Imagine an office – all your colleagues and all your supervisors and anyone with a say in your tenure prospects, your research funding and your publications – where everyone organizes their careers in such a way that a “human rights” commission would have no reason to object. Their teaching practices, their research, their political views; everything they think and do including and especially their “private” lives from the television they (do not) watch to the fast food they (do not) eat to the sex lives they (do not) allow themselves to have. Even the concept of a “private” life dismissed as reactionary and/or illusory and in any event subject to the scrutiny of any undergraduate with internet access and a grudge. That is the life I escaped. Even a couple years after the fact I find it a surprise when my internal censor warns me against writing something for fear of losing my livelihood and my career and I realize I have already crossed that bridge, burned it and done a little dance some time ago. It is a small price for freedom compared to the price so many have already paid for me. But it is something.”
The bigger picture is slowly beginning to sink in.
The CHRC reach into the realm of our impolite medium treads upon the internet’s most sacred ground, something we have taken for granted since the earliest days of Usenet – the right to call each other names.
“First, they came for KKKate, and I did not speak out because I was a leftard.”
the thing is, that if kate’s case gets tossed then precedent is set. i’ve gone through comments at major news outlets, ctv the globe etc, and seen sda quality comment threads, including some base and potentially actionable stuff. if kate gets walloped, there’s a certain sense that she had it coming from a purely combative and ideological perspective. that said it would contribute to a chilling effect on the blogs. many of us would need to reconsider our approaches.
I wonder how many of you have paused to consider your own databases, and the google caches they lurk in? Have you thought about how you might be called to account for readers who have accused me of being bought and paid for by politicians? Of being a “Nazi sympathizer”? Who’ve denigrated my artwork? Who have posted fabricated “quotes” they’ve attributed to me?
Because, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s really no way for me to lose. I may shell out a few dollars over this complaint, but the precedent will be a gold mine. The Canadian left have provided me the fodder for a full time career as a plaintiff.
So, hurry now.
Purge.
But, set that aside for the moment – have your commentors accused Brian Mulroney of criminal activity? Jean Chretien? Grant Devine? Every premier in the history of British Columbia? They’re all private citizens, they all know good lawyers.
And as a commentor accessing this medium – what then? Welcome to your new role as “Exhibit A”. Will the blog owner trade your identity for a free pass?
Someone in media asked me in private conversation why this issue is so heated, so personal. I answered, “Then, you don’t understand. This is an existential threat to the Canadian blogosphere. This is not about what we say – this is about who we are.”
“”First, they came for KKKate, and I did not speak out because I was a leftard.””
When they came for the leftards there were no KKKates left to defend their freedoms.
I see this as an attempt by morons to regulate the internet.
I for one will not sit on the sidelines on this. If I get hauled up in front of those human rights pustules they will answer for what they do. The bungholes concerned can take that any way they want too.
I loved seeing Monkeyboy (PSA) calling SDA commenters “fellow travelers”. The irony nearly burnt a hole in my monitor.
These morons don’t care what happens, so long as they get their licks in. You ever wonder why you can’t talk sense to a Lefty, just read a couple of these comments and learn.
It isn’t that they don’t agree, its that if you say white they will automatically say black just to see the look on your face when they say it.
They don’t want a free country. What they want is conservatives in labor camps. Go read those comments and tell me you don’t agree, eh?
If I allegedly posted anything about alleged Dodges … I was misquoted … same thing about alleged hunting with alleged minivans … maybe a few other alleged things.
The funniest one is Robert McClelland, who last time I checked, still had a photo up on his site identifying a Conservative MP’s campaign worker as a “hate blogger” or some such. Kinsella then linked to it.
Despite begin told in his comments he was wrong.
Liberals had a policy resolution to regulate the internet to make it more socialist.
You can say white males are bad and you hate them as often as you like, ditto Christians, Americans.
Human rights commissions don’t care since the charter they want rights for everyone but me.
The right to free speech, the fascists could care less. Many of them are guilty of far worse.
The left is filled with hate so them accusing anyone else of it is rich. course they are so blind to it they think it should be natural.
Anyone who supports affirmative action is guilty of hate.
