Well, no, I simply feel it is courteous to provide a response to clarify my position and acknowledge another's post. Of course, your specious assertions also demanded a response, lest they be construed as the last word on the subject.

Of course, you appear to feel differently about proper conduct, assuming an air of insulting superiority to reinforce insubstantial contentions and give the impression yours is the final word on the matter. You should be apprised of the fact that this behavior does nothing but portray you as a pompous, self-impressed twit.

It has apparently escaped your notice that you argued giving a signed piece of paper to someone essentially transferred your right of identity to them, so that they might "... do anything I could do."

In the case of the Twitter accounts, the authors of the tweets usurped the identity of the actual account holder. They did not state, "This post was made by Comic Con on the behalf of so-and-so." They impersonated the account holder.

Black's Law Dictionary's definition of identity: http://thelawdictionary.org/identity/

I don't need to further assert what is demonstrable, legal fact. A signature is not an identity, it is nothing more than a legal instrument. Period.

By the way, you seem to conflate a signature with identity. They are not the same thing. When you empower someone to act in your behalf, with a signature, they must do so under their own identity. To assume your identity is still a prosecutable malfeasance. If you conspire with them toward that end, you may be prosecuted, as well.

... we need to address the blasphemy of secret courts. This is the greater stain on the legacy of the Founding Fathers.

Physically they can illicitly take your signature and manipulate the resulting document, but legally they cannot. That is the point here.

While you may have a point regarding the act of giving such permission being an indictment against one's judiciousness, that has no immediate bearing on whether one has such a reputation in the first place.

Obviously, significance is in the eye of the reputation holder, potentially to be determined by the court.

The real point is making this an expensive enough episode for the perpetrators to discourage such behavior in the future. By most accounts, it came as a surprise to the victims that postings had been made without their approval. This creates considerable question as to whether the perps made a good-faith effort to inform them of what they were agreeing to.

Garnering misplaced trust may not be actionable in and of itself, but deceit to gain and or abuse of that trust can be. A material question, then, is whether the attendees so exploited actually had a "100x cooler" experience or whether they felt betrayed, ripped-off and demeaned. Evidence suggests the latter and actionable misconduct by Comic Con.

Astroturfing is reprehensible enough without hijacking peoples' identities to do it.

Harm to one's reputation or public image is a demonstrable and prosecutable harm. If one were to enjoy a reputation as a sensible and judicious person, some of the comments I've seen, which were purported to be the postings in question, would do harm to it.

Your comment does draw further attention to the potential harm that might befall the readers of such postings, who would have been wilfully mislead.

In ghost writing the individual for whom the writing service is provided has knowledge of the product and editorial rights over it. The people whose identities were abused, here, had no such opportunity to control what was published under their names.

To suggest that I "cheapen the meaning of everything" is offensive, cheap, and wrong. It is you who cheapen the milieu of rational discourse at Slashdot. You should be ashamed.

No, that was just an example of a right you can't sign away. Indeed, a closer analogy would be indentured servitude, a contract that was "freely" entered into, but wherein one relinquished one's rights as an individual, for a specified period. Note that it was the same stroke of the pen that eliminated slavery, which also eliminated indentured servitude .

What your are describing is a situation where the word posted did, in fact, originate with you; you simply want to disown them after the fact. That is substantially different than the case where the words did not originate with you and you were given no opportunity to vet them before they were assigned to you.

They can do those things on your behalf, but it must be so stated, legally and formally and they may not assume your identity to do so. They must do so under their own identity, on your behalf.

Someone cannot apply for credit, file their taxes, or vote under another's identity, even with the rightful identity holder's complicity. The people whose identities were hijacked were not the only victims here, by any means. Those who read the posts were deliberately given the impression that the individual posts were the product of the person whose identity was attached to the post. That's fraud. Prosecute them.

An established principle in the law is that there are certain rights you cannot sign away. For instance, you cannot legally, voluntarily or otherwise, enter into slavery in the United States of America. It remains for the courts to decide if one's identity is one of those rights. Prosecute them.

... for identity theft. Period.