[Web] The 'um riot post' we talked about last April...

[John Slade]

For those on the list: Charlie wrote back and here's my reply

To Charlie,
Thanks for getting back to us about the issue. First off, the TC-IMC is 
an all-volunteer group, and sometimes between doing new stuff and taking 
care of the old stuff, things fall through various cracks. Communicating 
with you or Norm was one of the things that fell through the cracks.

What we actually did was hide/edit the post saying that it was pulled 
pending investigation. So the contact information and the attribution of 
the story, and the story itself, were no longer available sometime about 
April 20th, I'd guess. (Which is too bad; does xseanx still have a copy 
of the original?)

see:
http://twincities.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=12152&group=webcast

The post also sparked a worthwhile discussion among the group, so that 
was useful.

Further comments interspersed in your post...

Charlie Demerjian wrote:

> John,
>    I just was doing a google search on myself to find something I had 
> written a while ago, and found this, forgive me  if I am directing the 
> comments to the wrong person:
>
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-minneapolis-editorial/2003-April/000948.html
>
> While it is rather a moot point now, let me tell you what happened. I 
> did indeed write that story that was published on your site. I sent it 
> to a bunch of people shortly after it happened, as an e-mail. No big 
> deal. Norm Rupp, who happens to actually be my roommate, a fact that I 
> can't see why you find so incredulous, posted it to me on your site. 
> He then told me that it was published, and I got rather annoyed at him 
> for 2 reasons. First, he posted my works without my permission, not 
> that the permission to do so would not have been granted, but he 
> simply didn't ask. Second, he published my contact information in a 
> way that I didn't want it to be published, associated with something 
> that, if read out of context could make me look bad. 

I dunno - I thought that what I wrote said that you were likely 
roommates. And I'd be a little ticked at my roomie as well, particularly 
given the contact info being up. We find sometimes that people fill in 
all the fields in the form, particularly if they are first-time posters, 
even when it's not necessary. Our new site upgrade (coming soon) makes 
that a little more clear.

>    Let me explain what I mean about that. I like the police. They 
> annoy me a bit, especially when I am driving, but as a whole, I think 
> they do a good job. When I am talking to my friends, I use different 
> terminology that they won't take out of context. Things that when said 
> in friendly company can get a laugh can bring about a lawsuit if 
> 'published'. In that article, I called police 'fascist bullyboys' and 
> the like. The people I sent that to know I don't feel that way, and 
> was making light of a situation. A random 3rd party reader would not 
> know that. I was worried that people would think my views of the 
> police were what they are not, and problems could arise out of that. 
> Also, while the text was mostly accurate, there were exaggerations for 
> dramatic effect. That was not made clear, and your average reader 
> would not know that either. 

Grin - I think that part of the reason the post was so popular was 
beacuse many who read TC IMC think the police need to be called 'fascist 
bullyboys' from time to time - keeps them in check. Personally, using my 
gamer-wisdom (remember, WIS will get you through times of low INT better 
than INT will get you through times of low WIS) I figured it was a bit 
of an overstatement, for effect. But a funny effect.

>    When I heard about what Norm did, I expressed my annoyance, and 
> told him to fix it. I said that I didn't mind that it was up as long 
> as any personally identifiable information was removed. I also told 
> him that he got me into this mess, it was up to him to get me out, I 
> did not want to spend time and effort cleaning up his shit. there were 
> two things that could make things right, either remove my name/e-mail 
> etc, or get the story removed. Either way, I wanted it done NOW. I 
> assume, though I never saw the mails, that he did it. 

And here's part of the problem. He did make the attempt, and in his 
email he did threaten to sic a lawyer on us.

>/Mr. Demerjian demands that you remove the story attributed to him from your
/>/website immediately.  If you fail to do so his attourney will be in touch
/>/with your organization within the week.

/

So, when I read this in his letter, me personally, I got my back up a 
bit. Norm's post didn't say 'Oh, I did it,  I shouldn't have, I'd like 
it down', which you say is the real situation. So not to speak for other 
members of the collective, but I was a little ticked when we got his 
email. We've got no real assets - which means there's little to lose, 
but no easy way to deal with being sued.

>    As for the 'furor' that this cause, it shows the immaturity of the 
> site. 

I prefer the term 'age-impaired', actually. And for me, the threat in 
Norm's email wasn't very mature, either.

> While there is no editorial policy that covers this, why the hell 
> didn't you do like you said in the post, and call  me or write me? 

Because we'd hidden the post.

> It is obvious that you can type, and form nearly complete or better 
> sentences.

Why thank you!

