What are the free speech limits on an offensive 9/11 build?

As opposed to those undeliberate attacks, right?

This statement is meaningless. Both guilty and innocent people use the "do you think I would be so stupid as to commit an offense" argument. There's no proof of anything. Even smart people can do stupid things.


And part of growing up is learning to stand up for yourself when someone puts out something as grossly and broadly reprehensible as this build.


hyperbole.

What the hell is the big deal? He accidentally (even if it was purposeful, BIG WHOOP) ran into a guy with a cardboard plane in a VIDEO GAME.

I would hardly call my posts a rant. Just because you disagree with my political views is no reason to get snippy. As far as calling the Bush Crime Family "neo-con fascists". I wasn't trying to be original, I was trying to be accurate. I don't think you understand the definition of "jingoism". You might accuse me of being slanted, but "jingoism" by definition is extreme misplaced nationalism.

The fact is you did talk about success. You spoke of the builder's alleged inability to adequately get their point across. You don't know what their intent was, but you are certainly free to think you do --as am I.

To conflate the actual tragedy of September 11th with this build as you have done is absurd. Personally, I lost three close friends in the tragedy on the day the towers fell, and a week later a beloved pet parrot (who died of asphyxiation from the dust which filled my apartment). I didn't wring my hands and shed crocodile tears over a digital build in an online game. I will say that I was enraged, however, at the Republican National Convention's morbid and excessive use of those 3,000 innocent dead to push their agenda of hate and aggression. Ya know what offends me? Everytime I see a picture of the Twin Towers superimposed over a teary eyed bald eagle emblazoned with the words "We Will Never Forget", and know that it's jingoistic symbology is being used to garner support for the senseless slaughter of ten times that number of innocent Iraqi women and children in the name of US Imperialism.

Spare me your outrage. I'm not impressed.

I mean really, I know that most people probably won't care for my opinion as I'm new, but it does seem like this is a case of a mountain being made out of a molehill. You can choose to be offended at whatever you like, but you can also laugh at whatever you like too, humor and offensive material is in the eye of the beholder so to speak. Trying to force everyone to abide by everyone else's views on what is and isn't offensive is silly.

Maybe i'm new and just don't understand, but I went and saw the building in question and personally found it funny more than anything, it's obviously done in a comedic light. It really just seems like a big tantrum fight between kids or something. You both have your points about the issue and have made them so why not end it at that?

First, <insert obligatory "it's not a video game" comment here>.

Second, I laugh at the thought it was accidental. At best, maybe you could argue that it was extremely reckless.

Third, it's not cardboard, and you neglected to mention the "burning buildings" part.

Four, and most importantly:

Imagine the most traumatic moment in your life. Let's say you watched your mother die in a horrible car accident. Let's say then that someone is now following you around SL with a giant image of your mother going through the windshield with happy faces all over it.

For many, many people, especially New Yorkers who witnessed the tragedy, 9/11 was the single most traumatic experience of their life. They lost loved ones, saw people jump from buildings dozens of stories up, witnessed the death of thousands. There are tens of thousands of documented cases of depression and PTSD and other psychological disorders caused by 9/11 to people.

And it's really pathetic I have to explain this to you. You sure you don't belong on the teen grid?

And it's all self induced bullshit, it's not the result of some outside forces forcing them into that statet. It's the lack of their own coping mechanism, if you look back in history, much bigger "Tradgidies" have occured and people managed to live on without becoming a grovelling mass of fear and oppression. There are plenty of documented studies that show it has little to do with the events and more to do with the person's state of mind.

Also, I find it interesting Hiro that you must resort to crudely insulting people who disagree with you instead of pointing out the flaws in their arguement. We should be able to discuss things without getting personal.

(directed to hiro)
Again, I say reitterate my point that it's all in how you percieve it and your perception is solely under your control. You can interpret anything any way you want using a number of perspectives and I find it odd you refuse to acknowlege that there is a point of view other than yours while I feel that those that oppose you have acknowleged your point of view and while disagreed with it, tried to explain theirs to you. You didn't seem to put much thought into trying to see things from another perspective.

As much as I dislike Prokofy and in general think he gets everything he deserves, even Prokofy didn't deserve this one does.


