not so much that that sort of thing is illegal, as it is crass and uncivil. Send an email or letter of complaint, but don't orchestrate an anonymous game of doorbell ditch. As I said, the moral high ground is worthwhile.
I didn't say they weren't responsible; I said that harassment was clearly the wrong way to communicate. Rationalizing it doesn't help.
And as for an opinion of an entire profession, you can't do it with some very rough stereotypes of a group of hundreds of thousands of people. Stereotypes of the tech professions are pretty crude, right? Same thing.
I agree. As I mention elsewhere, going after his attorney is getting just a little too adolescent.
An initial jab is kind of amusing. A protracted campaign of sniggering hatred is not. Theoretically we're better than he is.
Harassing the lawyer for doing his job is another step altogether. If he himself is harassing people, that's one thing; if he's just protecting the spammer's rights, he's doing his job. For that matter bear in mind that the law frowns on self-help generally.
Remember that excessive harassment will make the antispammers look every bit as contemptible as the spammer. The antispam effort needs the moral high ground. I'm talking about the perceptions of 3rd parties.
Please don't bother to tell me how terrible spammers are; I agree. But I don't think it wise to trample everything in our path to take what we believe to be ours. That's what the spammers do, after all, and "but we're right!" is nice but does not authorize disreagard for the rules of the game.
What's next? Spam anyone who even makes a gesture at fair play that might somehow benefit the spammer? That's one of the reasons I'll never post my email address.
I figured as much. The only near-perfect solution would also use an encrypted sig.
I brought this up mostly as a reminder (to myself?) that although opt-in is talked about as the most conservative option, it is not in fact adequate. Snail mail advertising hasn't really needed this kind of protection.
Also helpful would be a global opt-out, though that could create problems for those of us who do want to subscribe to a thing or two. So there could be a central registry.... Hmm, messy. I don't know if this could even be explained to the average user.
And good luck getting the spammers to "opt-in" to the plan. Also, they fo have limited free speech rights, I'm not sure how that would factor in to the complexity and security of the scheme.
...from this adolescent spamming (notice I don't say I disapprove -- it qualifies as poetic justice) is there's a weakness to even conservative opt-in spam -- 3rd party abuse. It's been done, to mass-subscribe a target -- even nice guys -- to multiple irritating lists at the click of a script. This could also be used as a cover for spammers to play dumb when someone complains.
... if opt-in is to work, there has to be some add'l layer of caution such as a practical methods of authentication. Suggestions? The snadard now is to send a single email requesting a reply before the opt-in is confirmed. Is there a way to spoof this?
This kind of stunt has been done for years, as by filling out lots of those "tell more more!" business cards with the victim's info. Again, the internet takes a little problem and magnifies it 100-fold. This can be used for evil as well as "good."
So
Better a jackass than an anonymous coward jackass. :)
"Non-gay"? What the heck is that?
Um, right -- but I was joking...
I make a polite effort to deflect the nth silly slander of lawyers, and that's overrated? Goes again the party line does it? Or just too subtle without a smiley?
Remarkable for a group that beats the First Amendment drum so ferociously.
But I don't get it -- lawyers aren't fish.
But you're right, catfish are nasty buggers. But good eatin'!
This is even worse than I gave the OP credit for! This letter could lead to the next Nuremberg trials! Bigger than the Pentagon Papers! The smoking gun!
What is this crap? Score -100; Improvidently Posted Article
If you think this is despicable conduct from a lawyer ... you've never been to court!
... nothing new. OK, "should."
... but shouldn't we be above throwing money at a problem? ;-)
Ah, the stories I could tell...
Anyway, not revealing the bias (I wouldn't elevate it to "conflict of interest") is marginal. But the FCC should evaluate the comment on its own merits, which is garden-variety badmouthing
I second the endorsement of the EFF
-- the real problem with "adults-only" is that it only inverts the debate over what's adult and what's not, while retaining all the aggravations of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, plus the inevitable court fights.
I respect what they're doing in principle and see no harm in it. Beats censorship and filtering, if it works.
It was also not reported (hardly?) that there was a memorial ceremony for 9/11 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (that's in Canada) attended by 100,000 people. All that was in the American news was gatherings of a couple hundred people in Europe.
Ottawa? Isn't it in Kansas?
I have no idea what was in our news. I live in DC and was numb.
Has he ever actually had an IQ test?
Not a job requirement. Nor is being elected. The Constitution just says you have to be 35, born in the U.S., and some other trivia.
Q: What country is the top foreign supplier of Oil to the United States?
A: Canada. (1.7-million barrels per day)
OK: correction, if you had oil the U.S. was even faintly worried about losing access to. Also, there are much more readily exploitable (cheap) reserves out there, and unfortunately we've shown a certain willingness to go after them militarily while claiming to be something else. But I lapse cynical.
Ever had vinegar chips?
Too salty. My kids love them.
The point was that Stewart wants to be involved and is decent about it; Brooks does not and is decent about it (he prefers stage work, but DS9 paid the bills).