But the left knows the law works for them, not against so they are immune.
If Conrad Black was a lefty would he be in jail? Not a chance.
Ok, I’m a baseball fan. The successful managers all say that they ask their players to do things they are capable of doing. I suggest that we ask our players to set up a committee/inquiry/whatever to look at the HRCs … all political stripes.
Please consider every space to mean space and the word “alleged” or “allegedly” … what ever fits.
Supporters of the Liberals, NDP and anything further left are intellectual adolescents whose reaction to any challenge to their circumscribed and juvenile world-view is an attempt to shut down by shouting down. They are the product of an intellectually challenged educational system and are so emotionally and developmentally stunted that they need the power of the state to protect their fragile egos from the meanness of reality.
Leftism truly is a mental illness, leaving its sufferer suggestible to all sorts of conspiracy theories (see AGW), prone to irrational fits of rage (see Bush derangement syndrome) and unable to frame any issue other than via their emotions – their favourite arguments all start with “I feel”. Sufferers are immune to facts, have no ability to integrate data to form opinions and have never been exposed to the scientific method.
Pity the leftists. They may call us “knuckledraggers” but they are all to cognizent of their failure to evolve into thinking, critical and sentient individuals (vice collective hive minds). The best example is the idiocy of biofuels – turn uncounted fields of food crops to produce feel-good oil replacement, but fail to realize that creating scarcity of food crops will affect the poorest of the poor by raising prices. But the leftards feel good because they now have 10% ethanol in their Volvo gas tanks. Who cares about little brown people starving in countries far away…. Lefties sure don’t.
Please, any of the regular lefties here, do try to refute the above in words of two syllables or more. You will be graded on original thought, grammar and readability.
If the leftards I’ve read lately really think they are so pure as they are, they might be in for a surprise. The pompous arses are as libelous as anyone in the blogosphere especially towards conservatives. Of course that’s open season. We know.
I think as bloggers we do need to be careful not to slander anyone in the legal sense. Blogging is media after all, and if we want our blogs to be respected and treated like media we do have to mind that slander laws are not broken. However anything that is factual is fair game, ie: Kinsella is a has been.
That being said section 13 and the Human Rights Commission need to go the way of the donkey.
I have long felt that there would be coming legal battles over the use of the WWW. This is not the first; nor will it be the last. This phenomenon may be focused upon Canada right now, but many countries will eventually go through something similar.
We can learn lessons from history – in particular the Reformation in Europe. Many attempts had been made in previous centuries to correct the errors of the Established Church of the time. For the most part, the Roman Church was able to stifle public opposition even though underground churches existed. When the printing press was invented in northern Europe, it had the economic effect of lowering the cost of publication. The inventor of the press (Gutenberg) felt it imperative to publish the Bible and make it available to those who had not had easy access to it previously. The greater access to the Bible and to other publications written by Reformers and other opponents of the Established Church allowed opposition to the Roman Church to grow and eventually diminish its political power in Europe.
Now, whereas there are clearly similarities between the some of the ideas in Scripture and some of the ideas in a liberal democracy, it is equally clear that they are not identical. Therefore, the analogy holds only insofar as seeing a new media technology enable a group or groups to become media participants who had heretofore not had the economic ability to become publishers.
However, to that end, I think the analogy is rather close. The WWW clearly lowers the cost of publication. That the political power of an existing establishment is being seriously challenged by people and groups taking advantage of new enabling Internet technologies should surprise no one. That the establishment is fighting back should also surprise no one. If history repeats itself (at least in a small way), then the relative political power of the establishment will be diminished in the coming decades or even years. Interested watchers should also not be surprised to notice that the Establishment will win some of the battles along the way.
I think I understand.“This is an existential threat to the Canadian blogosphere. This is not about what we say – this is about who we are.”
The nature of the internet and the blogosphere is what is being argued about here.
First, because of the structure of the internet, it is probably almost impossible to prove or disprove that Warman wrote the ‘Cools comments’. The address might link him, but, since it is only an address, then, he might claim, as noted above, that his aunt’s nephew’s cousin’s dog Kyoto wrote that.