That was just a stupid senseless act and I hope the people who did it are punished accordingly.

From what was said in W-Hat's group IM when the "attack" took place, I'm 99% sure it was an accident.

I have a very close friend who lives in NYC and still is going thru therapy for what she dealt with on 9/11 - so spare me the bullshit. She's seen all of our tower monuments and seen them for what they are - a commentary on the jingoistic nature of a post 9/11 America. She laughed. The Cross and Plane version was her favorite though. Humor is part of the healing process.

Additionally, you have a rather high and self absorbed opinion of yourself to think that anyone from W-Hat would go out of their way to seek *you* out to harass you. It's far more fun to listen to your absurd and misinformed drivel here.

Perhaps it's you who belongs on the Teen Grid so you can be a busy-body there too and attempt to set some sort of moral-standard for the kiddies - you certainly seem to like to do it here, why don't you give it a go with the kids while they can still be saved, hm?

No, you're incorrect.

Our soldiers coming back from Iraq are coming back with PTSD. Does that mean they are "lacking their own coping mechanism" and are "a grovelling mass of fear and oppression"? No. It means that when trauma happens to a human being, it's likely that they are deeply affected by it.


This claim is seriously laughable.
Where is this "crudely insulting" attack? Nowhere. You're making this up.

This topic, however, is inately personal. That's why the display was so broadly and deeply offensive. ... From the Police Blotter, it seems the Lindens agreed with that notion.


Pure relativism is meaningless. It's not relative. LOTS of people are deeply offended by this filth display.


1. I have been addressing things the other side has been saying. Scroll up and read my posts again and look at how I quote them and respond directly.

2. The other point of view has been very poorly represented.

3. Prok's harassment story sort of clinches the whole "other side has no leg to stand on" idea.

...

There, I've directly addressed you, shot down your statements as untrue. Ball is in your court.

What happened may or may not have been intentional, I only know 3rd party info.
However, having a giant building rezzed and moving it around is sorta... hmm... gee, it's pretty obvious that you may hit someone else within 50m? Like I said, if not intentional, reckless.


People deal with tragedy in different ways. Just because your friend sees humor doesn't mean a very large amount of people find this deeply offensive.


I never said they would. Why would you say that?
I was posting because I have a good handle on freedom of speech issues and I want to dismiss claims that this kind of despicable build should be permissable in public.

If this was true, you'd understand precisely why it should be permissable in public.

I work in an industry where I deal with what you can and cannot say every single day. My job depends on knowing where the line is. If this was something built in the real-world, built in the US - nothing could legally be done. There is no violation of any law by that display. It is not hate-speech/expression, nor is it obscene or indecent. Obscenity and indecency deal with sexually related things.

You are trying to make a case for legislating taste, ethics and morality when there simply isn't one.

Also, please remember that no one is ever forced to come to Baku, though we do have an official complaint office and police station now. It's in the same building our escort service works out of!

To address this, my statement was in reference to Prokofy, I simply forgot to put in quote I had intended to use. The rest though? Yeah, that's all for you~

I wasn't using the adjective crude was the best word I could come up with at the time.

I could go into a long raid about PTSD, but you've made it abundantly clear that your mind is already made up, I made the points i'd like to make so i'm done.

Please reread my post about the "fighting words" exception and reply with a response to that.


It's not illegal. I never claimed it was.
I claimed it was not protected by the 1st amendment's protection of free speech. The Lindens apparently saw it as abuse according to the police blotter, and even if SL wasn't a privately owned system, the build would not be protected from censure or prosecution. (If you read the Fighting Words examples, the prosecution could potentially be disturbing the peace, etc)


Prove it. Nothing I've said has anything to do with taste, ethics, or morality. It does have to do with peoples' right not to have overwhelmingly and broadly offensive items on public display. If you disagree with this, then please quote me and cite examples of how I referred to "taste", "ethics", or "morality".


No, but the display was HUGE and people do fly by and live nearby. Had the display been in a closed area, I would not have posted.

Hiro, Prokofy: You sound like the kind of person(s) who do(es) not try to understand points of view outside your own, but rather you attack them. This is one of the biggest PROBLEMS with the human race, in attacking ideologies foreign to their own. That's why 9-11 ultimately happened, and also why America as a culture has completely FAILED to get over it.

