...and some breaking news about trolls unmasked. not a comment on morality; just consequences.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/07/autoadmit

That case is mentioned in the NYT article.

yes, i read it, snarkboy.

no snark, was just mentioning it.

"Women named Jill and Hillary should be raped."

Those are the words of "AK-47"... Now lawyers for two female Yale Law School students have ascertained AK-47's real identity... potentially marking a death sentence for the comment trolls' budding legal careers even before the case has gone to trial.

I'm of two minds on this sort of thing. On the one hand, I'm a big fan of anonymity. On the other hand, these guys were giant asses, and don't belong employed in any company that also employs women.

Tough call.

Now they're asking the judge to give them additional time to try and determine the identities of the remaining defendants, who are currently being sued under their AutoAdmit handles: among others, PaulieWalnuts, Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey, The Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rollah, Patrick Bateman and HitlerHitlerHitler.

HitlerHitlerHitler. Solid handle.

Do you think HitlerHitler was taken?

Reminds me of the crying vp-threat-guy.

Yeah, I wonder what that guy's up to now. I went and looked up that post the other day. It's hard to imagine what he was thinking.

Man, I'm not even that young anymore and that article seemed really unhip to me. Two reasons:
1) I didn't need a navel-gaze-y seven-page NYT Magazine article to find out that people on the internet are dicks.
2) Sentences like: "“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium."

Re: AutoAdmit: Those guys have fervent defenders online who will come here if you attract their attention. Speaking of trolls. I haven't had time to read legal blogs lately, but I'm very interested in what sorts of laws we'll end up with to handle this sort of behavior, because it's pretty clear that we need some.

I think the laws we have in place now are pretty good. You're welcome to go after the people who post the bad stuff, but the website who hosts them is immune. It protects someone who runs a site from having to censor everything to avoid liability. Can you imagine attempting to determine what is and what is not defamatory on a large website? It would be a nightmare.

Hipness is not usually a filter I apply when choosing what to post here. I admit that the article is more pedantic than usual, but that's because a large audience of various age ranges read the NYT Magazine. Would you have preferred the author to use 'lulz' without explanation?

Or let me put it this way: I subscribe to Wired magazine, and I often enjoy their long-form articles, but sometimes Wired tries too hard to sound hip. I don't mind the sincere naivety of this article, because it works for the audience.

I wouldn't say that "people on the internet are dicks" was the main thesis of this article, or I wouldn't have posted it.

Is that why you didn't link here:

http://chardarkminion.livejournal.com/188832.html

?

I would have preferred that the editor say "Nah, that's a non-story, or a front-of-book blurb at best." Maybe "out of touch" would be a better description than "unhip." I know the audience for newspapers trends old, but it's not 1995.

What would you say the theme of the article is? I admit that I stopped on Page 2, but given that the first two pages were about how people on the internet are dicks and I have finite free time, I don't think that was unreasonable.

RD: The woman in Michigan who was cruel to her suicidal 12-year-old neighbor is being prosecuted under BS charges precisely because there's no law prohibiting what she did. I do like the protections for providers in 47 USC 230, but it doesn't cover every situation.

As I said, I think the theme is morality and ethics on decentralized networks.

The woman in Michigan was a bad, bad person, but I don't think she should be charged with anything. What are you going to charge her with, being mean to a 12 year-old? Are you also going to arrest ever middle-schooler?

She pretended to be someone, and was mean with that persona. If she had really been that person, and had been equally mean, but wasn't lying about who she was, would you charge with that crime too?

Well, I think there are legit arguments both for and against prosecuting someone in that situation. There's a difference between kids being mean to one another (which is arguably part of growing up) and adults behaving like mean children.

"Morality and ethics on decentralized networks" seems to be a highfalutin' way of saying "internet morality," and the article is about trolling.

Anyone else fascinated that some trolls are organized and extorting millions of dollars a year?

I thought it was a great article and worthy of comment, Monk.

Uh, Lorelei?

I'm very interested in what sorts of laws we'll end up with to handle this sort of behavior, because it's pretty clear that we need some.

While the trolling culture stuff was mildly interesting (agreed, Snarf, re: organization) the article was also about, and spurred a conversation about, legality of censorship. Complaining about the content of an article you admittedly haven't read more than 25% of, while at the same time discussing said article repeatedly, strikes me as a bit.... trollish.

Oh, shit, look what I started.

did Weev rent the rolls royce just to impress a journalist? does "the organization" really exist, because i feel like it's impossible to trust anything this guy says.

am i now a target?

oh jeez.

"ambient misanthropy" would be a great band name.