Can we ban joseph, Loran, and Simon?

[_asbestosman]

Using photos without permission is much, much, much more common than any other sort of copyright violation - much more than pirating music or movies. I have yet to see a single online forum where "unauthorized" use of copyrighted images wasn't common throughout the whole site.

Thanks for ignoring my actual point. That's why you're one of my favorite posters. Yes, Buffalo, you are correct. However, it has nothing to do with the question of legality or even morality. If you wish to address my point, please establish that how common it is has a bearing on the question of legality rather than simply re-emphasizing how commonplace it is.

[_sock puppet]

Even the few among you who really do have some advanced education and intellectual heft can't break out of this mold and into the arena of ideas with serious apologists.

When are you folks going to take your training wheels off and engage us apologists in serious, civil, rational discussion of our differences, and cut out the High School in-group giggling and finger pointing?

You know, Droopy, the apologists confine themselves to nibbling on the fringes, declaring as major a success if they can validate but the most obscure and incidental claim of Mormonism, or refute the most ridiculous strawman they can possibly have imagined and set up.

Critics can be suckered into just engaging the apologists, keeping the discussion on the fringe, the most tangential problems for Mormonism. Or the critics can keep perspective, and their eyes and their discussions on the mountain of evidence against Mormonism's truth claims. It is why Mormon defenders shy away or attempt to hi-jack a thread that takes Mormonism head on, such as this recent one, Are Defenders simply incorrigible? that I started. Apart from its veering off into the IQ differences between Mormon believers and atheists (which difference I thought unremarkable, particularly in light of the recent Christian migration to atheism), the only posts among the 137 that were by defenders were complaints that they did not like the OP rather than addressing the problematic mountain of evidence head on. Midway through page 6, I again noted how there had been not a single defender address the substance of the OP. Indeed, I have not seen you attempt to take a whack at that mountain of evidence.

So, Droopy, I can certainly understand why you would again sound the siren call to critics, trying to invite them down to the floor where the apologists nibble on a crumb or two of cheese that has fallen to the floor. But it is a mere effort to avert the critics' eyes and noses from how stinky that big piece of cheese yet on the table really is.

[_schreech]

Teabaggers...uh huh. Keep exposing yourself for what you are schreech. I won't try to stop you.

lol - what am i?

I have engaged in a great deal of "apologetics" over the years, defending the church at the MADboards, at a defunct board called "Answering Mormonism" (dating to the late nineties), two very left leaning email lists on Yahoo, Mormon-L and Mormon Thinker.and here, over the last five years or so.

Um, so? I am guessing there isn't a single LDS apologist that would claim you...Just because you have access to a thesaurus and love to regurgitate LDS/Bircher talking points, doesn't mean you are an "apologist"...

....dear elohim....you are an angry, sad, little man...

So, what real world changes have you actually initiated with all your, barely coherent, internet bloviating?

[Guest]

Using photos without permission is much, much, much more common than any other sort of copyright violation - much more than pirating music or movies. I have yet to see a single online forum where "unauthorized" use of copyrighted images wasn't common throughout the whole site.

Thanks for ignoring my actual point. That's why you're one of my favorite posters. Yes, Buffalo, you are correct. However, it has nothing to do with the question of legality or even morality. If you wish to address my point, please establish that how common it is has a bearing on the question of legality rather than simply re-emphasizing how commonplace it is.

Laws that are routinely ignored by the vast majority of people in a position to either follow or break them have no real authority. These laws aren't enforced. No one seems to care about them. Why should I? A law that isn't enforced isn't really a law. Let's not treat laws like commandments from on high.

I care about this as much as I care about the legality of jaywalking on an isolated country road.

[Guest]

Using photos without permission is much, much, much more common than any other sort of copyright violation - much more than pirating music or movies. I have yet to see a single online forum where "unauthorized" use of copyrighted images wasn't common throughout the whole site.

Thanks for ignoring my actual point. That's why you're one of my favorite posters. Yes, Buffalo, you are correct. However, it has nothing to do with the question of legality or even morality. If you wish to address my point, please establish that how common it is has a bearing on the question of legality rather than simply re-emphasizing how commonplace it is.

Except to lawyers sitting a law exam, the question of whether or not an action is 'legal' or not is, in itself, of limited interest. What matters is whether any court is likely to take an action based on the alleged infringement of the law seriously.

This post by MsJack on another thread is very much to that point:

by the way, I noticed this today at the DMCA Wikipedia page (emphasis mine):

The law is currently unsettled with regard to websites that contain links to infringing material; however, there have been a few lower-court decisions which have ruled against linking in some narrowly prescribed circumstances. One is when the owner of a website has already been issued an injunction against posting infringing material on their website and then links to the same material in an attempt to circumvent the injunction. Another area involves linking to software or devices which are designed to circumvent DRM (digital rights management) devices, or links from websites whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright protection by linking to copyrighted material.[4]

There have been no cases in the US where a website owner has been found liable for linking to copyrighted material outside of the above narrow circumstances.

So there ya go. As far as "hotlinking" to infringing content goes, MDB did absolutely nothing wrong.

[_Kishkumen]

Well said, sock. The apologists are at a big disadvantage, since the fundamental claims of Mormonism cannot withstand scrutiny outside of the assumptions of faith. On a historical basis, it is a complete disaster. Obviously, the only weapon they have, and it is a sorry one to be sure, is "oh, yeah, well you can't prove it isn't true." To which I will always respond, "why should I think it is in the first place?"

There really is no good answer to the latter question. The discussion is over before it even began.

[_Droopy]

And this is sad on some level, because it's easy to get the sense that Droopy could be a decent apologist if he'd adopt some Christ-like humility and if he'd find a way to get over his inferiority complex.

There are, perhaps two things that might help you before it becomes too late, Scratch. The first is intensive, long term psychotherapy. The second is being dropped from a C-5 Galaxy into the Alaskan wilderness with only a loin cloth, a Bowie knife, and a bag of gummie bears. By the time you came back to us out of that experience, you might actually have become a human being with some sense of proportion regarding this life, and the most salient priorities within it.

What he wants more than anything is for people to respect his intellect---he wants people to think that he's well-educated and smart, and while it's clear that he's ingested a ton of right-wing propaganda and think-tank "scholarship," I cannot think of a single person---critic or TBM--who would single Droopy out as a bright, shining, intellectual Light on the Hill.

You don't know what anybody thinks of me Scratch, outside of my hostile interlocutors here and the tiny cell of LDS leftists that buzz around the periphery of the Church and surface in message boards, now and then (or congregate at places like MESJ) where they feel freer to articulate their views.

In fact Scratch, believe it or not, not a single person I know has ever heard of FAIR, the MADboards, this board, you, David Bokovoy, or anyone else on this board.

Droopy isn't stupid, but he's so obsessively hell-bent on demanding that people treat him like some sort of genius that he just winds up shooting himself in the foot and coming across as an angry hayseed who just fell off the Right Wing turnip truck.

Only you and the exmo posse here take this kind of thing seriously Scratch, and indeed, I'm not at all convinced, and never have been, that you are in any position to ascertain what is and is not "smart," and what is and is not intellectually substantive, let alone deep.

You can continue sniping behind your wall of anonymity all you please. You lost any credibility you had a number of years ago.

[Guest]

Stalinism? You mean McCarthyism, right?

No, I mean Stalin (Lenin, Hitler, all the same).

"Are you now, or have you ever been a Communist?"

Same difference.

No, not really. Lefists in power shut down all opposition media, censor literature, film, and art, and put dissidents in prison, gulag, or kill them. McCarthy, as bad as he was on a personal level, promoted (and had no power to enforce) any kind of censorship or intellectual repression. Indeed, virtually all of David Horowitz' professors in the fifties during his early college years were open communists, philosophically. McCarthy was not after ideologues or political philosophers who leaned toward communist (socialist) doctrines, but party members and "fellow travelers" who were directly or indirectly working for the destruction of the political, economic, and cultural values of their own civilization in the name (and pay) of a hostile foreign power. We have long known that, save for a few individuals who were unconscionably defamed and harmed by his overzealous activities, McCarthy was, for all intents and purposes, correct regarding the substantial majority of those he subpoenaed and brought to testify in his Senate hearings (including every single one of the "Hollywood Ten").

Over at the Foyer, you see, I became an LDS non-person erased from the board that the exmo faithful might remain pure. That's intellectual Stalinism, not McCarthyism.

[_sock puppet]

Well said, sock. The apologists are at a big disadvantage, since the fundamental claims of Mormonism cannot withstand scrutiny outside of the assumptions of faith. On a historical basis, it is a complete disaster. Obviously, the only weapon they have, and it is a sorry one to be sure, is "oh, yeah, well you can't prove it isn't true." To which I will always respond, "why should I think it is in the first place?"

There really is no good answer to the latter question. The discussion is over before it even began.

Thanks, Kish.

I have much more respect for the TBM that realizes that it takes and stands on his or her faith. Not so much the defender that tries to intellectually defend his or her faith as rational.

[_schreech]

You can continue sniping behind your wall of anonymity all you please. You lost any credibility you had a number of years ago.

lol - is this some sort of "i am desperate to score some kind of points", apologetic (not really in your case) response to being completely embarrassed? The next step is to claim that we are all proving your point .... you guys are getting way too predictable...fortunately, for you and your pseudo-lds ilk, i don't know any LDS that behave or think like you in real life (thank zuess)...so i can't really blame the LDS church for your level of crazy...