In any society there are
malcontents, people who have, through some quirk of personality, upbringing
or nasty event in their personal history, become destructive to community. I
have blogged before about Jason
Fortuny. People like this build on their fame, get drunk from it, and each
time we say their names they get emboldened.
For every creative malcontent like Jason, there are a hundred "Me toos" like Michael Crook. Simply for discussing Michael Crook in a negative light, Jeff Diehl had to move his web site around and invoke the EFF. Says Jeff:
Crook seems to have a particularly malicious interpretation of the DMCA. He has declared on his blog his own campaign to serve take-down notices on sites he doesn't like, regardless of whether he owns the copyright on the material in question.
Now, this fight and the manic actions of Fortuny or the uncreative copycatting of Crook makes for good TechnoSoap, but it's indicative of a deeper issue within community. Communities have certain laws or rules - many of which are understood or unspoken. These center around respect.
One of Webster's definition is:
to refrain from interfering with <please respect their privacy>
Ultimately, this is about respect for the community and its members. This extends beyond acts of personal injury or terrorism like Crook or the Unabomber.
In Washington State we have a process that encourages the public to get involved in politics through popular petitioning. The public initiative system is designed to provide a framework whereby the public can enable legislation or public funding in areas where they deem the legislature is too slow or unwilling to act.
This process is a community process and, by design, highly democratic. It existed for some time without issue although it had one hindrance - signature gatherers needed to be volunteers. Then an initiative came about to allow paid signature gatherers. This opened the door for exploitation of the system by those with political or private motives.
Tim Eyman is not the only person to exploit this process, but he is the most visible and obvious. Mr. Eyman is a man who saw the initiative process and an entree into politics and went for the path of least resistance: car tabs. After an initial (and later rule unconstitutional) victory, Mr. Eyman became enthralled with the idea of launching initiatives. Launching 13 initiatives in less than 7 years.
Luckily, he was quickly identified by voters as a nuisance and has been largely unsuccessful. Like Fortuny and Crook though, he did gain notoriety and was successful at disrupting the community.
All three of these men exploited an open, democratic and community-driven system for personal gain. As we create systems in the future, care needs to be taken to guard against those who would exploit them - but not in such a way as to negate the system's value or goals. Protections should hopefully be based in the strength of the community and not in draconian rules that limit the freedoms of the community.
Written Gray Hill in Seattle.
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