[context: * <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/2535> Fair Use is not stealing * <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/2530> Either truth matters, or it doesn't * <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/2529> Re: Message not approved * <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/2523> Re: Restoration of 2004 LP Platform ]
Outright moderator Allan Wallace writes to the Outright leadership (whom I lack permission to address): AW) Wikipedia is an ever-changing weather vane of public opinion. Someone who quotes Wikipedia as a source of truth clearly does not know what truth is. Perhaps you are one of those nuts that believe there is no such thing as objective reality, that reality is what YOU think it is, and that reality changes when you change your mind. (AW Calm down, Allan. The feverishness and absurdity of the above illustrates perfectly why you should have recused yourself at the outset from the decision of whether to censor my rebuttal of your own arguments. It's ironic for you to dismiss the premier Internet encyclopedia's straightforward and undisputed definition of the Internet phenomenon known as cross-posting, and it's downright bizarre for you to infer from my citation of it that I might be a complete metaphysical subjectivist or solipsist. (Readers will note the additional irony that Allan's elliptical construction "perhaps you are one of those nuts" is in fact a much more scurrilous "personal attack" than the ones he accused, tried, and convicted me for -- namely, my detailed and unrebutted demonstrations that people had made deliberately false statements about me.) AW) Fair use has nothing to do with this. From the very beginning you knew we had restrictions to participate in OutrightLibertarians. Even when we clearly restated those restrictions to you, you flaunted and ignored them. (AW You mean like when you ignored your own rules by letting Brian Miller post serial personal attacks on me, including an oblique reference to my intimate relations with my wife? You mean like when you ignored your own rules by letting Beau Cain quote me saying things that you said justified censoring the message in which I said them? AW) We continued to remind you of them, and still you ignored our reminders. Any decent person would have stopped posting to another group until the matter was settled, not you. (AW Any decent moderator would have answered my question about what you were objecting to, but not you. If you object to your rulings being subject to public scrutiny, that's all one needs to know about them. AW) BTW, while I was there, I took a look at your group. You edited and thereby misrepresented what I said in several cases. I edited out just 3 words that were truly offensive at the end of one sentence, one time on one post of yours, and that after you had been warned several times for offensive statements you made that were not edited. Yet, you acted like I cut half of everything you ever submitted. (AW Nonsense. I wrote: "(To the moderator: does it qualify me not to have my protests against personal attacks be censored? Anyone wondering what happened to the 2nd sentence of my first posting this morning can read the original here <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/2456> .)" My comment made it perfectly clear that only one of my sentences was censored. It's simply scurrilous for you to claim I was suggesting that all of my posts were being systematically censored. Please stop making stuff up about me. Have you no shame, sir? AW) The truth is that you CAN quote from any Yahoo group you want. Just because you CAN do a thing, does not mean that it is RIGHT do that thing. You might be able to quote from our group without the permission of the author and remain a member of YAHOO, but you cannot do that and remain a member of our Yahoo group. (AW Yet another delicious irony. The one who is invoking his raw power to do something unfair is YOU, in your final sentence above. My invocation of the Fair Use doctrine is not me simply noting what I can get away with; it's me agreeing with a codification of what the vast majority of people (who aren't self-serving self-dealing Outright censors) agree is fair. (Hence the name "fair" use.) Again, you don't even dare to dispute whether the Fair Use doctrine is a commendable one, just as you didn't dare above to dispute the definition of cross-posting. You just say "our policy is our policy", and flex your right of association to arbitrarily exclude me. I'll always defend your right to do that, but that doesn't mean it isn't shameful. AW) Using someone's words without there permission is impolite at the least and stealing at the worst, and both are un-libertarian. (AW Argument by assertion. Fair-use quoting is not stealing, and it's just laughable to claim otherwise. I'd be shocked if you could get a Beau Cain or a Rich Newell to agree with that howler. I doubt they'd even agree it's "impolite" to fairly and accurately quote Outright comments off-list (as opposed to cross-posting). AW) I have already wasted too much time trying to explain the simple fact that you refused to abide by our restrictions and have therefore ejected yourself from being able to contribute. (AW Repeating something is not explaining it. Despite my repeated begging, you have NEVER ONCE addressed the