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Really the abuse of "terrrorism" so blatantly even by the standards of a government should qualify for some pretty damn harsh defamation law to the officials tr

Really the abuse of "terrrorism" so blatantly even by the standards of a government should qualify for some pretty damn harsh defamation law to the officials trying to hide behind the state. Those sorts of abuses of power are the kind of thing where we actually do need to be "tough on crime" for if we wish to be remotely free.

Asooka 8y ago
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the abuse of "terrrorism"...abuses of power The federal court opinion [1], which rules in favor of Malamud's NGO, does not once mention "terrorism". The case is a copyright one. (And an important one at that.) I'm guessing the quote was from the lawyers' remarks, not the actual charges. So serious faux pas more than abuse of power. [1] http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589.pdf http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589....
- ebg13 8y ago
  You're conflating "accused of" and "charged with". Note that the title does not say "charged with".
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > You're conflating "charged with" and "accused of". Note the title does not say "charged with" We don't have any context beyond a Georgia lawyer saying "strategy of terrorism." Given how broadly that term is used nowadays, sort of like "war on X", this could have been a reference to Public.Resource.Org's legal or PR strategy or many other things. It's a terrible choice of words, particularly for a government lawyer. But I don't see the evidence in the text to support the headline that he was accused, formally or informally, of terrorism. (Nor that he believed he was fighting terrorism, versus copyright, accusations or charges.) TL; DR A lawyer using the term "terrorism" loosely is not the most interesting facet of this case.
    - JdeBP 8y ago
      > We don't have any context Actually, we have both context and original source documents, going back to 1992. Consider discussions on this page, which I suspect will include lots of people arguing the accusation, as a case in point of how very few people read and do their research. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899223
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
  The document you linked shows that the case is Government Entity vs Private Entity. Anything improper that the government's attorneys do would be an abuse of power.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > * Anything improper that the government's attorneys do would be an abuse of power* If the government lawyers said "he is behaving like a terorrist" or "this is terrorism," I'd agree with you. But we don't know that. We just have government lawyers describing something, within unknown context, as a "strategy of terrorism" and a headline running that into an accusation.
    - OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
      I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities. Whether and how it happened is irrelevant.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities It's a fair challenge. My response isn't that you're wrong, just that the article provides insufficient evidence for me to agree with you. Describing a legal action as a "strategy of terrorism" is, to me, a faux pas. Describing a person's activities as a "strategy of terrorism" is abusive if employed to dissuade them from continuing a legal battle and possibly defamatory.
        OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
        Gotcha. I thought you were dismissing the possibility that it could be anything more serious than a "faux pas" if it was in fact improper.
Fnoord 8y ago
I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians are forced to reevaulate them.
- gumby 8y ago
  > A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians are forced to reevaulate them. What happens is you have mass renewal laws, which end up being de facto non-expiring laws with a veneer of expiration. My argument sounds like “can’t work 100% so do nothing” but laws that are given sunset clauses because of their controvesiality (e.g. USA Patriot Act) are routinely renewed as their very existence seems to justify their continued existence, while the sunset clause had been added to mollify objectors.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case law will have unanticipated consequences.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Good point. On the other other hand, it would also be pressure to solve another issue with the law — the dilemma that ignorance cannot be an allowable excuse, yet that the law is too complex for even a legal expert to not be ignorant of something.
  - emidln 8y ago
    > This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes Yes. Presumably politicians don't want to be murdered by their opposition. It wouldn't lapse more than once.
baybal2 8y ago
USA has very little in terms of law on personal liabilities of officials and their scope. The dismal legal history for USA CFR 25 11.448 - abuse of office is a proof of that. USA is one of few countries where there is close to nothing amounting to codified criminal abuse of office laws, the few criminal abuse of office laws are state level in USA. The wider official crimes class of offences, is also poorly represented, if not to say not being recognised as such. Even if you compare USA to worst offenders on that front, from how it was in USSR, to China and other joke polities. They did jail more office abusers than US. Sounds silly, but look at the digits. While this was never indicative of political commitment, and USSR was horridly corrupt through its whole history, there was at least a minimal acknowledgement that completely useless/incompetent people must be kicked out from official positions, or after demonstrable public screw up. Here is a list of things amounting to official crimes in self respecting polities: - Criminal incompetence - Criminal dereliction of duty - Insubordination - Providing criminal agency - Criminal conflict of interest - Exceeding official authority - Conduct of crime under official authority (have no idea for a better translation) - Criminal deprivation of rights - Failing official audit - Criminal violations of cadre/appointment/recruitment policies/procedures - Loss of official records/communications/accounting - Income/assets beyond known means while serving in office (a charge as such, literately) Any real code will have few times more of the above, and of stuff nowhere remotely considered an official crime in USA.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > USA is one of few countries where there is close to nothing amounting to codified criminal abuse of office laws There is a lot of law, at the federal and state levels, concerning abuse of power [1]. This takes the form of both statutes, which tend to use the term of art "malfeasance in office," e.g. [2], and court precedent (both of which are the law). > there was at least a minimal acknowledgement [in the USSR] that completely useless/incompetent people must be kicked out from official positions Office abusers tend to lose their office through elections and term limits. Where this safety valve doesn't exist, a more pointed approach is needed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_of_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_of_power [2] https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title14/rs14-134/ https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title14/rs14-...
marcoperaza 8y ago
I think people are latching on to one person’s very poor choice of rhetorical flair. The case has nothing to do with terrorism and no one involved has actually been accused of terrorism, outside of this hyperbolic rhetoric. But I do think it is bad practice for the state to turn up the rhetoric in its legal disputes when it turns a legitimate adversarial dispute about the legality of actions into an improper attack on a citizen’s character. But on the other hand, there are plenty of circumstances where we feel it is totally proper (e.g. criminal prosecutions, but probably also lawsuits for fraud, gross negligence, and intentional physical injury). It is hard to balance the state’s dual roles as neutral arbiter/enforcer of the law and adversarial participant in it. The executive/legislative/judicial split helps, but does not solve it.
ajross 8y ago
To be clear, the "abuse" of "terrorism" in this case amounts to rhetoric. They called the guy's tactics (posting the text of laws online) a "strategy of terrorism". The actual case seems to be a copyright dispute over whether or not the State of Georgia can copyright its own laws.
- dfxm12 8y ago
  They're claiming he referred to his own actions as terrorism here (in the prologue): https://museum.media.org/eti/ https://museum.media.org/eti/ I disagree with that claim and I think it is irresponsible for a lawyer to call what he was doing a "form of terrorism" or "part of a strategy of terrorism". I think it's even more irresponsible for a lawyer to equate what he was doing and his words, a "form of standards terrorism", to unqualified "terrorism".
  - ajross 8y ago
    Yeah, but it's not a criminal prosecution of a terrorism charge. It's a copyright case.
    - dfxm12 8y ago
      Following that argument (which is beside the point), how does calling this guy a terrorist further their copyright case? The point is that this is poisoning the well. Now every time this guy is googled, his name will be associated with terrorism, thanks to this suit, putting doubt on his work, which is meant to balance the power between the state and its citizens. You don't see why the state calling this guy a terrorist is reprehensible?
      - ajross 8y ago
        It doesn't, but it's still a bad headline. I'm on Malamud's side here. Georgia is clearly in the wrong, and they're behaving badly. But it's not a story about Georgia trying to smear Malamud, it's a fairly dry story about the copyright case[1] they're bringing against him. Responsible editors don't take legal stories about appelate copyright cases and slap "terrorism" in the headline, they just don't. [1] It's even a fairly subtle copyright case. The laws themselves are public domain, what he copied was the annotations (e.g. links to relevant court cases) that appear in the heretofore-privately-published law texts. Do curated links count as copyrightable material? I don't know! It's an interesting subject and I'm interested to read about it. But not when it's headlined as a terrorism accusation.

