Look, if I apply for a job, the last thing I want them to know is personal data about me. If I played WoW, I would want to keep that private, because people are petty and opinionated, and the less they know about you, the less they don't like. That's my reason for freaking out about it. The long term record-keeping quality of the internet means that anonymity keeps my opinions, my hobbies, and my interests separate from the database containing my real name. It's not that I'm ashamed of it, it's that I refuse to submit to the whims and prejudices of others.

That's because fundamentally we only have 1 group in power:
People Who Want You To Do What They Say.
We have no liberty, only lip-service to an ethereal concept we label "liberty". It's still possible for a majority of voters to vote to take away or prevent the granting of rights to people who do not conform to the majority's standard. I'm straight, but the fact that people can vote to prevent gays from marrying means it's NOT a free country. We are instead oppressed by our leaders AND our peers instead of just our leaders.

If voting allowed us to change the world, we would not be permitted to do it.

Three words:

Kill

Your

Masters

Yeah, when Apple says they "require their suppliers to treat their employees with dignity and respect" is that written into the contract, or just something Apple says to the press when the factory boss goes and roughs up an employee? I would bet that it's not in the contract.

Very true. Every person, religious or not, feels that certain things are untrue. Most Christians, Jews, and Muslims would agree that Ganesh is a fable. "Elephant-headed god, indeed!" they'd say. Then you tell them that you don't believe in their god, and they think you're a bigot. I don't just "not believe", I actively disbelieve. There's a huge difference there, and many people need to be less mealy-mouthed and own up to their active disbelief and its difference from passive nonbelief. To not believe is to not put faith in an assertion. To disbelieve is to think the assertion is very likely to be incorrect. A "not proven" verdict is different from "not guilty".

True that. I was raised Evangelical, it took a couple of slick-haired, slick talking ministers to convince me, at age 30, that it was all crap. I had gone through conflicts with my family regarding gay rights, the value of free choice and not theocratic rule, science vs. biblical literalism, but the ministers clinched it. Everyone who serves one of these fake-smile, lie about how good your life is megachurches should realize they've destroyed my faith and I can never have it back. You see, even by choice, you can't will yourself to believe in something your brain thinks is complete crap. Oh, believe me, faced with obliteration and the nothingness of actual death, I tried. It can't be done. I'm an Atheist, and even if I found a belief system I liked better, I couldn't just will myself to believe something just because I liked it better. Truth is ugly but at least it's real. YMMV and if you've seen evidence for a god, it's logical for you to believe in one. I just haven't, so it's logical for me not to.

Only this time it was the newb who came in and fucked with everyone else. They asked him to stop it. So, it's kind of analogous to the reverse of your example of the surfers. There's a bit of a difference between surfing a wave and grabbing a person's avatar and throwing it to a squad of high level NPCs. Neither is evil, but I don't think your analogy is analogous in the sense that you used it.

He's not wrong to play that way, he's wrong to think that the other players should tolerate it happily. He shouldn't be banned unless he pisses off a LOT of people (game companies are in the business of selling fun, and if he makes their product suck, they'll sacrifice him to the fun gods and permaban him.)

I played COH for about 2 years. It's a decent MMO. Regardless of whether these social customs and the expectation to follow them are reasonable, they are the "law of the land". He has his choice to play the game, they have their choice to play with him or not. If he was simply TPing them into monsters, fair deal. If he was exploiting the map and TPing them into a STUCK condition near monsters, well, that's just evil cheating.

You wouldn't think a sociologist would need to do long term research to discover that intentionally and repeatedly breaking social customs leads to ostracism.

Yeah, I've been using ISO for a while and nobody seems to come back around with my records asking questions about it. It seems more intuitive even to those uninitiated.

Related to defamation is public disclosure of private facts, which arises where one person reveals information that is not of public concern, and the release of which would offend a reasonable person. However, it WAS of public concern within the organization. It is necessary to communicate to employees the importance of following protocols put in place, and the consequences of failure to do so. It was not released publicly, but internally, right? If I were photographed picking my nose, and the photo were made public, would that be a disclosure of private facts if the photograph was taken at my birthday party? How about through my car window? In my front yard? We're not talking about a thing which is done in private- turning in an expense report is not an act which carries an expectation of privacy in the same manner that using a bathroom stall or going to your physician would have.

Well, the issue here then is privacy- do we have a right to privacy for such things? Not in current law that I am aware of. It is quite a different thing to say he was terminated for violation of policy than to say he stole money or double dipped. They stated their reason, not an allegation of his behavior. It is reasonable to assume that when a person says "I broke up with Helen because she was not faithful" means that the unfaithfulness is the opinion, not necessarily the fact. If the person had said "Helen was unfaithful to me. I broke up with her." , that's actually a very distinctly different statement. It's a subject-verb thing here. If they said they fired him for X, that's not a direct allegation. If they said he did X and was fired, that's an allegation.

I totally disagree. If the plaintiff is aware that the "libel" is in fact truthful, wouldn't any such suit be a S.L.A.P.P? If you know that the suit has no merit and your reason for filing the suit is to silence the person who is speaking the truth, it would seem to be a S.L.A.P.P no matter what was said. Malice? Can it really be malicious to tell the truth out of anger? Can we be sued for libel because we outed someone's secrets? Blackmail is illegal, but is telling the truth in order to hurt someone?