substance of any of my defenses of any of the comments by me that you arbitrarily labeled a "personal attack". You didn't even answer my request for a clarification of the conditions you dictated by which I may return to your forum. Instead, you've simply convicted me in your kangaroo court. AW) You did this to yourself in part by your insistence that our guidelines are invalid and that we accept YOUR rules for OUR group. (AW On the contrary, I explicitly agreed that I would no longer risk the calamity of the first-ever reverse-cross-posting from marketliberal to the Outright forum. And even to this day, nothing in your official guidelines says that OL postings may not be quoted anywhere else on the Internet. Why should anyone not conclude you're just making up rules because you don't like the arguments being offered by this "straight white guy from suburbia"? AW) You have been inconsiderate, impolite, argumentative, provocative (in a bad way), you have gone out of your way to be as disruptive as possible, your words discouraged any intelligent discussion that disagreed with your point of view (AW When precisely did I "discourage any intelligent discussion" or "go out of my way to be as disruptive as possible"? Was it when I reported to your forum about my successful rebutting on PlatCom of arguments that gay rights aren't a top priority? Was it when I asked your forum for feedback on gay rights Platform language (and got none)? Was it when I educated you about the history of the support for the gay rights plank at the last three NatCons? Was it when I taught you about the Fair Use doctrine? Was it when I schooled you with 31 factual predicates rebutting your canard that we reformers are trying to make the LP "the Party of slightly more Principle than the Republican Party"? Was it when I quoted Art 3 Sec 2 of the U.S. Constitution to James Younce? Was it when I busted Brian Miller for not not knowing what 10 <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/654.html> U.S.C. ยง <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/654.html> 654 <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/654.html> (DADT) actually says? Was it when I quoted the LRC's website to prove that Brian Miller simply LIED when he claimed "The LRC's proposals thoroughly 'de-gay' the platform"? Was it when I demonstrated that Miller simply LIED when he claimed "the LRC has not accepted any meaningful feedback or participation from Outright's membership", by citing my earlier appeal on the OL group itself seeking feedback? What you may someday grow to realize is that if someone ends up feeling ridiculous, it's not always because they've been ridiculed. AW) and then you accuse us of mistreating you. (AW I don't just "accuse"; I document it publicly and persuasively. Here's Tom Knapp writing tonight on marketliberal: "I did not attempt to post that to the Outright list. My last round of conversation on that list convinced me that a few of Outright's leaders are hell-bent on making their own organization look bad. Their call, but I decline to be their enabler." AW) If you want to bully and push people around, go someplace else, we have had enough. (AW Ah, I see you've gotten the latest Brian Miller memo on how to shout me down. On the third day we ever debated, Miller told me "Hopefully, this spanking will prevent you from indulging in such childishness in the future". Scant weeks later, he was calling me a "bully". Can you quote me ever using such subjective and inflammatory language to personally describe you or him? AW) And even though you do NOT have my permission to use this on your Yahoo group, you probably will anyway (AW Good guess. You are absolutely correct that I am not going to preserve the secrecy of the Outright star chamber. Feel free to add that to the ex post facto offenses in the bill of attainder you've concocted against me. AW) and you will probably not leave it in one piece but cut it up, leaving out the parts that look bad for you, (AW We'll never know, because there weren't any such parts. :-) I didn't omit a single word, but I of course replied to it systematically -- which in your bizarro world is apparently some kind of personal attack, as opposed to a sign of intellectual courtesy and thoroughness. HURT ME with the disrespect of daring to actually answer this defendant's case clause by clause, Mr. Judge, Jury, and Executioner. AW) and insert your own commentary to distract your readers from what I'm saying; just as you did nearly every other time you quoted me. (AW If your message includes some kind of enchantment that only works when read straight through, then feel free to post directly to marketliberal, where I always immediately approve all your messages. You'll find your Jedi magicks don't work on my readers; they're a hardy lot. :-) AW) That is my last word. Any further communications should be with Outright Libertarians' National Chair, Rob Power. (AW No comment. P.S. On the very day you guys were expelling me from your forum, I succeeded in inserting into the leading PlatCom subcommittee's draft the remaining sentence of the Principles section of the existing Sexuality and Gender plank, so that now that section is preserved in its entirety. Only Rob has been a more vocal defender of gay rights on the PlatCom than I, so congratulations for expelling me. You must be so proud.