> If you had put those skill to use months ago, I would have told you 
> the above. 

And that would have helped.

> Does the indy media have nothing better to do than make up 
> conspiracies and think the world is out to get them? 

Oh, we do - making up conspiracies is just one of our lesiure time 
activites ;-)

> I am absolutely shocked that noone tried to contact either of us. This 
> organization need to do a lot of growing up. 

Well, yes. You're right, we should have followed through with the 
contact as well as removing the post. But we did remove the post, and 
your contact information. As someone with some level of computer skills, 
you're more than welcome to come and contribute to our maturity process. 
(And it'll give me someone to geek out with...)

>    That said, think about this. If I post a story that I made up under 
> the name 'Cardinal Bernard Law' detailing how I molest little boys, 
> and G W Bush holds the video camera and uses his influence to keep the 
> FBI out of my hair while we both jack off, do you leave the post until 
> you hear from the real cardinal, from the spoofed address that looks 
> real? 

While we don't have media lawyers at our beck-and-call, I do know that 
there are more freedoms for commenting on people who are public figures 
such as politicians and major members of the Catholic hierarchy. You, on 
the other hand, are not such a public figure (yet... we're giving you 
time... ) so that's part of the reason we did pull the post. Attribution 
of posts, given our open-publishing policy, is somewhat a weakness. The 
new site will have 'email verification' whereby people who want to can 
get some control over what name or handle things are published under.

> Can you people say lawsuit? 

Well, Norm sure did...

> And they will win. 

They may not. IMC has had a few legal threats, mostly on a network-wide 
level, and we've been somewhat successful, although I don't know if 
that's because it was a bogus charge or our pro-bono legal team was 
awesome.

> Look at what Falwell did to Hustler magazine for how far freedom of 
> the press goes.
>    That said, glad you liked the story. I am a little concerned that 
> Norm posted my phone number in an open forum, but what the hell. Also 
> I don't recall threatening to sick my attorneys on anyone, but I might 
> have done so. Call it a 50-50 shot. If you do need verification that I 
> am me, and so on and so forth, as a few other people on the forum have 
> said, tracking is a bitch on the net. I would suggest that you look 
> for my stuff where I write. I write for the Inquirer 
> (www.theinquirer.net), but the search feature does not include the 
> author field (DOH!). I also write a lot on the Aces Hardware forum 
> (www.aceshardware.com). Find me, compare writing styles. Enjoy. A 
> phone call or an e-mail would have been easier in the short and long 
> term. Funny how, with all the threats of action on the forum, nothing 
> was done. While I am a liberal leaning democrat, I also have a little 
> thing about stupidity. I can't stand it. This whole affair, or at 
> least indy media's reaction, and lack or action pushes me a little 
> more toward the right (or is it wrong?), and definitely reaffirms my 
> dim views of the entire indy media scene. 

Well, you're welcome to view us dimly, but as I said at first, we did 
pull things from the site. Yours, or rather, Norm's, was the first email 
like that we'd gotten. There are many other people who find the 
relatively unfiltered nature of IMC newswires a major shortcoming. I 
think we're near the looser end of the scale - some IMCs will pull rants 
that we leave up - but the theory about open publishing is that it makes 
up for the losers by getting real folks to give real reports about what 
happened, like yours. In a way, being on the site makes you not only an 
IMC-er, but in the words of one commenter 'an IMC award for excellence' 
winner. Personally, I'd give us a B minus - we did get the post down, we 
didn't do the followup.

>   That said, while it is probably to late, since google and a dozen 
> other places have the story, with attribution, please do remove my 
> name and ID from the the story. Also, feel free to post this, I am 
> giving you permission. If you do, I would like an e-mail with a link 
> to where it was posted, just so I can read it. I have some trepidation 
> about having further words posted at such a lax site, but what the 
> hell, worse things have happened to me on the net. 

I can't (in three minutes) find anywhere where it's archived, and I have 
no idea how to deal with a 'this is in your archive and the author 
doesn't want it there' request. If you can send a link, I suppose we 
could try to get it changed. I have forwarded the email with my response 
to the IMC editorial list for the TC site. Personally, I'd like to get 
your story back on the site (as I said, funny and telling) with whatever 
handle you'd like in that pesky 'author' field.

Thanks,
John Slade
TC-IMC web-edit volunteer

-- 
 

Fascism is: A fuzzy totalitarianism characterized by selective populism, contempt for the weak, fear of difference, obsession with plots, and a cult of tradition.

        Umberto Eco 

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a 
merger of state and corporate power.

        Benito Mussolini

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