As I said in the Great Council, "Defamation" has served more or less as a tool for people to send ultimatums and silence other people. Our criminal system isn't about enabling this kind of behavior.

Quote:Article 5: Criminal Code

1. Treason shall be defined as plotting against the Coalition, seeking to lower the delegate's endorsement count without his or her consent, breaking the endorsement cap after receiving an official warning, aiding any entity in which the Coalition is taking defensive action against, or any entity in which a state of war exists with.
2. Defamation shall be defined as communication of a statement which makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, in an attempt to harm the reputation of another user or group of users on the forum. The offended must express the offense to the Court in order for the charge to be considered.
3. Fraud shall be defined as a deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual.
4. Espionage shall be defined as an act of or attempt to obtain information that is confidential or not made publicly available for use by oneself or an entity one represents. Distribution of private information that originates on the South Pacific Forum without the express written permission of the Cabinet of the South Pacific shall be considered Espionage.
5. Conduct violations shall be defined as breaking in-game NationStates rules.

Article 6: Penal Code

1. If found guilty of an act of treason, the offending nation will be immediately banned from the in-game region and offsite forums.
2. If found guilty of defamation, the offending nation must issue a public apology to the nation in which the offense was committed against.  Further punishment may be determined by the Judiciary.
3. If found guilty of fraud, the Judiciary will determine a sentence.  The sentence must be proportionate to the offense.
4. If found guilty of espionage, the offending nation may be banned from the in-game region and expelled from the offsite forums.  The Judiciary may determine a lesser sentence in order to keep proportionality with the offense.
5. Conduct violations are punishable by immediate ejection and banishment from the region, albeit punished parties may appeal this decision to the court. In most cases, nations that appeal the decision and apologize should expect to have their ban lifted.

Defamation actually is wrong, and it should stay on the books. Threatening to accuse someone of defamation to coerce them is blackmail. This is not a defamation problem, this is a blackmail problem.

Giving someone a change to settle a matter out of court is hardly blackmail.

(02-05-2015, 01:46 PM)Belschaft Wrote: Giving someone a change to settle a matter out of court is hardly blackmail.

Operating under Uni's POV, if you're accusing him of defamation to keep him from doing something, that's not a problem with defamation, not blackmail. I'm not going to weigh into the actual argument. I just don't want defamation taken off the books because someone believes that it's being misused.

I should also point out, for the record, that Unibot proposed this less than an hour after being charged with defamation.

Unibot has been calling for this for a long time, Belschaft.

(02-05-2015, 01:51 PM)Belschaft Wrote: I should also point out, for the record, that Unibot proposed this less than an hour after being charged with defamation.

That may have driven him to more immediate action, but I don't think this is solely a response to this case.

(02-05-2015, 01:43 PM)Sopo Wrote: Defamation actually is wrong, and it should stay on the books. Threatening to accuse someone of defamation to coerce them is blackmail. This is not a defamation problem, this is a blackmail problem.

"Defamation" has time and time again been used as intimidation. 

The thing is Sopo that TSP doesn't operate like RL, well actually it does operate like RL. Let me explain. I had a law professor who once said, '90% of my job is about intimidation and writing intimidating letters'. That's how the law works in RL - most stuff is never resolved in courts, it's resolved through negotiations to avoid going to court.

Because courts are uncertain bodies with uncertain results that are time-consuming and themselves imposing, people always want to stay out of court, even if they are innocent. Which means they're more likely to back down than go through a full defamation case. What we've seen is more aggressive players use defamation as a weapon and passive players giving in to this tactic to avoid standing through a court case. A new 'blackmail' charge wouldn't solve anything because passive players are also reluctant to pursue charges against more aggressive people who they believe have wronged them - court cases are, basically, scary and thus people persuade themselves that it is 'okay'. That they don't need to pursue charges. 

Essentially the system I'm describing is one-way - a product of the adversarial system that we use - aggressive players can use the law to intimidate and there's not a lot of "push back". It's something that some have been very good at in The South Pacific and the law has been crafted to suit that style of play. 

We rarely see actual cases of defamation go challenged - because victims are unlikely to pursue criminal cases against people, it's usually only loudmouths and braggarts. Therefore, the institution that would be better suited for handling defamation is the moderators, who can respond to obvious lying about people, without requiring victims to lodge reports and carry through a criminal court case with the inevitable amount of re-victimization that occurs with adversarial court politics. 

-Christ, I'm sorry Sopo. I meant to create a new post and ended up rewriting your post. Fuck me. Some of your post exists in the form of a quotation below. >_< -

~ Unibot.

Quote:I'm not persuaded that it's a good idea to hand off judicial authority to the moderators simply because some people have been known to abuse the law. I understand your point, and I agree that a problem exists. However, this resolution means that no one will be able to take legitimate cases of defamation to the Court, instead needing to rely on moderators, who don't really have the authority to force an apology or give our any substantial punishment. If they had that authority, we'd end up with the same problem: "I'm going to go to the mods because you're defaming me!" At that point, there won't even be a criminal case, the mods will simply decide what to do. I would prefer for both sides to be able to settle the problem via a court case than to give the mods judicial powers or ignoring defamation completely, the latter of which is more likely to happen if it's taken off the books.

Neither body can compel an apology. Both can punish.

Going to the moderators over defamation does not serve the same purpose - the purpose is to intimidate someone enough that you get them to back down on saying something that is true because they have a fear of going to court. The process of a court case is more time-consuming and imposing on victims than the process of moderation which is quicker, less public and doesn't require them to make a defense of themselves.

I'm certainly not a fan of outsourcing most articles of justice to moderators - because I think in the past, moderation was used as basically a 'community moderator' - people were punished by moderation for speaking out against the region, the government or its administration. This is why we needed a strict code of conduct for moderation and more central role for the judiciary. But defamation serves as an exception in my mind because of the particular nature of this kind of victimization - when it does occur, it takes on the form of harassment akin to other forum rule-breaking.