On 12/7/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I'm not an expert in US constitutional law; it's not my country. Sometimes it does happen though that one right can interferes with others. Reconciling those rights may lead to limitations on one or the other. I don't think that it would be fair to conclude that free speech condones defamation. Whether actual defamation could be proven cannot be established unless the person has the right to face his accuser.
The point they were trying to make is that this is a fellow who supports various civil liberties but seems to desire that it would be extremely easy for people to get intricate personal information based only on an IP address, without having the desire to actually file charges for that information. That's an attitude frowned upon by most privacy advocates, and S.'s advocacy of it sounds suspiciously like something he would not want applied as a general rule, but just in his situation, but I don't know.
Should I be granted access to anybody's personal information just because I didn't like something they wrote on an internet forum? That sort of power could be easily abused and I'm sure we've all had situations where we can recognize that it was a good thing that the nut on the other end of an electronic exchange didn't have access to our phone number much less our home address. Of course, if that nut was filing legal proceedings, that would give them standing for such information. But if they just want to casually complain -- hard to justify.
FF