He might as well make money for it.
Make money, of course; be an ass, no.
The U.S. get the critical last fourth of its oil from the Middle East, te expensive fourth that drives our policy. The other 3/4, mostly domestic, is taken for granted. We also import from Nigeria and Venezuela, getting caught up in their politics, too. Then there's the rising star of Kazakhstan. It leads to conflicts of interest, to put it mildly.
The Times published a map a week or two ago showing int'l reserves and annual production by country -- wish I could find it, they did a nice job. Iraq has 1/10 of the reserves, and Saudi Arabia far more -- all easily extracted oil. (Another DOE chart.) Kuwait has about as much as Iraq, or Iran, and so on. Here is some of the data. Canada, like the U.S., doesn't have that long a future at current extraction rates. The USGS also has a detailed int'l map of projected reserves.
The Middle East, meanwhile, has a staggering amount of oil untapped. It makes me wonder why Iraq's Hussein doesn'y just kick back and get rich, buying the affection of his people. He has the oil. There's something missing, perhaps just his sanity.
The U.S. needs some long-term planning. One of these days we should just invade an oil-rich country and make a colony or something out of it. It fact, I think such plans are in the works as we speak.
Obviously I have an opinion or two... none of this means Canada is irrelevant, it's just too peaceful for us to get all worked up about and bomb or something. Disappointed?
Hey, I patented my kids (pending).
I don't know the work that went into this ill-fated mouse, but we do need a way to assure ROI. I think the Canadians agree -- just not using patent for the task. The test for patentability is quite so extreme as "new life form" anyway. It will be a while before we can invent new things genetically, but there's lots of interesting work in mix-and-match of what we've got, plus the occasional induced mutation. (Obviously I'm not taking an animal rights perspective at the moment.)
There certainly are trademarked strains of mice and rats, and I assume you have some contractual obligation not to start breeding them.
Yeah, I've been there more than a few times (I keep picturing Bester, too).
But John Edward is real. Honest. As real as Bigfoot.
Nooooo.... I've read plenty about him over the years, and this is 100% consistent with his bad press. He's a stranger, but not a cipher.
So, imagine that person whizzing by your cube is someone you saw kicking puppies over their break.
He's not a personal blight. I just don't like arrogance much -- especially arrogance backed by so little talent. I mean really, this guy lucked out to get this campy role that panned into millions for him.
I'll throw in, just in case I'm "flamed", that I'm not a homophobe (and I'm quite sure liberal Wil isn't either) and don't think gays are funny, per se.
But there was something about the tone that just sounded so "Little boy, why don't you come here and have some candy?"
Keep selling the shirts, Wil. (He's had these crazy ideas about discontinuing them.)
I'm sensing a special episode of Crossing Over with John Edwards [scifi.com] coming up. And for the first time in the show's history, it would actually have something to do with the channel it's airing on.
(1) OMDB (Over My Dead Body) -- I least I respect Shatner for his past work;
(2) Edward (no s) and SciFi are a fit -- on the FICTION prong. Since they dumped Farscape it's nowhere but down from here.
There have been numerous dissections of Edward as a fraud online. Some of trick are quite blunt, like creative editing of the tape, and possibly shills or spies in the audience.
No, that's the De-mouse-o-matic ... for your less successful creations I guess.
Yes, I meant more tensions.
;-)
Soooo... take the mouse hostage in response? Hmm.
I do remember the bombing. We do bomb our own guys, too. I do wish the U.S. wouldn't act as though Canada were invisible, or just a big granary. I didn't know the #1 trading-partner thing until a few years ago -- it's just not talked about.
Top US officials have dropped to ball on the 9/11 investigations. There will be more finger pointing than fingers down here shortly. Canada's not being singled out, anyhow.
Pres. Bush gets called a lot of things, mostly by his subjects, er, countrymen. Remember the German official calling him a Hitler? After that you'd think moron would just bounce off. Or not. If you just had lots of oil, you'd get plenty of respect, like a bunch of unsavory nations elsewhere in the world the U.S. flirts with, regardless of our President.
I think Canadians make great neighbors. I never got used to that vinegar-on-french-fries thing, though.
What does God have to do with injecting a mouse full of cancer causing genes?
No, the question is: What is God gonna do about Dexter injecting a mouse full of cancer causing genes?
I'm not misty-eyed, the whole thing makes me nervous. And it does raise some perfectly good atheist existentialist questions, so there.
I think he seriously hates himself. It's a classic case of black self-hatred in my uneducated armchair opinion. It's a shame, too, he used to be a perfectly normal-looking African-American. Here is a chronology -- even if he'd stopped back at age 26 or so... It's not just the nose -- the skin-bleaching and other surgeries, too. And orangatans?
OK, he needs help for other reasons, but I think he does have the common social maladjustment, too. To the extent his fame has denied him the help he needs, I feel bad for him. He seems to be a nice guy; nice, anyway, these days.
And yet -- what was the deal with the child dangling thing, anyway?