Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:00:32 +0200
From: Brian E Carpenter 
To: Dean Anderson 
Cc: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ ,
     Theodore Ts'o , ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: I'm not going to listen to this any more.

Dean,

Please stop repeating assertions about alleged liars.

Sergeants-at-arms, please pay attention since I believe that we
may need to consider action if this continues.

    Brian

Dean Anderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Dave Crocker wrote:
>
>>>>I thought we also had a mechanism for taking action against posters who
>>>>violate list policy egregiously.
>>>
>>>As one of the IETF list's "sargent at arms", I certainly don't see
>>>Harald's one-time, single line posting as being egregious in any shape
>>>or form.  I also didn't see it as a personal attack.
>>
>>sorry for the badly written note.  i was trying to focus on getting the
>>procedure used, not specify who it should be used against.
>>
>>harald's posting was not what i considered to be egregious.
>
>
> Since when are _true_ facts about liars on a subject (open relays)
> discussed in an IETF RFC, egregious?  Is it against list policy to assert
> that the IETF should be honest, and not associate with liars?  I missed
> that part. Perhaps you could be so kind as to point it out?
>
> Your beef is with reality.  I didn't create the facts, I'm just the
> messenger. The people who created the facts of their lies (by lying)
> thought, like some others, that lies will never return to haunt them.  Of
> course, that's what reputation is about: the return of past misdeeds.
> Associate with liars, and people will say you associate with liars.
> Reasonable, civil, rational people won't trust liars nor their associates.
> Accountability is harsh.
>
> I wrote this for another purpose, but its appropriate here:
>
> Defamation sometimes results in a short term gain for the defamer, and a
> short term loss for the defamed.  But, given time, it always results in a
> long term loss for the defamer and a long term gain for the defamed.  Be
> patient, but don't forget.
>
> Before 1720, British defamation law didn't permit truth as a defense
> against defamation. In fact, if the defamatory claims were true, common
> law made the penalty worse because, as the courts reasoned before the 18th
> century, truth was far more damaging than lies.  But around 1720, 2 people
> writing under the pseudonym Cato argued that truth should be an defense
> against defamation. They were subsequently sued for defamation for
> revealing disparaging true facts. They won. Since then, truth has been an
> absolute defense against defamation.
>
> It is remarkable that truth is more damaging than lies.
>
>               --Dean
>