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>Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal" Well now Joe has a libel claim. If Joe is actually a deviant criminal then, well... he pissed off th

>Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal" Well now Joe has a libel claim. If Joe is actually a deviant criminal then, well... he pissed off the wrong person. What's the issue?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Well, on that subject, of course the internet is the issue. Once something is 'in the wild' on the internet it is very, very hard to quash it. The old legal mechanisms are slow, certainly not the speed of the internet anyway. A 'viral' video on social media isn't something you stop with a libel suit.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  You can't unprint a libelous article in a newspaper either. You can sue them and they can print an apology, but you cannot erase history. The internet poses new hurdles because information is so easily accessible, but we have to be very careful about imposing rules which restrict an adult's ability to consume information.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  I don't' think it is that new given anonymous bill postings before forensics were sufficient to identify a publisher. If everyone already knows that someone posted a bunch of pamphlets that stated that the governor is an embezzling child molester. Enforcement has always been limited by practicality. Before forensics advanced sufficiently just a dead body in the street with no witnesses was a perfect murder.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
What about "I've heard Joe is a a deviant criminal"? The rumor does not have to be true for the statement (that the rumor was heard) to be true. What about "Joe has, at the time this sign was made, never denied beating his wife on Decemeber 31st." The claim could be very true in that Joe never has denied that specific claim because there was no reason to deny a claim that hadn't been made yet. What about putting up the sordid details of a teenagers love life on a bulletin board outside her high school? Assume you verified the statements as factual. Is there perhaps an issue even when it is the truth?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Harassment is a crime. Countering it does not require censorship. (Except in the sense of restraining orders, which are actually targeted at the responsible party)
  - Retric 8y ago
    You are now largely placing the effort to fix the problem on the victims. Sometimes the platform really is the problem. It’s the old mean rime before dick issue, if you let people share content you will see verious kinds of content. Nintendo for example gets around this by limiting what messages you can send to other people. I am not saying it’s nessisarily appropriate for collages, but it is a real issue schools need to deal with.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      >Sometimes the platform really is the problem. The platform you're talking about is the internet. So do we outlaw billboards? What about TV? I could always run a commercial, right? Are newspapers ok? We have laws that are reactive because we are not a country feels comfortable providing safety by stripping freedoms. You can come up with blatant examples all day, but real world scenarios will not always be so cut and dry. I lean to the side of less restriction, not more.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Billboards, TV etc have a lot of laws associated with them which cause the owners to act preemptively. So, it's generally not possible to anonymously post an explicit x rated image on a Billboard or TV commercial due to the people doing manual content reviews. Prime time TV added tape delays and a manual bleep to avoid similar issues. That's not to say message boards need to have some person review every post before it goes public. But, that is a possible theoretical solution to this issue. Granted it's not economically viable, but plenty of other businesses models are also limited by the law. PS: HN is actually a great example of what's possible while still allowing random postings online while avoiding many of these issues.

>Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal" Well now Joe has a libel claim. If Joe is actually a deviant criminal then, well... he pissed off the wrong person. What's the issue?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Well, on that subject, of course the internet is the issue. Once something is 'in the wild' on the internet it is very, very hard to quash it. The old legal mechanisms are slow, certainly not the speed of the internet anyway. A 'viral' video on social media isn't something you stop with a libel suit.

EpicEng 8y ago
You can't unprint a libelous article in a newspaper either. You can sue them and they can print an apology, but you cannot erase history. The internet poses new hurdles because information is so easily accessible, but we have to be very careful about imposing rules which restrict an adult's ability to consume information.
Nasrudith 8y ago
I don't' think it is that new given anonymous bill postings before forensics were sufficient to identify a publisher. If everyone already knows that someone posted a bunch of pamphlets that stated that the governor is an embezzling child molester. Enforcement has always been limited by practicality. Before forensics advanced sufficiently just a dead body in the street with no witnesses was a perfect murder.

PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago

What about "I've heard Joe is a a deviant criminal"? The rumor does not have to be true for the statement (that the rumor was heard) to be true. What about "Joe has, at the time this sign was made, never denied beating his wife on Decemeber 31st." The claim could be very true in that Joe never has denied that specific claim because there was no reason to deny a claim that hadn't been made yet. What about putting up the sordid details of a teenagers love life on a bulletin board outside her high school? Assume you verified the statements as factual. Is there perhaps an issue even when it is the truth?

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Harassment is a crime. Countering it does not require censorship. (Except in the sense of restraining orders, which are actually targeted at the responsible party)
- Retric 8y ago
  You are now largely placing the effort to fix the problem on the victims. Sometimes the platform really is the problem. It’s the old mean rime before dick issue, if you let people share content you will see verious kinds of content. Nintendo for example gets around this by limiting what messages you can send to other people. I am not saying it’s nessisarily appropriate for collages, but it is a real issue schools need to deal with.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    >Sometimes the platform really is the problem. The platform you're talking about is the internet. So do we outlaw billboards? What about TV? I could always run a commercial, right? Are newspapers ok? We have laws that are reactive because we are not a country feels comfortable providing safety by stripping freedoms. You can come up with blatant examples all day, but real world scenarios will not always be so cut and dry. I lean to the side of less restriction, not more.
    - Retric 8y ago
      Billboards, TV etc have a lot of laws associated with them which cause the owners to act preemptively. So, it's generally not possible to anonymously post an explicit x rated image on a Billboard or TV commercial due to the people doing manual content reviews. Prime time TV added tape delays and a manual bleep to avoid similar issues. That's not to say message boards need to have some person review every post before it goes public. But, that is a possible theoretical solution to this issue. Granted it's not economically viable, but plenty of other businesses models are also limited by the law. PS: HN is actually a great example of what's possible while still allowing random postings online while avoiding many of these issues.