Comments for The Art of Conversation

Comment on Fake Identity, coming to a lawsuit near you by Joshua Kronengold

Joshua Kronengold — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:29:40 +0000

I think the theoretical way the law works now is fine (if applied, properly). We don’t restrict what you can do per se (lying per se is not illegal, nor is impersonation), but we do hit you with penalties based on actual intent or results (so if you defame someone’s character, you can get hit with libel, slander, or defamation of character; if you pretend to be someone in order to falsely make money, you can get prosecuted for fraud; if you impersonate someone in a fashion that endangers others (I think policeman or doctor falls under this), then you’re committing reckless endangerment.

But by classifying crimes/torts based on the harm they do rather than the behavior in general, we avoid making actions crime when there isn’t any victim for it to be a crime against (kinda like if we decriminalized drug use/sale, we could still prosecute people for inappropriate actions taken under the influence, for providing drugs to a minor or otherwise without valid consent, etc).

Comment on Fake Identity, coming to a lawsuit near you by Justin

Justin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:09:59 +0000

Hmm. A fair point, and perhaps even the correct way to look at it. But it raises the knock-on question of, what defines “reputation”? There seems to be an implication here that it’s a single spectrum, but I’m not sure that that’s true — that is, I’m not sure simple value judgements of harm really cover the possible damage, which can be fairly subtle.

Mind, I’m by no means sure here: I do think that tightening things up without crossing into territory of chilling free speech is hard. But the gut-check says that identity *matters* more now than it used to — that the Internet has made identity squishier, much easier to impersonate, and yet arguably more important than it used to be. It feels to me like some new legal philosophy is needed in order to match that, but I don’t think it’s going to be easy to puzzle that out…

Comment on Fake Identity, coming to a lawsuit near you by Chad

Chad — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:13:03 +0000

My rough understanding is that impersonation is only illegal in certain cases – notably impersonating people of authority to gain confidence or access (police, doctors, often). Otherwise, impersonations are arguably a form of free speech. Identity theft again is not illegal for having impersonated someone, but for having done so to gain access to identity-restricted items. Defamation, libel, and slander are all about doing harmful things to a persons reputation. Identity itself is really used for disambiguation, and anything beyond that is not identity, it is reputation.

Comment on Fake Identity, coming to a lawsuit near you by -dsr-

-dsr- — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:25:01 +0000

Circumstances make it so hard to get laws right.

Some possible cases off the top of my head:
- I open an account in my own name, but it’s the same as your name. Can we sue each other for damaging the other’s reputation? What if I deliberately tarnish my own in order to get you? (If this seems farfetched, pretend our name is Donald Trump.)

- I open an account with an obvious pseudonym, and leave clues that I am you, but don’t say it outright. I tarnish your rep.

- I open an account in a random name, leave false clues that it is actually a sock puppet belonging to you, and tarnish your rep.

- I open an account in your name without knowing anything about you at all, just picking it as a pseudo, and tarnish your rep by accident.

Once I logged into AmberMud as Roger Zelazny, back while he was still alive. I had people going for several hours.

Comment on The inevitable limits to anonymity by More on the legal limits of anonymity « The Art of Conversation

More on the legal limits of anonymity « The Art of Conversation — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:08:07 +0000

[...] The Art of Conversation Talking about Purposeful Online Conversation in Communities « The inevitable limits to anonymity [...]

Comment on Conversational Feedback by Alexx Kay

Alexx Kay — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:09:51 +0000

“(Emoticons are essentially an attempt at this, and illustrate how hard the problem can be — they are often badly misused.)”

Is that misuse the fault of the emoticon concept, or of the (mis-)user? A huge part of why text communication is hard is that it is merely a subset of the general “*Communication* is hard — and lots of people suck at it even face-to-face” issue.

Personally, I think emoticons are a tool which has done more good than harm, on net.

Comment on Conversational Feedback by Bergey

Bergey — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:09:34 +0000

There are a couple of ways I see people negotiating this problem currently. The first is to criticize on one’s own blog, rather than in a comment thread. This tends to make the tone feel more I-focused, and separates the potential pile-on. It potentially means that the OP doesn’t read (or feel obligated to read) the responses, which can be good or bad.

The other response is a direct reply to the OP. This is curiously opposite the first. I think the sense here is to communicate discomfort or outrage without grandstanding for a general audience. Maybe that’s the point in both cases; writing for two or three different audiences is really hard.

I don’t know how either pattern would translate into CommYou, of course.

Comment on When does posting become publishing? by -dsr-

-dsr- — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:00:16 +0000

@metahacker — that’s the same approach taken by many authors, and this is the first I’ve heard of that problem. How did the commercial venue find it?

Comment on When does posting become publishing? by Lowell Gilbert

Lowell Gilbert — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:14:44 +0000

And a good thing it is that the law wants clear lines. Compared to litigators, gamers are pikers at rules lawyering.

That said, even before online communication, the range from freedom of the press to freedom of speech (or from libel to slander, if you prefer) was already understood to be more of a continuum than a binary choice. Actual trained lawyers might know of a decades-old precedent that provides a well-defined test from a case involving, say, a family newsletter. Or something else related…

[Actually, I have a couple of geeky cousins who are lawyers. Maybe I should ask them...]

Comment on When does posting become publishing? by Chad

Chad — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:53:35 +0000

If only everyone respected robots.txt. I suspect that without some explicit technological locks on things, pretty soon everything will be considered ‘published’ to the public. Even in places like facebook where things occasionally slip by filters, or where people find ways to get around some of the restrictions, suddenly what you put up is more open than you expected.

For a generation growing up with this, it is second nature. For the businesses, individuals, and laws of an earlier time, they have a lot of catching up on how to deal with these things.