4 ms·
Neither truthful statements, nor opinion based on disclosed fact are defamation. I believe my statements here qualify as both. I am pretty careful when I'm inte
by gpm 5y ago
Neither truthful statements, nor opinion based on disclosed fact are defamation. I believe my statements here qualify as both. I am pretty careful when I'm intentionally attacking a person instead of an opinion.
I'm criticizing the person and not the analysis for several reasons.
The primary one is that the purpose of my post is to caution people about reading fosspatents as a reliable law blog, not to discuss this case.
An equally important reason is that I think there's a chance that he happens to be right this time (as I indicate in my original post) so there's probably not much in his analysis for me to criticize (though I did not read it in detail).
Finally it takes substantially more time and expertise to disprove disinformation (especially in a fashion convincing to lay people in a comment short enough to post on hn) than it does to make it. Debating misinformation every time it comes up is not something I have the time or expertise to do. Warning people about a known bad actor however is something I do have the time to do, and is in my opinion more likely to improve the world.
- otterley 5y ago(Retracted due to error)
- gpm 5y agoI firmly believe you are mistaken as to the meaning of the word defamation, to quote a dictionary (emphasis added) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defamation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defamation > the act of communicating false statements about a person that injure the reputation of that person True statements are not defamatory as a matter of the meaning of the word in common language. Calling out bad actors is not a "cheap shot", it's a useful social service. On HN we should demand better sources that do not come from known bad actors. A cheap shot would be some sort of unfair attack on his character, e.g. calling out random cases where he called the outcome wrong (which inevitably happens if you comment on enough cases). If you want to read well written and thorough criticisms of some of his older posts, you can, for example, pull up old groklaw posts about them (which did take the time to disassemble the arguments step by step and criticize them).
- otterley 5y ago(Retracted due to error)
- gpm 5y agoWe're not in a court... legal definitions are not the relevant ones. Edit: Though now that you mention it, here is blacks law dictionaries definition, emphasis added > What is DEFAMATION? > The taking from one’s reputation. The offense of injuring a person’s character, fame, or reputation by false and malicious statements. The term seems to be comprehensive of both libel and slander. https://thelawdictionary.org/defamation/ https://thelawdictionary.org/defamation/