Second, the structure of the internet makes it almost impossible to claim a direct result of the comments on the internet. The internet is not ‘written’communication. It is oral communication. Oral communication, by its nature, has no specific author. And no specific reader. It’s almost like gossip.
Third, defamation has to show a specific result, and I don’t think that Warman can do that. There is no way to link comments made in gossip, or on blogs, to the heightened or lowered esteem of Warman in the community. His actions with regard to the HRC can’t be separated from the perception that others have of him. Some applaud his behaviour (Kinsella, CJC); some disapprove. The comments made in gossip/blogs won’t change anyone’s mind on that.
Fourth, since Warman moved himself into the public sphere, by his misuse of the HRCs and the taxpayer’s money, this means that his behaviour is open to scrutiny and fair comment. He may dislike the commentary but, he moved himself into the public sphere and his actions must be accountable to that public.
Fifth, Warman has to show intentionality, on the part of the defendants, to ‘destroy the reputation’ of Warman. His reputation as what? As a lawyer? I don’t think he can do that. His reputation as an endless filer of HRC complaints?
After all, criticizing someone’s actions could very well be deemed to do just that, ie, destroy one’s reputation, but people in the public view are, and must be, criticized regularly.
Sixth- kate has quite a case – what about those blogs/bloggers who’ve linked her to the KKK, who’ve called her a nazi sympathizer and so on?
Warman’s claims against all the defendants are that they, or their commenters, essentially ‘called him names’. Well, heck, all of the defendants have been called names, real bad names, by blogs and commenters. So?
And yes, what about all the pundits who’ve called various politicians criminals?
So, I don’t see that Warman has a case. He (and I repeat, my guess is that Kinsella is involved) just wants to make trouble.
But seventh – and importantly, the internet is not similar to either the print medium or television or radio. They are all, if you’ll excuse the word, Linear. They all communicate from the author to the receiver. The receiver is a passive recipient.
The internet has no single authors, no single receivers; all people involved in the interent are active inter-agents. One person says/writes something. Instantly it is picked up by 1,000 other sites, corrected, added to, changed, and moved on to another 1,000 sites. There’s no ‘authority’ or control over this vast, this enormous networked interaction.
The internet relies on something that the linear press, television and radio don’t rely on. It relies on the intelligence of all participants.
The linear press/TV/radio rely only on the intelligence of the Author. The passive reader/listener is not deemed to have any reasoning capacity. They ‘swallow’ what they read or hear. That’s why defamation and libel are relevant in these linear media.
But the internet is a completely different media system. It relies, absolutely, on the intelligence and reasoning capacity of its multiple users. So, if you write nasty things about kate, someone else in this huge blogosphere will instantly tell you that you have no basis in fact to call her such terms..and to shut up. Someone else will equally instantly say ‘but, but’.. And someone else will consider the debate too childish…
That is, the decision-making process is within, is internal to, the blogosphere. Defamation and libel aren’t really operative in the blogosphere because the system itself will self-correct the perception. It doesn’t require an external judge.
If you want to continue to maintain your invalid perception of kate, by all means, do so. But only a few people will accept your conclusions since others have shown that they have no basis in fact.
It’s not about libel; it’s about power and dominance. And while I would like to be reassured by the “hoist on your own petard” argument, that presumes consistent and unbiased application, which, let’s face it, just is not the case. Hypocrisy reigns supreme – it’s a quintessential human failing.
Kate – your link to the good ghost is most apropos. If Canadians had full understanding of the mindset and values of academia, it would scare them blue. I hoist a beer with the local guys from the quarry and construction gangs to keep my immunization current, and the difference between the two communities is startling. As much as it hurts me to say it, academics are generally narrow-minded and elitist. I don’t object to the latter (indeed, I strive for it), but the former is an occupational hazard that few are equipped to resist.
Tenebris, another way to keep your immunization current is to spend some time with the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. If anyone has their heads screwed on right, and see the world for what it is, it’s them who put their lives on the line to preserve the good we have. And few people are more clear-sighted and good-natured, especially when there’s comradeship and beer involved (grin). I’d rather spend an evening with my troops than any number of academics. I tend to learn more from the troops….
ET: Dude you are one smart fella. Kate should hire you.
