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Subject: Re: Now it's clear that Ritter Rost's post is not a fake

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 07:20:41 04/10/00

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On April 10, 2000 at 09:23:17, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>there is no "hindsight" here.  The email was _not_ posted here by the
>author.  It is _always_ improper _and_ illegal to do so without the

How should we have known that RR is not Ossi?

>author's permission.  Copyright law is pretty clear about who owns something

How should we have known that RR did not have Ossi's permission?

I tried to determine these facts immediately after I read the post. But by then,
the discussion was all but over. So should I have "shot first and asked
questions later" by immediately deleting a dozen messages that were probably
legitimate? (I was pretty sure that RR was Ossi.) I don't think that's the
proper way to run a forum like this.

>>When you consider that Ritter Rost might have been a name that Ossi uses, or
>>that Ritter Rost may have had explicit permission from Ossi to post the e-mail,
>>well, that complicates the situation, doesn't it?
>Not particularly.  Do you continue to let a newspaper story run, until the
>facts are verified, or do you wait until the facts are verified before running
>the story.  (IE National Inquirer vs NY Times).  We know who gets sued all the
>time for 'printing without verification'.

This analogy makes no sense. A newspaper and the CCC are totally different. We
don't print/run stories. They appear. Or are you suggesting that the moderators
check every post for content before they get posted?

>>Personally, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt instead of
>>immediately deleting everything that looks slightly suspicious to me.
>I don't disagree.  But this wasn't slightly suspicious.  It was obviously
>private email written by someone else.  No chance it was Ossi doing the posting
>as he would have referred to "I wrote the following"...

That's absolutely absurd. It would be like writing, "Here's a letter I wrote,
just in case you can't read the name at the bottom." In fact, I would expect the
exact opposite. If you posted a letter by someone else, wouldn't you precede it
by, "Here's a letter someone else wrote..."?

>>By the time I found out that the post was actually illegal, it had "naturally
>>expired" so there really wasn't anything I could do about it.
>what does "naturally expired" mean?  So far as I know nothing 'expires' here,
>if you keep going back using 'next group of messages'...

From my standpoint, the post is gone. I (virtually) never click on "next group."
If you're still hell-bent on having this post deleted, again, I suggest you send
the moderators some e-mail.

>I would assume that anyone running as a moderator would _know_ that copyright
>laws apply to email just as effectively as these laws apply to books.  It has
>been discussed both here _and_ in r.g.c.c several times in the past.  I was a
>moderator for the first 'shift' when we created CCC.  I have declined to run
>each time since as I don't have the time.  If you don't have the time, then
>why did you run???  It does carry a responsibility with the title...

Yes, of course I am aware of this law. But I've already justified my decision
above.

I _do_ have enough time to do this job. But I don't have enough time to go
through every single post every waking moment. That's not what the job is about.

If you see a post that you don't like, or you see one that you KNOW is illegal,
then simply e-mail the moderators. Because we might not notice it ourselves. Is
that our fault? No. Is it your fault for expecting us to do exactly what you
want with no imput from you? Yes.

-Tom



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