Asooka 8y ago

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> the abuse of "terrrorism"...abuses of power The federal court opinion [1], which rules in favor of Malamud's NGO, does not once mention "terrorism". The case is a copyright one. (And an important one at that.) I'm guessing the quote was from the lawyers' remarks, not the actual charges. So serious faux pas more than abuse of power. [1] http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589.pdf http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589....

ebg13 8y ago
You're conflating "accused of" and "charged with". Note that the title does not say "charged with".
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > You're conflating "charged with" and "accused of". Note the title does not say "charged with" We don't have any context beyond a Georgia lawyer saying "strategy of terrorism." Given how broadly that term is used nowadays, sort of like "war on X", this could have been a reference to Public.Resource.Org's legal or PR strategy or many other things. It's a terrible choice of words, particularly for a government lawyer. But I don't see the evidence in the text to support the headline that he was accused, formally or informally, of terrorism. (Nor that he believed he was fighting terrorism, versus copyright, accusations or charges.) TL; DR A lawyer using the term "terrorism" loosely is not the most interesting facet of this case.
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    > We don't have any context Actually, we have both context and original source documents, going back to 1992. Consider discussions on this page, which I suspect will include lots of people arguing the accusation, as a case in point of how very few people read and do their research. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899223
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
The document you linked shows that the case is Government Entity vs Private Entity. Anything improper that the government's attorneys do would be an abuse of power.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > * Anything improper that the government's attorneys do would be an abuse of power* If the government lawyers said "he is behaving like a terorrist" or "this is terrorism," I'd agree with you. But we don't know that. We just have government lawyers describing something, within unknown context, as a "strategy of terrorism" and a headline running that into an accusation.
  - OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
    I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities. Whether and how it happened is irrelevant.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities It's a fair challenge. My response isn't that you're wrong, just that the article provides insufficient evidence for me to agree with you. Describing a legal action as a "strategy of terrorism" is, to me, a faux pas. Describing a person's activities as a "strategy of terrorism" is abusive if employed to dissuade them from continuing a legal battle and possibly defamatory.
      - OnlyOneCannolo 8y ago
        Gotcha. I thought you were dismissing the possibility that it could be anything more serious than a "faux pas" if it was in fact improper.

