On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 16:26, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Charles Reiss wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 13:01, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Charles Reiss wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:41, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>> (d) deliberately does not care about what the defendent actually
>>>> thinks, only what e could have thought. Therefore, there is no reason
>>>> to consider the defendent's admission in deciding whether it is
>>>> acceptable.
>>>
>>> Um, IIRC I wrote (d), and I beg to differ on it what it deliberately
>>> cares about. -G.
>>
>> Looking at the archives, I guess you probably did. But I don't know
>> how else you expected people to interpret a change from the old
>> wording ("UNAWARE, appropriate if the defendant reasonably believed
>> that the alleged act did not violate the specified rule") to one that
>> uses "could have". And, well, I think it's an improvement.
>
> All I'm saying is that if a defendant admits that e could have known,
> we should take eir word for it.
>
> Here's an example. Let's say there's a really obscure way that everyone
> in the game is violating a rule, but no one knows it. Then, one person
> does eir own research and learns about it, and is very sure about it.
> But e continues to knowingly violate it anyway. And then, later, e
> confesses. Well... given the research, that particular person could
> have/should have known. And when e confesses, we take eir word for it
> that e knew what e was doing. -G.
I think plainly this is not what R1504(d) says since it considers
whether some hypothetical situation exists where the defendent could
have believed it did not violate the rule. This perhaps does not
excuse them for violations after research, but ought to excuse them
when others who did the same research may have concluded that "no, it
did not violate the rule".
And, anyways, I do not think it is in the best interest of the game to
limit the R1504(d) defense like this: doing so encourages people to
hide their knowledge: if you ever believe that something you and
others do violates a rule, you're better off pretending not to know
about it or to have the contrary interpretation, for otherwise such
evidence might be used against you in a future criminal case.
-woggle