/standing ovulation
ET said “…the structure of the internet makes it almost impossible to claim a direct result of the comments on the internet. The internet is not ‘written’ communication. It is oral communication. Oral communication, by its nature, has no specific author. And no specific reader. It’s almost like gossip.”
“The internet has no single authors, no single receivers; all people involved in the interent are active inter-agents.”
To misquote, your great learning has driven you mad.
Now, I understand where you want to go, but you really must stop reading Plato, stop worshipping McLuhan, and stop distorting the physics.
It’s exam time, and I have NO patience for silly comments.
People are projecting all their frustration and aspirations into this case, but I don’t think that this case is going to be about lofty principles, HRC abuse, or section 13.1.
It is going to be interpreted according to the letter of the law. The judge will not see it as a human rights issue, or as a freedom of speech issue. He/she will look at their list of things that are required to be fulfilled for a successful suit, and judge based on that and that alone. So things like “how was his reputation harmed” will be important. Things like “he abused the HRC system” are not.
And if the judge does not follow the letter of the law, then there will be a case for an appeal, regardless of whether it is a positive or a negative ruling.
Judges don’t make laws. And judges are very strict about what information is relevant to deciding a case, and what is extraneous.
Think about it. We live in an a society when a person can have a record of multiple violent offenses, but the standard of judicial practice is that in many cases such a record cannot be introduced as evidence to a jury on the grounds that it is prejudicial
So lets see if I have this straight. If we leftards don’t howl at the moon alongside you then you’ll sue us.
to ET comment @ 11:05
this may not have any legal merit but… if kate is responsible for what is posted to the world through her ip address (these comments) shouldn’t warman be responsible for the cools comments if they came from his ip address?
russ
tenebris – I can’t stand either Plato. Or McLuhan.
Absolutely nothing I wrote has anything to do with either of them. Plato was a top-down linear authoritarian controller. McLuhan was an ignorant idiot. Haven’t you read enough of them to know that?
I stand by what I wrote about the internet; it’s a CAS – a complex adaptive system. Read Watts or Castells on communication Networks. Or any complex theorist on networks.
By the way, when you give a conclusion, it’s best to provide reasons; otherwise, your comments are trivia.
To our fiends on the left …
If the enemies of freedom succeed and I believe some of them comment here occasionally, you will all be wishing you had set aside your petty political bias and stood up for Kate and others who are working to keep us free.
Freedoms are lost one at a time and little by little. You people here may see those gradual losses as victories for your side. I tell you now, you will regret being so narrow minded about what freedom actually means and how important every bit of it is to ‘true human rights’ and the democratic system. It is indeed a flawed system, but so far appears to be the best one available for the average schmuck. Thinking people will take human freedoms over human rights any day. Remember this … “A handful of might is worth a bagful of right”. Government who give you your rights will think nothing of taking them away on a whim. Freedom is another matter.
People who live in countries that are farther down the road to where Canada is heading are either, continually in revolt or they are drinking heavily. You cannot imagine what a completely controlled state is until you have lived it.
Slagging Kate and Kathy and dumping on Ezra is a very big mistake. It is Warman who would have us living in a police state. Kate and the others want a state where you occasionally may be insulted and have your feelings hurt.
Big difference.
If you really don’t see this, you are beyond help and I pity you and everyone else, if you should manage to have your way.
Anon – JTF2 are my neighbours; the low altitude para drops just delight my children. And, needless to say, there’s a cold beer in my fridge for any current or former member of the CAF.
“This is an existential threat to the Canadian blogosphere. This is not about what we say – this is about who we are.”
And who are we?
Non-leftists ( for lack of a better word…)
Although the blogosphere is one thing that the left does not control ( as they control the main stream media and the courts ) I think the threat goes beyond the blogosphere,
I think attacking the blogosphere is part of a bigger “plan”
I think our right to be non-leftists is threatened.
Human right courts ( and the United Nations ) have already begun to make it immoral to be a non-leftist.
and they are slowly moving on to the next step which is making it illegal to be a non-leftist.
