Posted by Genghis [130.15.126.81 - webproxy.QueensU.CA] on 01 May 2002 at 17.39.39 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: So Ford lured Wheezy into a chat with us today.... posted by Hunter on 01 May 2002 at 03.40.43 ZuluTime:

Jesus Christ, I've had it. Please excuse me for butting in, and for playing devil's advocate. I'm just a law student flexing my mental muscle. And as I've seen legal terminology thrown around incorrectly on this message board a lot lately, I felt I should clear some things up. It kind of pisses me off to see adults abusing legal terminology to browbeat, intimidate, and frighten little children. It seems to me exteremly immature and immensely frustrating. I guess that in my years away from this site I've started to grow up. I'm not sure I can say the same for everybody else here.

Well, let's get started, shall we?

EvilCoffeeChick:: There is no 'hired
     staff' if it's voluntary.

That's just not true. I myself have been hired -- by a legal coroporation, no less -- and yet receive no pay. I have a permanent voluntary staff position. I work about ten hours a week and receive no pay, no salary. That I have been hired means that I can be fired. I can, indeed, be fired without receiving pay. This is necessary in so many volunteer services where people not doing their jobs -- or doing their jobs badly -- could screw things up. I am living proof.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Unless you have a
     business license, and intend to pay
     them, with all the correct paperwork
     filed, you cannot go around 'hiring'
     and 'firing' people.

Being as you can legally 'hire' people into volunteer service, and volunteer service needs no business license, actually, that's perfectly A-OK.

Kichigai Lain: You can't hire a minor for
     that little pay.
     EvilCoffeeChick:: Nope. Improper
     terms of hiring. Try again.

Of course we've been through this. Of course hiring for $0/day -- minor or not -- is perfectly legal and legitimate.

EvilCoffeeChick:: You can't hire anyone
     for that little pay; you can't hire a
     minor at all. IF these kids knew
     anything about business law, they'd
     know that.

Okay, so business law contradicts your first point. As for the second, the term 'minor,' as I understand it, doesn't apply here at all ('minor' being defined as a person below twenty-one years of age, at least in most states). That said, I see the point you're getting at. Actually, you're wrong. You cannot hire children (below sixteen in most states, I think) at full- or part-time salaried positions. They can be hired for some casual paid contract work (that's how we can have paper delivery boys and girls), and they can be hired for volunteer service. That, I believe, is the issue in contention here.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Lain: Then it must be
     that this is a business operating
     without a license, hiring minors, not
     paying them, and firing them
     abusively. I'll bet they have
     sweatshoppes, too.

Well, I don't know about the sweatshops: but the rest is all right. Well, not so the firing them abusively. However, I doubt that any of this would count as harassment. Harassment is defined as 'a course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress in such a person and serves no legitimate purpose.' I would call it impossible to prove that this has caused 'substatntial emotional distress.'

But let's look a little further, shall we? Harassment legally occurs 'if with purpose to harass another, [a person]: 1) makes a phone call without a legitimate purpose; or 2) insults, taunts or challenges another in a manner likely to provoke violent or disorderly response; or 3) calls at inconvenient hours or in offensive language; or 4) subjects another to offensive touching; or 5) engages in any other course of alarming conduct serving no legitimate purpose of the actor.' I would rule one, three, and four out immediately. As for two, proving that this was 'likely to provoke violent or disorderly response' would be a bitch in any courtroom. You might have a chance on number five -- but you would have to prove that this fellow engaged in 'alarming' behavior. Again, this would be insanely difficult to prove in court.

As a matter of fact, as I read this transcript further, it strikes me that your actions -- by your own admission luring a child into a chat room and castigating and threatening -- would more substantively count as 'harassment.'

EvilCoffeeChick:: And that's classified
     as, all together now, "INTERSTATE
     FRAUD!"

I'm not sure from which statements you've come to this conclusion. I see no signs of it, however. No district attorney would touch this with a twenty-foot pole.

EvilCoffeeChick:: nimo: His getting a
     second name to namecall her again is,
     however. Stalking and harassment.

So we've shown this almost certainly isn't harassment. Stalking? Hell, no.

Stalking, although it varies from state to state, is generally defined thusly:

(a) A person commits an offense if the person, on more than one occasion and pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct that is directed specifically at another person, knowingly engages in conduct, including following the other person, that:

(1) the actor knows or reasonably believes the other person will regard as threatening:

(A) bodily injury or death for the other person;

(B) bodily injury or death for a member of the other person's family or household; or

(C) that an offense will be committed against the other person's property;

(2) causes the other person or a member of the other person's family or household to be placed in fear of bodily injury or death or fear that an offense will be committed against the other person's property; and

(3) would cause a reasonable person to fear:

(A) bodily injury or death for himself or herself;

(B) bodily injury or death for a member of the person's family or household; or

(C) that an offense will be committed against the person's property.