Muslim Extremists decided that they could no longer accept this culture that they did not understand and so they rammed a couple planes into conspicuous buildings that represented our culture. Maybe they were RIGHT about us being bad people. MAYBE WE, AS A SOCIETY, DESERVED THIS. In their worldview we did. Who is to say their worldview is any less significant than our own worldview, which supports dropping nuclear bombs on villiages of innocent people, or firebombing extensive forests in the name of our capitolist beliefs? Perhaps arranging bloody coups within governments such as Nicaragua, or allowing our companies to exploit children in sweatshops so close as Mexico?

My protests against 9-11 and subsequant happyness at it's happening isn't because people died, or it was bad. I am mad about it because Americans just mirrored the same image as the people who actually did it. Many americans, dare I say a greater percentage of us than the minority of muslims who engineered the attack became biggoted against THEM, including our illustrious monkey whom we call president GEORGE W BUSH.

To this extent you are just as bad as those people whom you may label terrorists. Unlike the muslim extremists, though, you do not kill directly; you support killing through supporting the war in iraq, the war on "terror" (read: the war on any conflicting worldview), and you support our rule on the world through this terror which we put into other nations who dare defy us.

Do I have any pity for those people that died? Minimal if any. Do I have pity on you? Yes I do. Do I have empathy for you? Well, I know exactly why you feel the way you do, and I am enough ABOVE you to understand that you are weak and small minded for feeling that way. So no. I do not empathise. This is why I am an asshole.

On a lighter note I actually stuck around to see if there was anything interresting going on and if the 10% thing was actually more than just a bunch of people whining. I was actually INTERRESTED in what was going on. Then I go to pull my [phantom] plane out again and fly off and I accidentally drop the building on my head, try my hardest to get it completely off your land because my mouse was dying and then I manage to teleport home when I realize again who'se plot it is I am standing next to. If I wanted to be an ass, I know doing stuff like that is cause for a ban, and I would have done it right up until I had gotten banned if I was intent on harassing you--I didn't. I teleported home within 5 to 10 seconds of that. and no, the building wasn't on fire to the best of my knowledge nor did it push or damage anyone

I am prepared to face CONSEQUENCES FOR A MISTAKE, though. I am calling Linden Labs as soon as they are next open to apologise and then discuss it with someone. You didn't IM me and ask me to stop or even ask anything at all. If you had you would have gotten an apology and I would have never darkened your doorstep again. Perhaps I would have debated the whole point of it, but something tells me that even if I discussed it with you, I would have met with a closed (and probably rather small) mind.

It is pathetic that I had to explain how deeply people were hurt by 9/11 and how deeply offensive this display is in public.

How is this a crude attack?

dictionary.com:

pa·thet·ic ( P ) Pronunciation Key (p-thtk) also pa·thet·i·cal (--kl)
adj.
Arousing or capable of arousing sympathetic sadness and compassion: “The old, rather shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic” (John Galsworthy).

Seems completely appropriate - this arouses sympathetic sadness and compassion for all the people who suffered and continue to suffer from 9/11. There is no personal attack, only your misunderstanding of what the word "pathetic" means.


Well, then you're done, with your arguments backing your points quashed. And some points you made without any evidence backing them up whatsoever.

Wow. I hope Linden Lab takes down your name and reports you to Homeland Security.

Muslim Extremists aren't stupid. They know that the people in the buildings were civilians. There is absolutely no justification ever for attacking a civilian target, regardless of what you think of America.

If you want to protest America's jingoism, that's fine. Making fun of the deaths of 3000 civilians is not.

p.s. If you hate America, get the hell out of it and stop reaping the rewards of living in our prosperous nation.

It was no accident. None of it. I was there. Interesting how he is trying to weasel out of it now. I love it when griefers get scared.

coco

Golly! W-Hat sure seems to have a lot of 'accidents'!

So does all of W-Hat think that the dead civilians from 9/11 "may have deserved it"?

Welcome to page 24!

Why does it matter if he's "understood" by outsiders? Why would people have a presumptive right to come onto our property and demand that we explain everything?

