At 03:18 PM 2/14/03 -0500, Jon Gabriel wrote:
No. You would bear at least some responsibility for any negative consequences that might occur. You would have organized said materials (very possibly out of context), and pronounced judgement on them arbitrarily.From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: POLICY PROPOSAL: The list and copyright Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 20:15:08 +0100At 11:46 14-2-2003 -0500, Jon Gabriel wrote:You have threatened (and seemed most intent and serious about it, too) to post a wall of shame that would have very real life, damaging consequences to many list members.Assuming for a moment that such damage would actually occur, the authors of those messages themselves would be responsible for any damage that might occur, not me. It is, after all, their own writings that got them into the Hall of Shame.
Let me relate the story of what has recently happened to someone I know from other lists.
Some while back, someone joined one of the lists. As far as I can remember, he never posted any messages on the list or participated in any of the discussions. Being a member did, however, give him access to the list archives. He found some old messages from a particular long-time (about 7 years at the time) list member, copied some parts of those messages out of context, and forwarded a printout of those excerpts to the author's employer. Last week, that person (the author of the messages in the archive) sent a message to all of the lists he was a member of in which he said something to the effect that the time had come to leave the lists. While he did not specify the reason, based on what happened to him and some other information it seems clear that he was presented with the choice between continuing to be active on the Internet and keeping his job¹. So it is indeed possible for actions taken on e-mail lists like this to have serious real-life consequences.
Let's say that you apply for a job. The employer does a Google search on your name and finds your recent messages in the Yahoo!Groups archives. He concludes from those messages that you are intolerant and decides not to hire you. As those messages are *your* writings, you have only yourself to blame, not me. Nobody forced you to write those messages.
In the case I described above, and again without giving sufficient details to identify the specific persons and organizations involved, the comments in question, in the context of the discussion where they originally appeared, were perfectly innocent. Taken out of context, however, they seemed to suggest that he had some opinions which might be considered unorthodox by his employer. When the messages were first forwarded to the employer, the author explained things to the satisfaction of his immediate bosses, and he and everyone thought that was the end of it, but apparently higher-ups decided that they should act to prevent any similar incidents in the future by telling him (and probably others in similar jobs¹) to no longer participate in Internet discussion groups. Of course, as a private employer, they are perfectly within their rights to do that.
BTW, the messages in question were ones he posted from his private e-mail at home, not from work, so it wasn't a question of misuse of company resources, but entirely one of whether he might be expressing opinions, even within the limited distribution of an Internet discussion group, which someone might interpret as somehow contradicting the official position of his employer, though ISTM it would be necessary for someone to take the excerpts out of context in order to reach such a conclusion.
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¹Obviously I do know more details which I am leaving out to maintain the privacy of the persons/organizations involved. You will simply have to take my word for them, as I do not want to share anything which would cause further harm or embarrassment to anyone.
-- Ronn! :)
Almighty Ruler of the all,
Whose Power extends to great and small,
Who guides the stars with steadfast law,
Whose least creation fills with awe,
O grant thy mercy and thy grace,
To those who venture into space.
(Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn)
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