I see a connection to what is happening to non-leftists bloggers such as Kate and what Fjordman in Europe is describing in this excerpt,
“…Our so-called leaders pass laws banning the opposition to our dispossession as “racism and hate speech.”
“…In decadent societies of the past, the authorities didn’t open the gates to hostile nations and ban opposition to this as intolerance and barbarophobia.
What we are dealing with in the modern West is not merely decadence; it’s one of the greatest betrayals in history.”
“…Everybody’s supposed to keep their culture, except people of European origins?
Is that it?
Why is colonialism bad, except when my country, which has no colonial history, gets colonized by Third World peoples?”
“…I like cultural diversity and would hope this could be extended to include my culture, too.”
“barbaraphobia”..I like that word…
The piece is called,
“Creating a European Indigenous People’s Movement”
and can be found at
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3153
it is a bit long but very interesting.
rgraham – nice point. The problem is that the address of the Cools post was the same as the ‘Lucy’ posts – and Warman although at first denying his acts of posting as ‘Lucy’ finally admitted that he had done so..but you still can’t assume that the user of this address was the one person. Or even one computer. I’m no computer expert but others have explained it on this blog before. Their conclusion seems to have been that it was ‘highly probable’ that it was the same user, but not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’.
Lori – I think it would be very difficult to show any harm to Warman’s reputation. As what? Remember, his own activities are open to criticism, and this resulting possible damage to his reputation ‘blurs’ any specific finding of name-calling as damaging his reputation.
robert mcclelland – I think it’s the left (warman, kinsella) who are always suing or threatening to sue. And, it’s the left who insist on groupie communal behaviour. The ‘right’ is focused on the individual. Try again.
Posted by: Friend of USA at April 11, 2008 11:43 PM
Have you gone to see the new ENDGAME video on the internet. Google ENDGAME. It is free and over 2 hours long. World domination and the people they say are behind it.
ET – I generally like your thinking, but I’ve run out of charity on this one. You do not understand CAS. Period.
You project a narrowly-applied scientific theory well beyond its application areas.
You are guilty of, at the very least, sloppy presentation. You need to carefully study information theory, thermodynamics, response theory, general freakin’ physics, and the distinction between inanimate systems and animate ones.
My apologies to our host for the OT, and for what may seem on the surface as very uncollegial comments.
I know I tend to cryptic, but you truly don’t get the Plato/McLuhan reference? They’re direct riffs on the quotes!
I think it’s the left (warman, kinsella) who are always suing or threatening to sue.
So Harper and Levant are part of the left now? Um, no thanks. You can have both of those anti-free speechers back.
I remember when Canada was a free country and not under the rule of Marxists. Doesn’t seem that long ago. Pity.
Defamation and libel aren’t really operative in the blogosphere because the system itself will self-correct the perception. It doesn’t require an external judge.
ET,
You bring a very good point.
Robert, you should be howling at the HRC’s as much as we are, for your own self preservation. I don’t think you see it that way though.
You see it as a “got ya” moment, a moment of almost erotic pleasure, if you had the guts to pick up a gun and hunt, it would be that moment of bringing down that big buck, but lawsuits by Warman are just as good for you, because he is only going after Conservative targets, so you can sit back, gloat, and feel superior.
That might change soon.
tenebris- I’ve spent years studying and writing on exactly those areas (information theory, thermodynamics, animate/inanimate, physics etc)..and have acceptance from my peers in these fields, including awards (best papers), requested publications in journals and edited collections, keynote speeches, and close working collaborations with people in physics and biology and bioengineering (publishing papers together and of course, constantly being asked to review papers in these fields of information in biological systems and the nature of complex systems). OK? I do know what I’m talking about.
And no, I don’t get the Platonic/McLuhan references. As I said, I can’t stand either of them. Don’t try to claim that ‘Socratic dialectics’ is akin to the interaction on the internet. Not only was Plato, in his own views, far from Socrates, but I’ve never been a fan of the Socratic dialectic. And I can’t abide, simply can’t stand the vacuous ignorance of McLuhan.
Cheers – back to your marking papers! (I always used to find they went faster by starting at the back, with the references..).
Robert McClelland – are you incapable of systemic coherent thought, or are you merely too lazy?
