No, she was telling people to report the SDMB as a haven for pedophiles.
There’s quite a bit of difference between, “Hey, there’s a pedo posting here!” and “Hey, this place enables pedos!” The former I have absolutely no quarrel with, and it is certainly what reporters should do if they feel they must. The latter is vindictive and petty with little basis in fact. All the SDMB is guilty of is not instantly banning someone for their thoughts.
And just why, precisely, are all these knickers twisted into knots of Gordian proportions at the very idea that a mandatory reporter might contact Chicago law enforcement? The board is headquartered there, the DNS resolves to Chicago, and nobody on the board has access to any other concrete location to get information on a given poster–so what’s the worst that happens? Chicago law enforcement comes to talk to Creative Loathing, says “We’ve had a report that you have a creepy pedo posting on your board and we’d like to have the local authorities to that person look into the situation, so would you like to cough up the IP and any other info on this person or do we need a subpoena?” And CL says “Whoa, pedo? Fuck that, here ya go!” and the entire issue is resolved as far as the SDMB is concerned.
Or, to take a step or two out of the equation, you could just ban the motherfucker for being a gross pervert or a jerk or a one trick pony or whatever the current fashionable unreason is and then, if y’all wanted to be real standup people YOU could contact local law enforcement to wherever the gross pedo’s IP resolves to and say “Yo, could be nothing, but this guy is pretty emphatic about labelling himself as a pedo and has said some pretty squicky shit on our message board so we banned him, but though y’all might want to know.” If he’s just a troll yanking chains the worst that happens is he figures out that certain kinds of trolling are much more likely to get real world consequences than others and change his schtick, which is a net benefit for mankind. If he’s actually a pedo he might have a record and what he’s doing is absolutely forbidden to any registered sex offender and he’ll get the consequences he deserves. If he’s a genuine pedo without a record, this would give him a little extra added incentive to keep his bullshit firmly in his wormcan of a mind and perhaps save some poor kid from a lifetime of nightmares and dysfunctionality. So, tell me, where’s the downside on this scenario?
Actually, Marley23, I think you’re wrong on both these comments.
First of all, prior restraint is built right into the SDMB Registration Agreement, as part of the Board’s policies:
[QUOTE=Ed Zotti]
You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use the SDMB to post any material that you know or should know is false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or violative of U.S. law.
[/QUOTE]
So, it’s simply not accurate for you to hide behind the shield of prior restraint. The SDMB is a private organization, not the US government. It’s perfectly entitled to say, and it has said, that as a condition of using its services, we agree to prior restraint: we are prohibited from posting hate speech, obscene speech, and other forbidden types of speech. The prohibition is not limited simply to advocating illegal activity. Failure to comply with the SDMB’s requirement of prior restraint is a breach of the terms of use, for which we can be cut off from the service.
Secondly, I think you’re wrong in saying that nobody likes prior restraint. This is obviously more subjective, but in my personal opinion, one of the reasons I like the SDMB is because it is moderated, and there are boundaries to the discussion. This isn’t Stormfront, and any mindless racist or anti-Semitic comments warrant banning, as happened just the other day in the anti-zionism/anti-semitic thread. Any you know what? I think most posters like that. This is meant to be a civil discussion board, not one where hate is spewed.
Until this issue came up, I would have said that neither is the SDMB anything like a NAMBLA board, and that such posts as you find there would not be tolerated, because they are obscene. It appears I was wrong about that.
Why isn’t a poster who repeatedly talks about how he wants to fuck little children not in breach of the rule against obscene posts???
Why vindictive and petty if it’s what’s happening? And vindictive against whom, exactly? Do you believe that SA harbors some unrelenting grudge against the SDMB? What, exactly, is her motivation other than trying to keep a pedophile from posting his unhealthy and unwelcome opinions regarding child molestation from this site, o great intuitive psychic? And again, what causes you to think that she has such sway over mandatory reporters that they’ll simply snap to enforcing her wishes? Once again, you’re asserting your opinion as fact. I have to say I find it somewhat ironic that you continue to claim that Cesario’s posts are merely words and thoughts while condemning SA’s as an invitation to riot.
[QUOTE=Bosstone]
All the SDMB is guilty of is not instantly banning someone for their thoughts.
[/QUOTE]
Bull. The mods here will limit the posting privileges of people who spend too much time talking about BDSM. They’ll limit the posting privileges of those who start to many G.W. Bush bashing threads. But a guy who does nothing but post about children and how he should be legally allowed to screw them – that’s totally fine. And the mods save their ire for those who complain too much about it.
I would really love to know the answer to that.
Me too. From this site -
I don’t think this gets into any slippery slope kind of territory - tolerance is a good thing, and we are mostly tolerant here. Tolerance of someone promoting a bad thing is not a good thing, however.
If you guys are going to insist on repeating quasi-legal justifications for things, I really wish you’d listen at least a little when they’re rebutted.
