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Really? If someone here called me a rapist I'd either say "loldork" or else make a joke about it.

hmm that is much more internet savvy. I like it.

Completely off topic but...



What did I miss? Who got banned?


On topic:




No. It doesn't matter if it's the internet. That is a serious accusation when made using any medium. Having had those kinds of accusations thrown at me in the past(though to a different extent and a different situation completely), I can tell you that it's not something to just shrug off and forget about. I'd be absolutely livid if someone called me a rapist on here. And I'd have made a complaint and had the thread locked too.

Oh, that guy? What did he do?

I'm not really sure, only happened to catch it in passing that he had been banned. If I had to guess, going offtopic and flaming people after repeated warnings not to?

So now I'm being criticized for not being upset enough? At what point do I get to just conclude you'll find something to disagree about no matter what I do or say?

Only if being at least the third person to make the same bizarre claim counts as redundant.



You can't possibly honestly believe that. First off, the part of the sentence in which she referred to my name was speaking about men who commit a form of rape specifically, not about "men generally". Why the need for self delusion in this case? It's bizarre behavior. It's almost like you need so strongly for me to be in the wrong here that you can't read the words honestly. How does that work? I mean do you actually think it says something other than what it says, or do you know what it says and then look to see if you can come up with some tortured method to justify another interpretation no matter how absurd it is?


I still just don't get that. While I can accept some people thinking I over reacted, I can't understand why some people keep trying to insist that she didn't write what she so clearly did.

No. One person searching for a reason to dismiss the post as a non-accusation latched onto the idea of just labeling it satire. And I don't think even he was that serious about it.

Besides, you just claimed that it wasn't satire, but that she was just referring to me as part of the group of "men generally"? Which is it?

It was clear at the time. The post by itself is sufficient. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't have said anything about it.



You seem to be under the mistaken belief that simply declaring something to be satire after the fact actually makes it satire. Do you even know what satire is? Cause that's not it. It's not even remotely close.




What "others"? A couple people with an ax to grind on an internet board is hardly the best source for an objective opinion. While I'm by no means an expert on defamation law, a quick interwebs education shows that as as private individual, the burden for me to prove defamation is not as strict as that for a public figure, and that an allegation of criminal offense, especially of a moral nature (like rape) is considered "defamation per se", meaning that I don't have to show damage. Damage is assumed by nature of the false statement itself.


The only actual legal considerations if there were to be a case are the following:

1. Does the statement lead a reasonable person to a believe that a "fact" about a person is being stated?
2. Is the claimed "fact" false?
3. Is the claimed "fact" defamatory?


Condition 1 is clearly true. Aside from a few biased internet posters, no reasonable person could read what she wrote and not conclude that she was attempting to assert a "fact" (as opposed to opinion) that I had "committed a form of rape". That fact is false, so 2 is met. And as I pointed out claims of a crime of that nature are defamatory per se, so no damages need to be shown.

On what basis do you assume that I don't have a case? From where I'm sitting, it's a slam dunk if I choose to pursue it. The only reason I'm not isn't because I'm not upset about it, but because I don't feel like punishing someone just because they were stupid while on the interwebs, no matter how harmful what they said was.



Again, I have to ask: Do you say this because you have some reason to actually think it's true, or do you say it because you disagree with me regularly and have "picked a side" and base your opinion on that instead of any sort of logic or facts? I'm thinking the latter, but you're free to come up with some rational explanation.

Edited, Feb 8th 2011 10:51pm by gbaji

My deepest, deepest sympathies to you and your girlfriend. I hope that she recovered somewhat ok, and you did too.

Well, you do make it easy...

Honestly gbaji, I don't care about this whole situation (I find it endlessly amusing, though) . It's not like I could respect you any less because of it, nor does my lack of respect for you mean that I would be tolerable of a sincere injustice to you. Fact is, you've already made it satisfactorily clear that you had no intention to pursue any legal recourse. So it's not even as if I'm correcting you. I'm just stating that any half-assed defense attorney would have this case either thrown out or found for the defendant ridiculously fast. The only way you could get a conviction is if you committed suicide.

Put it to you this way: if the shoe were on the other foot, you'd be the first to worm out some semantic defense for how some word didn't mean what everyone else thought, or how it was taken the wrong way, etc., and there's not sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was any intent to libel/slander, that there was an intent to harm, nor is there any evidence that harm has occurred. You have a snapshot of a single statement without any context for the defense.

"Harm could have occurred if people took it a certain way," never has and never will win a libel/slander case.

Really it doesn't matter if it was satire or what it was. What matters is how many people read it and thought it was a legitimate accusation.

Anyone?

And worst case for the defense, they have to actually explain the nature of the community, at which case the judge will probably tell you to gtfo if you can't take a character jab in a forum clearly labeled the "NO HOLDS BARRED ASYLUM".

tl;dr: You would have just as much luck trying an insult comic for defamation.