Thursday 19 May 2011

Monsieur Defraud

Turton's keeping a list of names apparently...
"BTW D, one of the reasons the discussions on this blog are of a reliably good level and the commenters so intelligent is because I don't permit the trolls to post here. Most of the people that I don't permit to post here are/have been banned on Forumosa (which is in many cases where I first met them)."
So intellyquent are they, that Turton protects them from debate with me (to whom the Forumosa reference is not directed). Forgetting something about "CRU coding" are we Mr Compromise?

6 comments:

  1. Hypothetical (maybe not so hypothetical in the future) question:

    You've stated that blogs are private property and so if someone asks you to stop commenting you will. But what if someone were to ask you, specifically, to stop reading the blog?

    The reason I ask is because, say person X decides that he doesn't want you criticizing his blog. He has no right to tell you to stop posting about his blog but a read-ban on you would effectively kill all criticism. Plus, if the person X does NOT see unwanted perusal of an open blog as a violation, or simply doesn't care, then he would be able to mock your posts as he pleases.

    In the same vein, suppose X tries to handicap you by requesting that you not quote him. (This actually happens sometimes.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. "But what if someone were to ask you, specifically, to stop reading the blog?"

    Ask me? Then he'd be an idiot. The people he says are sending him personal threats, if that's true, are utter scum and if I were him I'd have them IP banned.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, I should say that my reading of Turton's blog does not transgress his property right in it (i.e. the political sanction for him to exercise exclusive control over it). Were he to ban me from reading his blog however, he would be presuming a right to control how I use my internet connection - which, in the absence of a violation of his rights on my part, would therefore be a transgression of my rights.

    However, the case of the people he says are threatening to rape his daughter and so on is different - if that's true - then he has the right to retaliate by IP banning them or to go even further and try hunting said individuals down.

    "...suppose X tries to handicap you by requesting that you not quote him."

    That happens in journalism to protect sources from political fallout, but it would be pointless as I could cite what he said by paraphrase. Asking me not to paraphrase and so on would eventually amount to an attempt to ban me from expressing my opinions on my own blog. That's way beyond the point where his right to property transgresses mine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I post this here as a comment just so that I can find it again later...

    I checked out that Forumosa place Turton mentioned, and found a discussion thread on climate change from february this year. The "Tainan Cowboy" chap got wiped, but what interested me was two things: first, although the rules prohibit "personal attacks", nearly all of Turton's comments contained such. The second thing was this fabulous sentence from Turton:

    "We've known since the 1880s that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere would destroy the planet."

    Jaw dropping statement isn't it?

    mike

    ReplyDelete
  5. The thing is, if you think of a blog as a virtual(generated) "place", it does seem as if the owner has the right to ban "trespassers". And, in fact, this is in practice perfectly possible by simply making the blog private - thus banning all would-be readers by default, regardless of their intentions. So if the (technologically backed) right to prevent most people from reading exists, why doesn't the right to prevent specific people from reading exist?

    By the way, the problem with IP banning is that, well first of all blogger doesn't actually let you IP ban. You have to implement it yourself. But more importantly, it's really easy for a person to change their IP either by proxies, dynamic IP, or just switching to a different computer. Furthermore, some people are behind routers, which means the IP seen is the router's IP. So if he bans that I think he'll end up banning all all the other computers behind that router.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "...if you think of a blog as a virtual(generated) "place", it does seem as if the owner has the right to ban "trespassers"..."

    The analogy is invalid because, unlike the more nebulous concept of a "place", a weblog is a very specific thing with an essential purpose; the whole point of a blog is to publish writings, i.e. to render them readable by other people (otherwise, some documents held on a desktop or thumbfile would suffice).

    "So if the (technologically backed) right to prevent most people from reading exists, why doesn't the right to prevent specific people from reading exist?"

    Hmm... Actually I need to be a bit more careful here. I have no other choice but to agree with you: Turton would have the right to ban me from reading his blog.

    And yes - IP banning is a bit lame, but it would at least be something of an inonvenience to the transgressor. So banning specific people from reading a blog is not an easily enforced option - and nor should it be made one by further State intrusion.

    That's the best comment I've seen from you.

    ReplyDelete

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