"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 00:39:13 -0500, "NOYB" wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

The bottom line...
You don't stand a snowball's chance in hell in prosecuting someone who
logged onto a newsgroup under your name. You *might* get the person's
internet provider to send him a warning, or maybe even cancel his
account...but don't count on that either. Law enforcement is too busy
with
*real* crime to give a rat's ass about some guy logging into Usenet under
a
false name. I guess you could get an attorney and sue. But then again,
what are the "damages"?

The real bottom line is that I can log on to Usenet as anybody I want
- has nothing to do with identity theft. And there is really nothing
Harry can do about it. Harry is a writer for some kind of Union deal
if I'm not mistaken, or a PR person - whatever, the point is that he
is a public personality and subject to laws regarding "satire". You
could also say that he is a public personality by his participation on
Usenet by espousing his political philosophy (which would be true of
me, NYOB or anybody else).

More to the point, nothing in his name was particularly egregious.
Don Rickles made his living for many, many years doing much the same
kind of humor.

Harry would also have a hard time proving any harm from all this. He
can certainly pursue legal action, but a competent civil attorney will
tell him that he's standing on legal quicksand.

As to header information and what not, that can be spoofed and it
would take more time than Road Runner would want to spend tracing it
back. If the spoofer wants to fight it, he can and have more legal
standing that the spoofie. Usenet is a ******* child of the WWW and
most providers would just as soon it go away. It used to be more a
function of Usenet etiquette - thou should never use another's nick.
It's just an unwritten rule.

In short, Harry will probably have to just sit there and take it for a
while. They usually stop after a while and things settle down.

Harry did make himself a target - it was destined to happen
eventually. That is not a defense of the perpetrator - just a fact.

Later,

Tom

And of course harry never said a peep when his butt buddy asslicker was
doing the same to me.