How on earth is it the case that Cesario’s posts are “totally fine?” He asked to start the thread that inspired all of this bullshit at some point months and months ago, and it never happened. He’s been warned however many times. He’s obviously going to get banned if he keeps talking about it.
What are you all so upset about precisely; just that he hasn’t already been banned? I would like nothing more than to stop talking about this, but it is really confusing to me.
Because the SDMB did not ban on sight or report him to the authorities, despite him not actually having committed any sort of crime, she wants to bring legal attention to the board. So yes, in this case she has something against the SDMB and is advocating an unreasonable response, for which I believe vindictiveness is as good a descriptor as any.
Because SA wants to involve law enforcement when no crime has been committed, whereas the extent of Cesario’s advocacy is that he wants to change the laws so that what he wants to do is no longer illegal. It’s sick, yes, but it has about as much chance as murder being made legal, which is why I don’t really consider this a very important deal. As long as he understands and follows the law, while I find his views disgusting and reprehensible, there’s no reason to get authorities in on it. It’s an unreasonable response based on moral outrage.
Whether a crime has been committed or not (and again, you do not know, so please stop asserting facts you don’t have) is not at issue. I understand pedantry, goal post moving and semantics are considered high art here, but you don’t have to practice them with every post.
As for following the law and just discussing breaking it: it was my understanding that discussing illegal acts here is strictly verboten. Posters have been both warned and banned for doing so. Were I to post ‘I’d like to talk about having an acid trip. What would it be like, do you think? Would I see music? Would I hear colors?’ I wouldn’t be saying ‘I’m tripping on acid right now and this is what is happening.’ but it would still be discussing an illegal act. That thread would be locked up tighter than Fort Knox. But the occasional post about how Cesario would like to have sex with a child, even as a hypothetical? THAT’S okay? I don’t think so. Discussing illegal acts is discussing illegal acts. Make it consistent or throw out the damn rule.
It has been clarified again and again and again that advocating for illegal activity to be made legal is not against the rules. You certainly can talk about how you’d like to trip on acid and would if it was legal, and how you wish it was legal, but you’d have to make it clear that it was against the law, and that you aren’t actually going to do it.
That’s, er, exactly the point. We don’t know. We have no idea. It’s just some guy yammering on a message board.
About illegal acts. Why you seem determined to develop blindness about that point is beyond me.
I don’t get how this is confusing. Board management has not had any trouble in the past telling posters to stop posting on a particular subject.
But for some reason, bitching about the Bush administration requires more censure than advocacy for sex with children.
How do you figure?
How do I figure the guy who’s already been told he can’t start a thread to talk about the only thing he wants to talk about, and who’s already been warned for talking about it in other threads, and for whom there’s already dozens of posters and a handful of threads going simultaneously demanding his head on a pike, like, a month ago, and who is either taunted and baited or outright attacked every time he pops up in a thread to talk about the only thing he wants to talk about, and who a few mods have already expressed individual distaste for, won’t last much longer?
Gut feeling, I guess.
Discussing acid is fine. What is not fine is discussing where to find the best acid.
I tell y’all what. I’m late for my superbowl party (nothing new there), but I did want to post one thing before I got gone. Currently, googling* ‘pedophile message board’ brings returns with the SDMB on both the first and second page. I’ll leave it to you to discuss whether that does no harm, as it’s just ‘some guy yammering on a message board.’ After all, it’s what you want your community to be, right?
*Google: site from which the SDMB derives ad revenue and new poster referrals.
So? Let’s ban the guy. At the very least his presence is clearly disruptive, as it makes otherwise normal people completely lose their minds. I think the guy’s scummy too and I don’t think a community ought to have to tolerate having an unrepentant would-be pedo around.
Where I disagree is thinking that his identifying information should be pulled up and turned over to authorities when no crime has been committed.
I was about to say that it was funny that just a few posts ago somebody had talked about goalpost moving, and then I realized that it was Syntropy who made the accusation.
Are we talking about google results and “community” or are we talking about whether he broke the rules?
I’m dismissing it because it was plainly against the rules, and because SmartAleq was trying to cause a problem for the board because she expected us to do something she didn’t like. It’s pretty simple.
Professionals know what their reporting obligations are, and if they had any that related to anonymous message board activity, they probably reported the guy six months ago. They’ll do whatever they are obligated to do. On the other hand, she’s encouraging people to make trouble for the SDMB as a foot-stamping protest and in a way that’s against the rules. I think it’s fair to respond to that, and I did so politely.
This is really nonsense. Here’s what I said:
It’s true the rule I quoted also includes spam, but it includes other types of posts, too. The bottom line is that she was encouraging posters to get into a campaign against the SDMB, and it does violate our rules. So I politely asked her not to do this again.
You know who else politely asked people not to do things? Hitler.
He hasn’t done that, though.
She clearly said more than that.
No, but he has argued that 6 year old girls are able to consent, and that therefore he would have sex with one given the opportunity, even though he knows it would be illegal. He just doesn’t care.