It’s not that hard. I mirrored it, minus the link to the registry.
Her words were:
I don’t see any wiggle room.
Well, if it is was true it’s still pretty stupid not to include the wiggle-words. For obvious reasons.
Wouldn’t it be easier to attack the arguments and not the person if you disagree with him/her?
This is what happens when you start a sentence, get interrupted for a few minutes, then try to finish it.
I haven’t seen many people looking at this from the angle of the person who reported SM to TubaDiva. That’s the person whose privacy was violated the most. As many have pointed out, SM made his sex-offender status public and his full name was in an email address he used on this board. The person who reported him, however, should have been able to expect privacy, and that SM would only know he was accused when the police showed up at his door.
How would you feel if someone reported that your kid was being harrassed by a sex offender on a message board, and then that message boards administration informed said sex offender that he had been reported?
Tuba posted in the child molester’s private journal, where he has control over the post? I didn’t know that. Didn’t he delete it right away? Why is this a huge privacy issue for anyone else if it was done in his own journal, where he has complete editorial control?
She did not use any private information garnered from her position here to post his information which the State of California makes available to the public. Any interest SM had in his communication with the minor was dispensed with when he hit the send button. At that point, it wasn’t private anymore, it was the minor’s too. The minor did what he/she wanted with it.
I am definitely more concerned with the privacy of the minor than SM. Which is the primary reason why Tuba, Ed, the Reader, are all foreclosed from discussing this issue further. Instead, they have to sit and take whatever shit posters who have absolutely nothing at stake, question their integrity.
You’re just plain wrong. I’ve found no example of a message board ever being held legally responsible for a post made on the board, let alone one made on a completely different board. Especially when there is no indication of any legally cognizable injury.
Well, I guess I don’t have to e-mail it to you as catsix just posted it here. Which means this thread will probably be closed and deleted as soon as a mod finds out.
I’m not clear on why any of this is relevant. To me, SM’s actions don’t matter. IOW, it doesn’t matter if there was a “good” reason to post personal data in that manner.
Because we can discuss what she did, and our opinions of it, as long as we don’t tell the whole truth about what she did?
I don’t think TD has an integrity problem. My concern is more about recklessness and rash, summary judgment than it is about integrity.
Look again. TubaDiva is reporting allegations made to her (the legal equivalent of saying “alleged”) and then stating that the Straight Dope will not allow itself to be used as a hunting ground (which is thankfully a true statement).
Don’t see a case there.
stpauler, I am not “attacking” Blue Ruin. I am asking for his qualifications, so we can evaluate his expertise. If someone told you that (in his opinion) the earth was likely to crash into the sun this year, wouldn’t you want to know whether he had any expertise upon which to base that opinion?
Okay, having read that again, I’ll say that Tuba was intemperate to post the way she did. She believed the accusation made against him, and while she didn’t go into any details about it, we can all guess what the accusation was.
It would’ve been wiser for her to say that “someone has come forward and stated that you have continued to offend, and I believe them.”
I’m still not seeing the ethical breach, though I’m seeing some unwise behavior. It’s not unethical to take a person’s word at face value.
Daniel
I think it was that whole ‘Bet you won’t give it to me, either.’ line that made her look vicious rather than concerned.
Something like that.
That seems pretty fucked up to me. It’s like it reeks of covering up the real problem so that anyone who thinks it is a problem can be painted as a frothing psycho.
Really? Is there no point at which this ceases to be true? If the person involved had been a serial killer, would you also regard that as a “private” matter, not to be revealed by someone who finds out?
The person who reported the harrassment to TubaDiva could be experiencing stress from worrying if SM is going to retaliate against them for reporting him. There may also have been people who knew that SM was talking to this person but was not aware of anything improper, who will now know that they were discussing things that a sex offender could get in trouble for talking about. I know I would be pissed if I reported something like this in private and it was made public (on the accused’s LJ, no less). TubaDiva’s responsibility was to ban SM without telling him why (which she got right, at first) and report this to the proper authorities (which she claims she did), and then SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT. But instead she had to go warn Stage Manager, so she could enjoy watching him squirm and imagining him worry about what was going to happen.
What if SM had tracked down who he was talking to and killed them? It would ALL be on TubaDiva’s head, because otherwise he’d have no idea he had been reported.
People are probably going to be a lot less likely to report this kind of thing to the board administration now, out of fear that TubaDiva will go tell the accused.
Oh, I have no problem with said info being revealed to proper authorities, like the police. But only to proper authorities.
See, in my opinion, even that would have been a gross violation of the privacy of the person who reported SM to the administration. There was a good reason why no reason was given to SM for his banning - a reason that TubaDiva either didn’t understand or didn’t care about. He could have been left thinking he was banned for the ‘Ask the sex offender’ thread without knowing he had been reported for his private communications with a board member.
Well, some folks have tried to sue message boards before. I think, though, that you are right that none has ever been “held legally responsible…” Still, since the one thing that makes the admin here quake at the knees is the threat of a lawsuit, you’d think they’d be more careful.
And I’d speculate that if Stage Manager were a lawyer, or had the means to force a lawsuit, this thing would have been handle much differently.
Oh for the love of…no, it doesn’t make it true. What it means is that someone made an accusation against SM. THAT is true. Whether or not SM did what he was accused of is another story altogether. And even if he DID, blabbing about it didn’t do anyone any favors.