Let me give you a little hint: the genesis of the Harper and Warman lawsuits are entirely different. Absent smoking gun (and Warman should re-think), fair comment based on legally justifiable derivation and reasonable person test will likely play a key role, aka “the woman is a whore” defense. If Warman thinks his reputation is damaged now, wait until this goes to court. Kate’s legal situation is unique, and Warman screwed up in sweeping her into this.
Edgar,
at first I thought you were talking about a game, a video game,
I was going to say no thanks!
It seems interesting, I’ll probably watch it tomorrow, it is too late now,
Thanks
>>>>>That might change soon.
Off course it will. I used the wayback machine (internet archive) to check if all that anti semitic stuff that Robert used to post was still in cache and lo and behold it was. If Kate loses her case I can see some prime mining from Robert’s blogging fields. yummy, we are going to be rich
Give McClelland a break Tenebris. He is a collective … refers to himself as we.
Hmm, Robert McCelland is still posting and no one is listening. Your right ET, the internet is working just fine indeed.
“He is a collective … refers to himself as we. ”
Heh, but he speaks for the people 🙁
ET – you are gracious. I regret I cannot be. I’ve held my peace for several years. I’ve read one of your more substantive papers, and I’ve reviewed the field. The cardinal sin of almost all its contributors is projecting a theory beyond its application limits. Perhaps this summer we can arrange a discussion. I’ll dig up your email.
I try, really I do, but I am weak…
http://xkcd.com/386/
Wow, many of the comments at stageleft are very anti-free speech. They speak of the improvements the precedent will bring, of a moderated blogosphere.
So, basically, if you say something that isn’t true, you’re in trouble. Sounds good, right?
Who decides what the truth is?
The government, of course.
ET: Dude you are one smart fella. Kate should hire you.
/standing ovulation
Now THAT was funny!
I believe ET is a she PiperPaul
First, because of the structure of the internet, it is probably almost impossible to prove or disprove that Warman wrote the ‘Cools comments’. The address might link him, but, since it is only an address, then, he might claim, as noted above, that his aunt’s nephew’s cousin’s dog Kyoto wrote that.
If I understand it correctly, there only needs to be a balance of probability shown in civil cases. It’s enough to clearly show that the comments were similar to comments previously posted and that those comments came from consistent ip’s/operating system combonations…
Second, the structure of the internet makes it almost impossible to claim a direct result of the comments on the internet. The internet is not ‘written’communication. It is oral communication. Oral communication, by its nature, has no specific author. And no specific reader. It’s almost like gossip.
ummm… The very fact that I was able to read the words that you had written above clearly indicates that the internet is “written communication”…
ENDGAME is a new documentary on the Bilderberg Group, Rothschild and Rockefeller families. Quite a bit of video from the Bilderberg meeting in Ottawa a few years ago. The new North American Union and Mexico-Canada-Alaska new toll roads and portions owned by Spain. They have equalized the dollar already. Explains the massive drive of the rural populations into the cities.
Their conclusion seems to have been that it was ‘highly probable’ that it was the same user, but not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’
“reasonable doubt” isn’t the standard that’s used in civil trials. In civil trials it only needs to be shown, on a balance of probabilities, that a thing is true.
ET & Tenebris ~ if you two ever agree to get together head-to-head to discuss CAS, please invite me. Not only because I grok the subject, and have read a dozen SEED papers, but also because I agree with both of you! (Now watch me tap-dance around that.) That colloquium I would fly across the country for (assuming of course I get to participate, not just observe 😉
I’m not among those who wonder why [Flea] quit university teaching.
I am among those who wonder why anyone would fall for Flea’s preposterous caricature of the academy.
Organizing your television-watching and eating habits so a ‘human rights commission’ would have no reason to object?
Good grief.
Some people will fall for any claims, no matter how outlandish.
i like the parts where the left blogs request support for Kate,shows how freakin’ scary things really are, who’s next?
You know, I start reading here, and I plan to compliment Kate for her brilliant essay, and I get carried away with Tenebris’s challenge to ET. I apologize. That was rude. Your argument, Kate, is excellent, and that is what matters here, not CAS. Sorry for going off topic.