So, what sort of disclaimers work? The judgements of CFJs 1935, 1971,
and 2227 imply that they can come after a message without trouble, and
CFJ 1971 in particular that an excessively disclaimered message fails
to provide any substantive information and so fails to take some
actions; but here is a selection of disclaimers that have been
attached to actions without anyone questioning them:
I play Distrib-u-Matic to make this distributable (disclaimer: fails
if I've run out).
(Disclaimer: If the above CFJ is judged FALSE, then this
announcement is incorrect.)
Disclaimer: Some or all of the below actions may be ineffective
depending on the outcome of CFJ 2777.
[Disclaimer: Although I think this scam works, historically such scams
have tended to fail; so there is a high probability it fails due to
something I haven't thought of. Do not be mislead into thinking it works
without checking for yourself.]
I play Absolv-o-Matic to destroy a rest in my possession.
(Disclaimer: This might fail.)
The first one can be converted into a conditional ("if I haven't run
out, I play Distrib-u-Matic"), but all of the others claim that an
action might fail due to factors which cannot be evaluated, at least
at the time of the message. The last two, at least according to their
wording, allow just about any reason for the action to fail, and so
are effectively equally broad to the bloated one of CFJ 1971*. (At
the time of the second-to-last disclaimer, truthfulness only required
that your message not be misleading, so such a disclaimer *could*
stand on its own without affecting the content of the actions and
still protect the author, but whether it *did* is a different
question.)
I can see a line that might be drawn here, but I'm not sure it makes any sense.
By the way, I would like to apologize to the relevant recordkeepors
for increasing their work-- but-- I don't apologize for the message,
for the simple reason that chaotic behavior once in a while is good
for the game, and I don't think I've been very chaotic lately. And I
think my annoyance with pragmatism making playing the game
unnecessarily hard to play is legitimate. *shrug*
*DISCLAIMER: Any opinions in the above message may not be shared by my
employer (if I in fact have an employer), and possibly not even shared
by me. Any statements in the above message are not necessarily true,
even if the message makes them appear to be so, although any game
actions I take in the above message still have an effect. I may or
may not believe that this sort of disclaimer is a blatant attempt to
try to get round rule 2149, and may or may not care that this sig is
far too long to normally be accepted on Usenet. This disclaimer also
applies to the disclaimer itself, in that nothing in it is or should
be construed as a claim by me that it is necessarily true for the
purposes of rule 2149, although that does not prevent any claims in
it (or the message above, for that matter) to be true. The above
message and this disclaimer claim to have been written by ais523 (who,
like ehird, has 100 points), and this entire sentence is a claim as
to the identity of the message's poster. I do not warrant that
attempting to use any scams in the above message or the associated
disclaimer may or may not be useful for you or get you into Agoran
legal jeopardy, and do not make any claim either way as to whether
doing so violates copyright or patent law (or trademark law, for that
matter). This signature was not checked by a lawyer. Who reads these
things anyway?
