OT: This One Falls Under OMG

[Atrocities]

*Disclaimer* - I have no way of confirming this so...

Man sues AOL for Chat room beat down......

AOL user George Gillespie who is suing the ISP along with two men for harassing and inflicting emotional distress on him.

The Link

Even more proof that the US is falling apart. If other nations needed even more ammo to make fun of us, well here it is.

[Suicide Junkie]

Harrasment? Sure.
Suing them? Lame.

Get a restraining order if they're truly harrasing the guy, not money.

[Atrocities]

I think the guy is just a wack job who is trying to get free money out of AOL. I am surprised that if this is true, that the national media hasn't picked up on it.

And if you read the AOL EULA it states that AOL "owns" all content of your IM, Chat, and so on. Hense why many of us dispise AOL.

[Baron Munchausen]

Are you still smarting from being sued by the guy who bought your ATV and then ran over someone while drunk?

[PvK]

I think the suer, and AOL, should both be exiled to a country without Internet access.

PvK

[Daynarr]

I think they should be living in the country with MOST internet access (probably where they are now) and forbid them to use it.

[Jack Simth]

Atrocities said:
I think the guy is just a wack job who is trying to get free money out of AOL. I am surprised that if this is true, that the national media hasn't picked up on it.

And if you read the AOL EULA it states that AOL "owns" all content of your IM, Chat, and so on. Hense why many of us dispise AOL.

Oh, I don't know - I could readily see something like that being staged - especially if the case revolves around that little itty bitty point in the EULA that AOL owns the IP ... after all, who's responsible for the damage a dog does, if not the owner? Who's responsible for the damage inflicted by a statement, if not the owner of the statement?
'Course, that assumes that the person suing is crafty-crazy, rather than standard-crazy...

[ZeroAdunn]

I don't normally comment on these sort of things, but I have two very important things to say:

1: I think the U.S. would do well to adopt a looser pay law. Basicly, in a court case, the losing party has to pay the entirety of court costs. As it stands many companies just settle outside of court because it could potentially be cheaper. There are drawbacks to this sort of thing, but I think this sort of law would really solve a lot of problems.

2: While I am a big fan of free speech, I think americans don't fully understand their rights. Free speech doesn't extend to slander or profanity. Two of the biggest things that the internet is flooded with.

I still think this lawsuit is bull****. I am way against corporations being expected to do any sort of policing, and if this guy wins it is another step in the wrong direction.

[Jack Simth]

ZeroAdunn said:
I don't normally comment on these sort of things, but I have two very important things to say:

1: I think the U.S. would do well to adopt a looser pay law. Basicly, in a court case, the losing party has to pay the entirety of court costs. As it stands many companies just settle outside of court because it could potentially be cheaper. There are drawbacks to this sort of thing, but I think this sort of law would really solve a lot of problems.

Yes, it would solve quite a few. But you're right; such a thing is double-edged. It would cause others. Especially during transition.
Would it work for the US the same way as it has for other countries? Would it be worth it? Difficult to say with any reasonably degree of certainty beforehand.

ZeroAdunn said:

2: While I am a big fan of free speech, I think americans don't fully understand their rights. Free speech doesn't extend to slander or profanity. Two of the biggest things that the internet is flooded with.

Slander and libel, fairly definately not good things; deliberate falsehoods with intent to harm are rarely, if ever, a good thing.

Profanity? Well, try defining it. Language changes. Differing cultures find different things offensive. Yesterday's perfectly normal and acceptable word becomes an offensive term; gimped, crippled, handicapped, disabled, physcially challenged - listed in roughly cronological order, that's one such strand; gimped people objected to gimped, and so crippled was born. Crippled, having been used to refer to the same category as the previous gimped, became offensive to crippled people, and so handicapped was born. Handicapped, having been used to refer to the same category as the previous crippled.... I may have the history a bit confused, but that's basically the way of it. We have a curse word that was a portion of a person's last name - the inventor of the flush toilet.

ZeroAdunn said:
I still think this lawsuit is bull****.

See your own point number two on the last word in that sentence. By your own statement number 2, was that sentence protected under free speech, or not?

ZeroAdunn said:
I am way against corporations being expected to do any sort of policing, and if this guy wins it is another step in the wrong direction.

Probably; and if successful, one of many that have already been taken. Hardly definitive, but if done exactly right, some good could potentially come from it. If the official owners of the words are held responsible for harm from them, a number of potentially good effects could occur:
1) Companies will stop trying to grab the rights to everything everyone says across their medium (notably AOL chat rooms, in this instance), which would likely lead to
2) Individuals might start being held accountable for what they say.

Granted, that's a small number....

[Atrocities]

Baron Munchausen said:
Are you still smarting from being sued by the guy who bought your ATV and then ran over someone while drunk?

The case was dismissed.