It's the same logic as far as I'm concerned. Person A finds Symbol 1 offensive and would like to expunge all instances of it from the world. You can attach all kinds of elaborate excuses about how goons do it THIS way and gays do it this way, but when you boil away the fluff, it's all the same shit: Self-righteous individuals who believe they have a monopoly on what is right and wrong.

I don't think that people should ever expect to go through life without seeing anything that offends them.

Too bad for them. If they don't like it let them go somewhere else. No one is demanding that they come into our sim and watch it. Of course this "outrage" didn't stop Christiano from hanging around in Baku for at least ten minutes yesterday. Seems to me if he was so injured by the exhibit he would have taken his screenshot and got out, rather than hanging around for so long.

Regarding fighting words, I don't see how the towers are "harming" anyone. Let's take a look at that link you posted shall we?
I do not see how the towers constitute epithets or personal abuse. The tower is not shouting "N-----" and is not shouting "Cliff Yablonski is a big stupid loser!" I think I'll refer back to my gay bar analogy. Plenty of conservatives feel slapped in the face by people who are openly gay (such as my former friend who wants to mow them down in his car.) Doesn't give them a right to insist that we all turn into Calvinists. Ditto Catholics and Piss Christ.

Censoring the WTC exhibit relies on the same logic as insisting that gay bars (or gay people) avoid the appearance of being gay or gay-related.

What "They" would you be referring to? From Prok's post it sounds like one person bothered him/her.

I think it's worth mentioning, again, that Lindens have been to goon territory MANY TIMES over the past year, and we've had a Twin Towers display for most of that time. One of their visits was about the towers. They said the towers were A-OK then. What's the diff now?

I'm in W-hat and I don't. Are you really so narrow-minded that you cannot understand that we are individuals?

There are many different views.... I think all of them are entitled to have their opinions(though some are false). ;0 OMG! Baba is a terrorist!!! Nope ;0 Because I also don't care a whit because I'm a real asshole ;0 Sue me, but I don't give a FUCK about the opinions or views of religious extremists... I also think people who support or try to excuse religious extremists and their actions are beneath me...

I believe that while all people are entitled to their opinions and beliefs, I am under no obligation to agree... I am under no obligation to care. I am under no obligation to respect you or your beliefs.

Now, as for offensive material depicting 9/11.. I'm not offened by the images.. What offends me are the idiots who make, or post it.. Because it's just dumb, and stupid people offend me. We have to live with idiots.. It's a fact of life, so just simmer down and ignore it and try to control your urge to post blah blah blah I'm offended blah blah again..

My suggestions for having the blights in your eyes removed?

Speak to the offenders.. BE NICE ABOUT IT! Ask why it's there...

Ask nicely if they would mind taking it down..

If they say no, ask why is that?

If you get a response that you can accept, accept it!

If they spew shit out of their mouth... You know what you are dealing with.. forget it!

You have still not countered my arguement, Hiro. You have instead relied on trying to sidestep my arguement.

(1)Example of sidesteapping an arguement, textbook attempt at redirection of an issue. The fact that I am a dispatriot does not mean that my arguements are any less valid (or any more valid).

(2)My arguement didn't say that they did not know they were civilians, but to them civilians are just as guilty if not moreso than the military because they are the ones that support the view which the military is there to defend.

(3)See above. Within a muslim extremist worldview the fact that they are americans and participate in our economy may be reason enough to justify their deaths. The damage to the US economy was also worth that to them. Is the end of a war worth the deaths of 70,000 civilians in Hiroshima Japan? Aparently that seems justified in your American worldview. How then is the deaths of less than 1/20'th that number not justified to make Americans less imperialist?

(4)Satire has long been used to show objection to something. I am not making fun of their deaths, merely of a country with it's political and social head so far up it's president's ASS that we fail to see that we as a society could be WRONG.

You have not offered any evidence based on fact and study that you are right. I can assure you that you won't because the arguement is purely subjective. I can say that my arguement goes above subjectivity into objectivity because I do not look at the subjective views in this arguement, but rather the overarching conflict between those subjective views.

You talk a lot like Bush did at his debates, in fact. You run in circles and use inappropriate arguements and cyclical logic to avoid the bullet.

*(annotated for reference)
** I do not in fact support that extremists are right in what they do. With this said I also do not support the American government in it's reactions to the actions of those extremists.