“This Is the BIGGEST Case of Internet Harassment Yet Seen in History, That Much Is Certainly So. This Is the First Case in Which MILLIONS of Lives Were Destroyed As a Result of the Harassment Campaign. That’s All the More Reason to Be Certain It Is Prosecuted, No?”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

“If a site owner bans people from his site solely because those people have posted honestly on safe withdrawal rate, that is fraud. That gets you put into prison.”

A site owner can ban anyone, for any reason. Except for you, no one has ever suggested otherwise. You cannot link to a single example of anyone who was ever subjected to the slightest punishment (let alone prison) for banning someone. And yet for your scenario to make any sense, you have to make this wild leap from the zero punishment reality to a mass imprisonment fantasy.

Kind of a tough sell, isn’t it?

You cannot link to a single example of anyone who was ever subjected to the slightest punishment (let alone prison) for banning someone.

If you spend a few minutes searching on Google, you will find lots of cases in which someone was held liable for internet harassment. The law is not as developed in this area as it is in many other areas because the internet is a relatively new thing. But the caselaw relating to the internet is certainly in the process of being developed and generally not in a good way for you Goons.

this wild leap from the zero punishment reality to a mass imprisonment fantasy.

This is the BIGGEST case of internet harassment yet seen in history, that much is certainly so. This is the first case in which MILLIONS of lives were destroyed as a result of the harassment campaign. That’s all the more reason to be certain it is prosecuted, no? As a people we do not want to see millions of lives destroyed because some internet Goon is embarrassed for people to learn that he got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted to his web site.

If we want this internet thing to do some good in the world, we need to be sure to see cases like this prosecuted. That is how we change the world for the better. Or at least so it seems to Old Farmer Hocus. I would like to see some good come of this, Anonymous. Call me madcap. We have seen thousands of good people express a desire that we all be permitted to use the internet for the purposes for which it was created. Let’s do it, you know? We are not going to get there by worrying what you Goons might say about us if we post our sincere views. We are all going to have to work up a little backbone to get from the horrible place where we reside today to the wonderful place where deep in our hearts we all (including you Goons!) want to be tomorrow.

Everything good that ever happened in the world was achieved through the playing out of a process. THIS IS THE PROCESS. I wish it was a prettier picture, you know? It is what it is. This is the process that we are stuck with in this particular case. We can move forward and help millions learn what it takes to retire early or we can let the poison that you Goons have injected into the bloodstreams of our communities kill us all. I vote for moving forward. No apologies.

I don’t know about the mass imprisonment thing. My guess as to how this will go down is that there will be proposals for enactment of an amnesty following the next price crash. I don’t believe that everyone will be covered by the amnesty. But I believe that most of those who are at risk will be. That’s something that we will need to work out together as a community of people. I personally do not envision mass imprisonments. But I do expect to see imprisonment of the worst cases. We will have to wait to see how it all plays out to find out for sure.

My best wishes, Goon friend.

Rob