Posts by Bart Janssen

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  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,

    We seem to have okay for the last 162 years with laws that only go so far as discouraging calls to violence.

    I think that's the problem for me. While that law is good in its simplicity I don't believe it has done enough to prevent harm over that period. So no it isn't okay.

    One part of that is that it is only fairly recently that we've come to understand that words can do more harm ... the "man up" response hasn't helped either.

    The other part is that technology really does make a difference. The change in technology means that words have more power to do harm than they did 162 yrs ago, or even 10 years ago.

    I get that lawyers and legislators are reluctant to introduce new laws that have the potential to do harm themselves (by restricting speech) but balanced against that is the knowledge that people are being harmed and there is little in the law to prevent that harm occurring. Getting such a new law or legal entity in place and getting it right will be hard but that isn't a reason to not try.

    And for those that present totalitarian states as a consequence of limiting speech I'd suggest thinking about youth and adult suicide rates as the other extreme. Neither extreme argument is entirely helpful.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Morgan Nichol,

    That’s just how it starts.

    Slippery slope argument.

    You appear to be arguing that because a law protecting a king from insult is (in our opinion) stupid and unjust then protecting people from the harm that internet bullying does should not be pursued.

    I agree someone (presumably experienced members of a tribunal) should be in a position to exercise judgement as when the rules should or should not be applied. But that is the entire basis of our legal system - trusting experienced judges to make judgements.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Russell Brown,

    It is very difficult to put up billboards everywhere somebody goes. It is extremely easy to follow people with technology.

    There's another very important difference as Martin Cocker points out

    Assume a harmful billboard was put up. The person being targeting would almost certainly receive support from other members of the community. This stops the victim feeling as isolated, reduces the bully’s power, and reduces the harm.

    With a billboard the victim is not isolated. With internet harm, the victim can feel very much isolated from any support. That isolation in itself can be as much part of the harm as the bullying.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Emma Hart,

    I’m not sure if this is true.

    I disagree, respectfully and politely of course. I've seen behaviour in online environment that the same people would never consider in the real world. I know that's true because I've known some of the people in the real world and they just don't behave that way.

    So somehow they know good behaviour in the real world but don't know good behaviour online. Or for some reason see online as different in some way.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Emma Hart,

    I just don’t see how you take so many of these important factors into account on a large scale, with people you don’t know.

    That seems to me to be the greatest weakness for a tribunal. Just too damn hard to get all the information and make the right judgement.

    I'm all for a tribunal to work at that end of the problem, but I really think the long term solution is elsewhere.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    What might work, though, is to expose them and blow their cover

    Like Lilith I don't think that is necessarily true.

    However, I do think it highlights something interesting.

    For the most part this community is civil, polite and caring of each other - we each have bad days but we apologise and forgive.

    For the most part that is true out in the real world* as well.

    So when you find internet communities where that is very much not the case, I think that, as well as setting up laws and tribunals, it is well worthwhile exploring why the behaviour becomes and continues to be bullying or offensive.

    I don't know the answer, but I suspect it is related to the fact that all our methods of learning appropriate social behaviour relate to the real world and perhaps are not adapted well to the online world. In other words our methods of raising our children don't work for online communities.

    Perhaps the solution is looking at other ways to teach social behaviour in addition to merely legislating punishment for bad behaviour (whatever that ends up being).

    * For the purposes of discussion only I will postulate the existence of this thing called a "real world".

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Rich of Observationz,

    I don't think those things should be proscribed

    The problem is "I". What one person thinks is worth proscribing is always different from what another person thinks is worth proscribing. You might think it a waste of good police time but I might find it important enough.

    Essentially this is the very thing we have a parliament of representatives to define for society.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Steve Withers,

    But if the ‘resolution’ of the measures themselves is too low, then the value of the measure is undermined.

    Fair point. And definitely important to individual parents, although I'd hardly want to force teachers to publish the status of their relationship.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to tussock,

    Rubbish. Go educate yourself

    Try reading your own link

    From the Middle Ages to around 1750 part of today's Afghanistan was recognized as Khorasan.[32] Two of the four main capitals of Khorasan (Balkh and Herat) are now located in modern Afghanistan. The country of Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul formed the frontier region between Khorasan and Hindustan.

    Multiple "countries", multiple capitals, multiple tribes. And that is in one snapshot in time. The rest of the article describes centuries of conflict and division where parts of the country belong to one empire or another. Anything but unified.

    Presenting it as simplistic is simply not helpful.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

  • Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Steve Withers,

    I don’t see how anyone can compare schools at all.

    You can compare schools. But it takes considerable effort and sophisticated methods. It is precisely because our education system has compared schools that we have improved the system over the years. Qualified educated people have compared schools and discovered why some schools do better than others and learned from them. They've then passed that knowledge on to other schools where it has improved the outcomes. And they've also noted where changes haven't worked and tried to figure out why.

    Our schools now are an enormous improvement over the schools of 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. That came from intelligently making comparisons. It came from making and recognizing mistakes. It came from identifying success and failure honestly and in detail.

    It's not that you can't compare schools, it's that you can't reduce that comparison to a simplistic metric.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report

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