On 01/24/2013 12:47 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On 24 January 2013 15:23, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> wrote:
On 01/24/2013 07:46 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
Hi, Karl. Could you just answer the question without changing the topic?
You are not very polite.
Blunt, maybe, but i saw no personal insult. And, as a someone for whom the US Second Amendment is Someone Else's Problem, I tire of the comparison of domain names to guns and find it wholly inappropriate. So I'll support John in ridiculing the analogies.
Clearly you must have not read John L's statements, including words like "inane". When I said that his approach is "not very polite" I was being polite by avoiding stronger words such as "condescending", "insulting", or "rude". As for the gun analogy - I did not raise it. However I did find it a very apt situation in that it raises a question of principle, or to be more specific, it raises the question of what principle justifies the privacy of machines of mayhem yet justifies the breaching of privacy with regard to things that are incapable of causing physical harm to peoples' bodies? Have either you or John L. articulated any principle that would substantiate such a difference in treatment? If you have I must have missed it. The lack of a principle that justifies such a difference quite properly ought to be a cause of discomfort for those who advocate a whois that has less protection than records of far more more dangerous things. Rather than railing against one who points out the inconsistency it would make more sense to give whois at least the same level of privacy protection as given to records of gun registrations or say why such a difference is appropriate.
Neither speculation nor vanity is unlawful. Nor in many eyes are
they wrong or undesirable.
"Vanity is an excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise."<http://dahlig.deviantart.com/art/The-Seven-Deadly-Sins-VANITY-13310012>
I am glad that you make it clear that your justification rises from a personal religious belief, even if you claim to be an "atheist". What principle or law gives your religion-derived belief the power to restrict the actions of others? Clearly you are not alone in the assertion that "your belief allows you to impose that belief to control the actions of others". It was not long ago that I read about a girl named Malala who was shot just because the shooter believed that girls should not go to school. By-the-way, do you cut your hair or shave? There are those who consider those to be signs of vanity. Should such people have access to your home because of their belief in your vanity? I would suspect that your answer would be "no". Yet that accuse-and-intrude position is very close to what you are advocating. I have made it clear in all of my postings that the criteria for penetrating privacy must be an accusation, supported by concrete evidence, that a harm recognized by law has occurred. Neither vanity nor speculation in and of themselves are harms recognized by law. If you want to change that then I suggest that you try to get a law passed that declares vanity or speculation to be unlawful. (In the meantime I'll take a look at the fate of rules against charging interest on money or sumptuary laws to prevent one from wearing clothes above one's station.)
I tend to see domain speculation as no different from ticket scalping -- an act of re-sale totally devoid of added value. In the case of ticket scalping, the activity is considered unethical and indeed illegal in many jurisdictions.
There is a wide difference between "considered unethical" and "illegal". Only "illegal" is illegal. --karl--