On Thu, 29 Jan 1998 23:28:30 -0600 (CST), Mitchell Leben
<mitch@leben.com> wrote:
>Time for me to come out of the woodwork and ask a few questions.
>
>A list member has threatened to sue me because I first filtered posts from
>his account, then removed him from the list. He became the center of a
>flame war, and caused many people to leave the list. People wrote to me
>privately explaining they left because of him, or requesting he be removed
>or they will leave. I did send this individual a warning message, which he
>viewed as an attack. His on list behavior became increasingly rude and
>abrasive, and I gave him the boot.
We just went through something like this, but it was even more
problematic because the person was, on the one hand a valued member of
the list because of his technical acumen.
On the other, he was rude, belligerent and bellicose. He spent a lot
of time attacking the company that makes the software that is the
subject of our list, sometimes for good technical reason, but his
attacks often strayed into personal attack on the people at the
company.
We're close to them, and feel bad, but we are also under no control
from them, and we all like that. An unfettered discussion actually
helps them, though I am sure they wince a lot from the uncalled for
personal attack.
Last week, our listmember became an ex-listmember when he threatened
to sue for "slander" someone else on the list who had questioned how
this hothead had gotten the software in the first place. He didn't pay
for it, and the exact nature of his ownership is in some doubt.
When we asked him to retract the legal threat, he threatened us as
well.
He then farmed the list from his own archives and started accusing us
in private mail of removing him because he has said unflattering
things about the software.
We made one statement about why he had been removed, and sat back and
let the discussion rage. Our position was that he was welcome to
threaten to sue people, but he wasn't going to do it on our list. He
was welcome back if he'd retract the threats, apologize and agree to
not use our list to threaten again.
Also, we are trying to protect a space where there is a free and
unfettered debate. This is not because we're under any obligation to
do so, just because that's what we'd like.
But that means we do have to protect the group against people who are
litigious and want to suppress the debate through threats of
defamation suits. In essence, this guy is soiling his own nest, and as
somebody whose keyboard is more likely to get him in trouble than the
average listmember, you'd think he'd understand our efforts.
One of the ruminations he made was the "shopping center cases." (We
avoided attempting to argue the law with him, but his choice of cases
gave us great comfort).
One of the spam cases, Cyberpromo v. AOL, found Cyberpromo trying a
first amendment argument against AOL and quoting the "quasi-public"
shopping center case: Logan Valley Plaza.
The justices pointed to the Lloyds case as a limit to Logan Valley,
and found that there was no state component in AOL, so the
quasi-public cases don't apply.
I saw this initial posting some time ago, and this thread has been
helpful to us as we've been through our little teapot tempest. We
haven't been sued so far, and it appears that after some initial
beating, we've emerged as heros for providing the list in the first
place, and stepping in to stop a barroom brawl that clearly had gone
too far.
So hang in there. We've gotten lots of supporting public and private
notes, and the tormenters have pretty much fallen to just wondering
why the hell we're willing to do all of what we do for free.
And ya know...I don't know if there's a real good answer for that.
-
Jerry Trowbridge
--at Flying Pig Ranch
|
|
