Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 15:09:25 -0400 To: Liza Kessler , jellicle@inch.com From: Mike Godwin Subject: Re: [ALAOIF:16552] Re: On list-takeovers and lack of utility Cc: Mike Godwin I sat down with Seth and with Eric Grimm at CFP this year -- Eric had suggested that if we all sat down together we could work out our differences. I was skeptical, as you may imagine, but thought it would be amusing to try. Seth spoke for hours about all the awful things I've done to him. When I would interpolate comments or questions -- "Seth, could you explain exactly how it is that I've increased the risk that you will be sued?" -- he'd get more upset, and when Eric would explain to him that many of his imagined fears were ungrounded in actual fact or law, Seth did this kind of amazing blink-and-ignore response. It was fun in a perverse way. Seth's notion of burying the hatchet was his proposal that I simply agree to the truth of every nasty claim he's ever made about me, and "admit" that I have been lying about everything all along. I suggested gently that, you know, sometimes people disagree about events not because one is lying but because they have different perspectives and memories of things. This got the blink-and-ignore response. All differences of opinion with Seth are explicable only in terms of the evilness of the non-Seth person, you see. Seth entertainingly defended his attempt to smear me as a sexual harasser when I was at EFF. "I was just reporting what someone told me," he said. Of course, it was the off-the-wall sexual-harassment claim that finally convinced me that Seth is utterly insane. As I remember, Eric later told me that he hoped Seth would never get as angry at him as he is at me. "I hope so too, for your sake," I told him. I have since seen (albeit indirectly) poor Eric be assaulted by Seth in a mailing list. I have no idea what Eric's current take on all this is, but his growing irritation was evident in his responses to Seth. I also think rather less of James Tyre for being a Seth-enabler, but there you go. --Mike At 2:14 PM -0400 6/6/01, Liza Kessler wrote: >Jim is right. I just can't imagine you being happy to have set >precedent that way. :) > >BTW, Mike Godwin is now a Fellow at CDT. Judging from how hysterical >Seth became at the reference to Godwin's law and the satirical "Nazi >propaganda" posters, this has in no way changed Seth's feelings. > >For a little while in the CIPA debate, I was afraid I was going to >become the next casualty. > >Liza Kessler > >At 11:14 AM 6/1/01, [Michael Sims] wrote: >>On Friday 01 June 2001 10:04, Seth Finkelstein wrote: >> >> > [P.S.: Ironically, Michael Sims later became a Slashdot editor, >> >>The true irony of the situation is that Seth Finkelstein, censor and >>stalker extraordinaire, is posting about noise on a mailing list. >> >>For those who don't know him, Seth is a net-loon. There's no one simple >>definition of a net-loon, but I'll try: an obsessive, typically slightly >>delusional, individual who has extremely strong yet deluded beliefs and is >>willing to go to ridiculous lengths in internet conversation forums to >>defend them. In general, if after reading a bunch of responses from one >>individual you have this thought, "That guy has nothing better to do than >>to write obsessive responses to this online forum", you're dealing with a >>net-loon. >> >>Seth has posted something on the order of 1000 harassing messages to the >>web forums at slashdot.org, my current employer, attacking me. So Seth >>talking about disrupting conversational forums is laugh-out-loud funny. >>He's also emailed my supervisor dozens of times demanding that I be fired, >>and when he gets really off his rocker, he occasionally makes obscene >>crank calls to my home phone number. Why? Because I posted another >>message much like this one a few years ago, pointing out that he's a >>net-loon to another email list that he was in the process of destroying. >>Over the years he has also harassed several other people who dared to >>confront him: Mike Godwin, who was a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier >>Foundation; Declan McCullagh, a reporter for Wired News, me; and most >>recently, Eric Grimm, another lawyer pursuing free speech cases. In each >>case he has followed a similar pattern - massively harassing them in >>various email lists, writing to their employer demanding that they be >>fired, etc. >> >>The really supreme irony is that the only reason I haven't filed suit >>against him for harassment is that I've been begged not to by Jim Tyre, >>who is convinced it would set a bad precedent for online speech. >> >>-- >>Michael Sims -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- "I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy ...." --Walt Whitman Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-637-9800 His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic . --------------------------------------------------------------------