Wednesday, February 08, 2012

X-Post: Criminalizing The Internet, Part 2

A repository of the laws being cited by Donald Kent Douglas, in his attempts to legally bar me from responding to his posts (and teach me a lesson about daring to oppose him, of course)...((and with this, on 2/8/12, only the latter remains as a viable motive.)) ...and my responses to them. (The reason(s) each law doesn't apply to our situation is emboldened. Newest additions at the top...)

All this, because I submitted comments to posts at his moderated American Power blog (often, posts where he attacks me by name) against his wishes... Yeesh... (That and because he disagrees with me politically... Can't forget that...)
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Added Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 6:30 AM (PDST):

Today's offering, "American Power: Intent to Annoy and the Fascist Hate-Blogging Campaign of Walter James Casper III," wasn't so much a citation of law as an "If I Were King Of The Internets" statement. On some level, I'd probably prefer that the law said whatever I needed it to for me to smite my enemies, too... ...but that's just not how the world works...

Even in today's post though, there's this, cited from HaltAbuse.org:
First, you need to determine whether or not what you're experiencing is truly harassment.

Harassment consists of the intentional crossing of your emotional or physical safety boundaries. You must have boundaries set in place clearly in order for that to apply. The legal definition of harassment, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is:
"A course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress in such person and serves no legitimate purpose" or "Words, gestures, and actions which tend to annoy, alarm and abuse (verbally) another person."
This is of course a very broad definition, which state and federal legislation and common law have narrowed and refined in various ways. However, for our purposes, WHOA defines online harassment as any actions that meet the qualifications of the above definition after the harasser has been told to cease.

If someone simply disagrees with you, however strongly or unpleasantly, that isn't harassment. Someone who sends you a single email message that isn't overtly threatening probably hasn't harassed you. Spam, while very annoying, isn't harassment. And messages posted to any open venue, such as a newsgroup, a web-based board, an AOL discussion forum or a chat room, are seldom truly harassing unless they're forged to appear to come from you or contain direct threats or libelous statements. The same goes for things said on someone else's web site. Harassment usually involves repeated communications via email or some sort of instant messaging program after the harasser has clearly been told to go away.
My records indicate I sent three e-mails to Dr Douglas' blog e-mail address, all of which were more or less on topic, and only after reading this invitation: "Comments are closed. Readers who'd like to comment may reply to me by e-mail (at my Blogger profile) and I'll add comments in updates to this post." Everything else have been comments submitted to his "open venue" blog, intending that they be posted publicly, and did not contain any threats or libelous statements.
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Relevant / on topic / interesting links:
Schneier on Security: Anonymous Internet Annoying Is Illegal in the U.S.
Concurring Opinions � Annoy someone online (anonymously); go to jail
Anonymous Internet annoyance illegal? Yes and no.
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An American Nihilist x-post

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