Fnoord 8y ago

I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians are forced to reevaulate them.

gumby 8y ago
> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians are forced to reevaulate them. What happens is you have mass renewal laws, which end up being de facto non-expiring laws with a veneer of expiration. My argument sounds like “can’t work 100% so do nothing” but laws that are given sunset clauses because of their controvesiality (e.g. USA Patriot Act) are routinely renewed as their very existence seems to justify their continued existence, while the sunset clause had been added to mollify objectors.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case law will have unanticipated consequences.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Good point. On the other other hand, it would also be pressure to solve another issue with the law — the dilemma that ignorance cannot be an allowable excuse, yet that the law is too complex for even a legal expert to not be ignorant of something.
- emidln 8y ago
  > This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes Yes. Presumably politicians don't want to be murdered by their opposition. It wouldn't lapse more than once.

baybal2 8y ago

USA has very little in terms of law on personal liabilities of officials and their scope. The dismal legal history for USA CFR 25 11.448 - abuse of office is a proof of that. USA is one of few countries where there is close to nothing amounting to codified criminal abuse of office laws, the few criminal abuse of office laws are state level in USA. The wider official crimes class of offences, is also poorly represented, if not to say not being recognised as such. Even if you compare USA to worst offenders on that front, from how it was in USSR, to China and other joke polities. They did jail more office abusers than US. Sounds silly, but look at the digits. While this was never indicative of political commitment, and USSR was horridly corrupt through its whole history, there was at least a minimal acknowledgement that completely useless/incompetent people must be kicked out from official positions, or after demonstrable public screw up. Here is a list of things amounting to official crimes in self respecting polities: - Criminal incompetence - Criminal dereliction of duty - Insubordination - Providing criminal agency - Criminal conflict of interest - Exceeding official authority - Conduct of crime under official authority (have no idea for a better translation) - Criminal deprivation of rights - Failing official audit - Criminal violations of cadre/appointment/recruitment policies/procedures - Loss of official records/communications/accounting - Income/assets beyond known means while serving in office (a charge as such, literately) Any real code will have few times more of the above, and of stuff nowhere remotely considered an official crime in USA.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> USA is one of few countries where there is close to nothing amounting to codified criminal abuse of office laws There is a lot of law, at the federal and state levels, concerning abuse of power [1]. This takes the form of both statutes, which tend to use the term of art "malfeasance in office," e.g. [2], and court precedent (both of which are the law). > there was at least a minimal acknowledgement [in the USSR] that completely useless/incompetent people must be kicked out from official positions Office abusers tend to lose their office through elections and term limits. Where this safety valve doesn't exist, a more pointed approach is needed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_of_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_of_power [2] https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title14/rs14-134/ https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title14/rs14-...

marcoperaza 8y ago

I think people are latching on to one person’s very poor choice of rhetorical flair. The case has nothing to do with terrorism and no one involved has actually been accused of terrorism, outside of this hyperbolic rhetoric. But I do think it is bad practice for the state to turn up the rhetoric in its legal disputes when it turns a legitimate adversarial dispute about the legality of actions into an improper attack on a citizen’s character. But on the other hand, there are plenty of circumstances where we feel it is totally proper (e.g. criminal prosecutions, but probably also lawsuits for fraud, gross negligence, and intentional physical injury). It is hard to balance the state’s dual roles as neutral arbiter/enforcer of the law and adversarial participant in it. The executive/legislative/judicial split helps, but does not solve it.

ajross 8y ago

To be clear, the "abuse" of "terrorism" in this case amounts to rhetoric. They called the guy's tactics (posting the text of laws online) a "strategy of terrorism". The actual case seems to be a copyright dispute over whether or not the State of Georgia can copyright its own laws.

dfxm12 8y ago
They're claiming he referred to his own actions as terrorism here (in the prologue): https://museum.media.org/eti/ https://museum.media.org/eti/ I disagree with that claim and I think it is irresponsible for a lawyer to call what he was doing a "form of terrorism" or "part of a strategy of terrorism". I think it's even more irresponsible for a lawyer to equate what he was doing and his words, a "form of standards terrorism", to unqualified "terrorism".
- ajross 8y ago
  Yeah, but it's not a criminal prosecution of a terrorism charge. It's a copyright case.
  - dfxm12 8y ago
    Following that argument (which is beside the point), how does calling this guy a terrorist further their copyright case? The point is that this is poisoning the well. Now every time this guy is googled, his name will be associated with terrorism, thanks to this suit, putting doubt on his work, which is meant to balance the power between the state and its citizens. You don't see why the state calling this guy a terrorist is reprehensible?
    - ajross 8y ago
      It doesn't, but it's still a bad headline. I'm on Malamud's side here. Georgia is clearly in the wrong, and they're behaving badly. But it's not a story about Georgia trying to smear Malamud, it's a fairly dry story about the copyright case[1] they're bringing against him. Responsible editors don't take legal stories about appelate copyright cases and slap "terrorism" in the headline, they just don't. [1] It's even a fairly subtle copyright case. The laws themselves are public domain, what he copied was the annotations (e.g. links to relevant court cases) that appear in the heretofore-privately-published law texts. Do curated links count as copyrightable material? I don't know! It's an interesting subject and I'm interested to read about it. But not when it's headlined as a terrorism accusation.