People can get just wacky insane when given an anonymous pseudonym and the ability to publish to the world in the comfort of their own little worlds. Humans are the most cruel and destructive species to ever populate the Earth. People publish hurtful, damaging, despicable things that are completely fabricated and totally devoid of fact with no effort or sound judgement. Before the relatively modern era of tort litigation - we still had free speech but tort damages were still settled because you could get your ass shot in a duel or simply bushwhacked when venturing outside to take a piss. It seems like everyone with a keyboard is a cruel narcissist these days. Classical and long-standing Defamation and Libel laws - both personal and commercial, extend to the internet for good reason. Persons and Companies can get damaged beyond repair and with real and permanent injury. Everybody knows when the line's been crossed - it's obvious. And you are free to cross any line you care to, but you had better be able to substantiate your smack talk with facts. If what you are publishing on the internet is harmful to your target, in all truly free societies the target of your wrath has the right to monetize the extent of that harm and to seek a remedy through the judicial system. We have outlawed dueling. To wit: if you're going to cross that line of publishing information that injures - you had Fucking well better be able to substantiate your smack with facts that withstand the light of day ( like a jury trial ). There are some very unique circumstances to this case - namely, it wasn't truly a legitimate Free Speech circumstance in that the target of the vitriol was not allowed to respond because they were banned. Any clear thinking person following that thread could see that the AMP contractor had an axe to grind and he gamed the BMT website in a perfect way. He knew his target was helpless to respond, and he knew that BMT and AMP were not going to do any favors for each other. IMHO, Big Mike should be just as pissed at the AMP Contractor as AMP themselves for this mess. In many ways, BM is left holding the bag as it were.
You have to be kidding me if you think that BM stands for anything similar to free speech. That hypocritical moron is a prime example of an Internet fascist who goes by his rule "If you dont agree with me you are my enemy" and who wants to dictate everyone's mind with stupid fuhrer rules right from his bunker in Ecuador where his only girlfriend is an impotent dog. I dont know what went wrong in his life but I can only imagine a massive asteroid impact causing such a heavy brain damage like his one.
I mean free speech for all web sites. If you don't stand up for stuff you don't like, when they come after stuff you do like, you have already lost the fight. If websites can be sued for posters, then the website site owners will start constantly censoring posts which is not a result I would like. From your comments I think you do not like websites censoring either. Freedom of speech does not protect you from what happens when you say stupid shit. But I think people have the right to say stupid shit and live with the consequences. So let people say stupid shit and get sued for it, just leave the platform where they said it alone. Today it is BM, what about tomorrow if it is DailyKos or RedState ?
Maybe AMP sues Stone, BMT sues AMP for fees, and the nice BMT members get their legal contributions back from BMT. That way BM gets to say he beat AMP twice and the BMT membership is made whole with a complete accounting for legal fees from BM. And free speech will be preserved. And the lawyers are the ones who come out ahead. Once again.
. And I think many of the comments in this thread, including some of my early comments, are overbearing and possibly unfair. Likewise, Big Mike himself has chosen to take small isolated snippets of what myself and Pekolo have stated in this thread and make hay with them in a big way over on BMT. Not the entire post or a link to the entire thread, mind you - just isolated snippets for his convenient talking points while conveniently glossing over some larger and certainly more sensitive issues. Which, come to think of it, is censorship. And if he had just censored Mr. Stone half as much as he has censored my comments for his abuse and pleasure one might conclude all of this AMP lawsuit nonsense would have been avoided.
A sidenote on that and cross posting. If I say something on ET, I don't expect to be quoted on another website, unless it is the Greatest Wisdom of the Internet, where I have been quoted several times. The point is, if someone has a problem with anything I say, better be ready to debate it here, on neutral ground and not running away to their sandbox, where they can ban me if I beat them. Girlie man behavior, as Arnold would say.
I think it is a fair criticism that with such few posts to your user name, and probably most of them directed at hating on Big Mike - readers should rightly be cautious about how much reliability your statements might have. And, your commentary is reduced to mean name calling with no real honest discourse so your agenda IMHO can be questionable. Nothing personal, but it is a fair and valid point. Likewise, if the proprietor of a for-profit website that can be accessed by the public chooses to prominently display legal tort litigation documents and actively solicits in a very prominent fashion contributions for his for-profit business expenses ( legal fees ) then IMHO he should expect critical questions and even some demands for sunshine in terms of how those solicited funds were used. It is such a prominent feature of the BMT website that any rational third party would say that the website is inviting its fair share of slings and arrows. Free speech, censure, liability, and website management are all prominent themes of the posted litigation and a driving force for soliciting funds, after all. Again, this is phenomenon created by Big Mike himself by posting the litigation and soliciting funds in such a public and prominent fashion. Sure, AMP sued him. And AMP lost. And BM was found not be liable for what gets posted on his website. And AMP may have acted in a vindictive and unwarranted fashion. But who put all of this information in front of the public with a tin cup in hand panhandling for donations ? That invites criticism.