If you define what's just happened as stalking -- if you claim that any of these wankers are stalking you or Trill -- then not only are you grossly wrong (even under vaunted cyberstalking laws), you are also committing -- ahem -- a libelous act.

So you might want to tone it down.

Kichigai Lain: I lost $3200.

Of course your calculations were bunk. You cannot create an invisible contract and impose it retroactively without agreement. If you sued this bugger for $3200 you wouldn't just be laughed out of court, you would almost certainly be counter-sued for frivilous litigation.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Lain: Most people
     ignore fraud when it's perpetrated
     by children who go around hiring
     people for a dotcom in a dying
     dotcom world.

Maybe you can explain this to me. But in light of all we've covered above, I find it exceedingly difficult to discern anything in this whole mess that could reasonably count as 'fraud'.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimmy: I see no 'this
     is a work of satire' disclaimer.

Okay, now, fortunately, this country doesn't require those sorts of disclaimers, or we'd be burning copies of News of the Stoopid right now. I think you'd have to go far in a courtroom to prove that a resaonable person (henceforth defined as 'Trillian') would believe this crackpot. And I think, from her own words, it would be impossible to do so.

EvilCoffeeChick:: That's what you're not
     understanding here, isn't it? You
     don't get that saying 'you're fired'
     is a 'bad thing' because if you say it
     to the wrong person, you cause
     losses, and, eventually, cause
     yourself to get hurt.

Okay, it seems to me you're claiming -- explicitly and implicitly -- that this deal constitutes libel. It does not, on any grounds. At the very least, recognize that this was a personal conversation that was only made public by the potential plaintiff: thus it is not published material; thus it is not public announcement; thus it constitutes neither slander nor libel. Get your facts straight, please.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Do you now understand
     the illegality of claiming to have
     'fired' someone you never hired?
     Or do I have to explain how 'fired'
     immediately implies that you are
     required to give them severance pay
     and unemployment?

So we've pointed out the porblems with the former statement. As for the latter, a person 'fired' from a volunteer organization has no right to demand severance or unemployment! That's absurd. (If it was true, I'd be stealing more than staplers from my office right now.) I'm not certain that firing a person requires an employer to provide severance at all (unless we're dealing with a union, which in this case we're not), and I believe a person has to work for a considerable amount of time to qualify for unemployment insurance: longer, than, say, three lines of a chat transcript. Although, I'll admit, this is not my area of expertise.

EvilCoffeeChick:: I don't care if I've
     never heard of you in my life. If I
     go around saying, oh yeah, this guy
     'nimo' [if I were just making up
     names], yeah, we fired him a while
     ago. That's /not legal/.

That's Equivocation with a capital 'E'. Not only is this silly little bastard not communicating this to potential employers (the initial conversation, remember, was private), but no employer would possibly believe this! Thus it cannot count as libel, and it is not illegal. People can lie; lawyers do it all the time.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimmy: So, the
     records of these chats on AOL's
     servers aside, nobody else would
     know.

Exactly. If you're implying that records on a private server that will never be released to the public legally constitutes 'public declaration' or 'publication,' I'd reccomend increasing your perscriptions.

EvilCoffeeChick:: It doesn't matter if
     she was, or wasn't. It was SAID.
     It's a matter of /record/ now.

Sorry to go over the same points again and again. It's a matter of record by Trill's own volition: a private conversation is just that: private. It was Trillian, not wheezy or anybody else, that made it a matter of record, by posting it here.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimmy: We all know
     what you aspire to be. False
     analogy, though.

Again, his analogy is the more correct. There is no matter of record here.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimmy: I'm not a
     lawyer, dipshit.

Okay, that much is true.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Odd, why don't they
     have a .edu? Real schools are given
     .edus....

Okay, now you're being a fucking moron. To claim that a school isn't federally recognized because it doesn't have a '.edu' domain name is utter tripe. Christ, I've been to two high schools -- including one of the best in the country -- and now I'm at university, and I'm starting at another one next year, and none of them have websites that end in '.edu'. I'd love to see some documentation of the idea that a high school without a '.edu' domain name isn't 'real' or 'recognized'. Crikey.

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimmy: Then it's a
     public school. OR they're breaking the
     law.

Still with the stoopid. Private schools and universities and colleges receive public endowments all of the time. It's not much different from, say, subsidizing a private corporation: which happens regularly, and is not illegal. Where do you get these notions?

EvilCoffeeChick:: Nimo: I would but then
     I'd have to give you my password into
     the online OED, so you could see it
     too.

Since you mention it . . . From the Oxford English Dictionary, 1998 edition: theism noun belief in gods or a god. (theist noun one who believes in gods or a god; theistic adjective having the quality of belief in gods or a god.)

EvilCoffeeChick:: Wheezy: At least it
     doesn't act as if the laws of this
     pathetic country are a fucking joke.

After that I lost interest. I think this is a good note to end on, however.

Don't you?