Police Director Sues AOL For Critical Blogger's Name 282
Pippin writes "Memphis Police Director, Larry Godwin, is suing AOL for the names of the authors of the Enforcer 2.0 blog. The blog is rumored to be authored by a Memphis police officer, and is critical of the department, Godwin, and some procedures. Godwin is actually using taxpayer dollars for this and, interestingly, the complaint is sealed".
A link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:what? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interestingly [merriam-webster.com]
Interestingly.
ADVERB
Either there's a word missing in the sentence, or it should be rewritten:
And, interestingly, Godwin is actually using taxpayer dollars for this. The complaint is sealed."
- or -
Godwin is actually using taxpayer dollars for this, and, interestingly, the complaint is sealed."
Re:what? (Score:3, Informative)
You must be under some mistaken impression that Slashdot has "editors" that vet the stories.
Re:A link (Score:5, Informative)
They make some pretty serious allegations in this blog. Including possible murder cover-ups and tolerance of rampant sexual harassment directed at females in the police force.
I'm not sure I really believe everything I'm reading here, but if much of it is true, then I can see why the MPD would want to shut them up.
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:2, Informative)
How do you propose to violate Godwin's Law? Do you even know what Godwin's Law is?
(For those interested in the subject, Godwin's Law states that as the length of any discussion approaches infinity, the probability of a reference to Naziism within that thread in any context approaches 1. It says nothing about who wins, who loses, or even when the event occurs, only that the probability goes up with time. You could substitute any word or phrase you like into that equation and it would still hold true. In an infinitely long thread, you are absolutely certain to have at least one mention of every single concept, object, philosophy and idea ever known to humanity, because of the way probability works. In other words, the law is senselessly specific and statistically meaningless.)
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:0, Informative)
Whoosh...
Links (Score:5, Informative)
I notice that they haven't even linked the blog [blogspot.com] directly.
Does anyone care about the stories, or it it just "another libertarian story that they'll love"?
Granted, it wasn't hard to click through from the article, but it's not as if blogspot as going to get slashdotted, and free speech needs examples, not just meta-waffling.
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:just flame a little more carefully (Score:2, Informative)
"I believe he did something illegal." is an opinion. "He did something illegal." is a statement of fact.
If you can't tell the difference, you have a problem.
The two statements say exactly the same thing - you are saying he did something illegal. Whether he did or did not do something illegal is not a question of opinion, but a question of fact.
http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-defamation.php [eff.org]
Can my opinion be defamatory?
No - but merely labeling a statement as your "opinion" does not make it so. Courts look at whether a reasonable reader or listener could understand the statement as asserting a statement of verifiable fact. (A verifiable fact is one capable of being proven true or false.) This is determined in light of the context of the statement. A few courts have said that statements made in the context of an Internet bulletin board or chat room are highly likely to be opinions or hyperbole, but they do look at the remark in context to see if it's likely to be seen as a true, even if controversial, opinion ("I really hate George Lucas' new movie") rather than an assertion of fact dressed up as an opinion ("It's my opinion that Trinity is the hacker who broke into the IRS database").
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:2, Informative)
The most commonly seen form of Godwin's law in the wild is closer to "As thread length approaches infinity, the probability of someone making an unjustified comparison with nazi germany goes towards 1. The first person to do this is usually considered to have lost the debate."
That might not be the original form, but I've found that it's often useful to use the same meaning for things as the majority of the audience.
Incidentally, quoting Godwin: "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust."
Oh, and with the above in mind, I'm sure you can construct a number of possible inappropriate nazi germany comparisons for the original story.
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:0, Informative)
This isn't a "whoosh" moment you mime chiming little moron. The whoosh sound is the gas escaping form your air-filled head.
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:3, Informative)
Try reading the The Godwins Law FAQ [faqs.org]
The point of Godwins Law is that once a thread degenerates into comparisons with Hitler that thread is effectively over, and can be killfiled by the participants without risk of losing any useful information.
This leads to the tradition that mention of Nazis in a thread by a participant automatically makes them lose the argument (http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/g/GodwinsLaw.html)
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:4, Informative)
Try reading the article at the top of the page you're on [slashdot.org].
"Memphis Police Director, Larry Godwin, is suing AOL"
Re:You know who else (Score:3, Informative)
Does this joke rely on me knowing the answer or on the fact that I don't know the answer?
read the blog itself (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do, Do let me be first.. (Score:4, Informative)
That was an excellent post, except you dodn't add any links. From the Nazis at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
From the Uncyclopedia [uncyclopedia.org] death camps:
Re:what? (Score:3, Informative)
As somebody who was born in the middle of the 20th century, I got to correct you. It just ain't so. Nobody never used proper grammar back then, neither.
Grammar is so ninteenth century.
Re:You've missed something important (Score:5, Informative)
Yes dictatorships and their like tends to be much better at misappropriating funds for personal interest but US is a democracy
Actually, no it isn't. The US is a republic, not a Democracy. It isn't even a democratic republic; if it were, before any bill became law it would have to be voted on my the citizens.
We have "almost" democratically elected legislators. I say "almost" because we are more of a plutocracy than a democracy; usually the candidate with the most money to spend on his campaign wins. This allows the corporates, who own the media, to marginalize all but two of the political parties and "contribute" to those two, making whoever wins beholden to them.
I truly wish we were a democratic republic, where nobody could contribute to more than one candidate in any given race, where nobody could contribute to a candidate he wasn't eligible to vote for, where all laws expired after ten years and had to be relegislated, and where no bill became law unless voted on by the citizens.
I'd like to be rich, too, but that's about as likely to happen.
Re:Anyone else over the internet? (Score:3, Informative)
True, in the Dixie Chicks case it wasn't the government that did anything. Rather, a large radio corporation (not to mention names here) decided that they were going to be proactive and ordered their radio stations to ban the Dixie Chicks from their stations. Senators from both parties were troubled by the action. Senator McCain who disagreed with the Dixie Chicks' statement said: