On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, comex wrote: > How about Rule 101 (vi), the right of participation in the fora? > > It is physically impossible for the rules to prevent me from posting > to the fora- possible for the Distributor, perhaps, but not for the > rules themselves. So, by this tack, the Rules are just reaffirming my > natural right to post to the fora. Except that they don't. It has > been judged that the rule only applies in the circumstance that I'm > telling the truth. The right does not apply to lying, a distinction > which does not exist in any sort of "natural law".
This all rather depends on the definition of "participation". As you found in your spam scam there's a difference between sending something to a forum and "via" a forum. One sensible definition of "participation" might be "a players ability to send messages via a forum and to receive messages from a forum", a definition that has nothing to do with protecting message content. There's no reason we could pass a Rule that regulates the Distributor's mailing list (it's a recordkeepor's record after all, just one with technical consequences). I have a feeling that this sort of Rule (e.g. preventing blacklisting) was what the pre-rights "participation" affirmation was intending to protect against. I agree it's not clear and we won't know without some judge weighing in further! > Similarly with the right of refusing to agree to things. We do and > can prosecute people for violating the Rules even if they have not > agreed to them (see CFJ 2003), but not contracts. This distinction > exists only because Rule 101 says it does. This was broken when the Rules = contracts was removed. And even broken, there's no precedent there yet. All we know at the moment is that someone can allege an infringement. > Still, if I cannot amend rules by > announcement, my privilege of doing what I wilt is severely curtailed > compared to if I could. Does the last sentence of Rule 101's > preamble-- about taking precedence over any rule which would allow > restrictions of my rights or privileges-- along with the close, close > proximity of privileges to rights imply that my privilege is to be > interpreted as broadly as is reasonable? > > Certainly that is Agoran custom with rights. It's kind of too bad we > don't have other privileges as precedent. Your argument is certainly reasonable, a pity it hasn't appeared in a well-written judgement yet! Here's the counterargument for consideration: I agree we don't have a privilege precedent yet, and that the thing was made extremely unclear when Rules = contracts was removed (trivial fix needed: add "or Rule" after "binding agreement"). But as it stands, while the precedence in the final clause is important, I think the operative piece to consider is the "assumed to exist" clause, which is not strong. If we "assume" that something exists, we give it the a priori benefit of the doubt UNTIL OTHER EVIDENCE SHOWS WE ARE INCORRECT. We don't will it into being (create or grant it) the way we would if we affirmed outright that something exists (as we do for Rights). Like I said before, if I assume you can swim, that assumption works until a physical reality proved me otherwise. Likewise, if I "assume" a privilege of changing the rules by announcement exists, that holds until some CANNOT somewhere in the rules proves otherwise (this is not a conflict between rules in which R101 takes precedence, but the rather weak R101 "assumption" being shown to be an incorrect assumption by another Rule). -Goethe
