There is one thing one can do...leave and post at another site if one does not agree with the decisions of the mods or the application of fairness .
One does not have to contribute and once done..it has no special privilege attached..
One can contirbute to hire a hall, but if you trash the hall..you can be thrown out.
Agreed.
One does not have to contribute and once done..it has no special privilege attached..
Meg, read please. I agree with you in principle, but there have been situations litigated to this effect where courts have found that there is an "implied" priviledge when money changes hands. You may not agree with that, I may not agree with that, but some judges have and *could* rule in favor of some malcontent who decided to press the issue. I think this would be stupid, as I have stated - but precidents do exists.
Again, it's not about what you or I personally thing, but how the law has looked at a transfer of money between two parties. There is almost always some implied return on the transaction, whether you want it or not. Heck, this even applies to non-profits. If you contribute to a charity, and they decide to do something different with your money, you can go after them. Will you win, maybe, maybe not - but this area is grey, it's not black and white, and our personal opinions don't change that a bit. Everybody just needs to exercise decent judgement while money is being collected because there are 10,000 lawyers who would probably love to take a bite, or at least get some name recognition by doing so.
One can contirbute to hire a hall, but if you trash the hall..you can be thrown out.
True, but if you sue in small claims court, the court would have to find "reasonable cause" for you being thrown out, or else you would probably win the suit.
A difference of opinion has almost never ben shown to be reasonable cause. Someone getting drunk and shouting racial epiteps would be.
Just make sure someone is *really* getting out of hand, and your not just having a bad day and looking for a dog to kick.
Every ISP could, in theory, refuse to route traffic to Free Republic because they don't agree with it's opinions. FR could sue, and probably would win. The ISP's could say "they are our data lines and we can do what we want", but in reality, this is not always held as a valid arguement. Even if the ISP provided free websites to everyone (I believe Geocities has gone through a few of these). When you start taking money from the public, or providing a service that becomes well known from any person or entity, the rules change a bit.
I'm trying to be slightly helpful here. And I don't disagree that someone would have to way too much time on their hands to pursue such a matter. But it can, does, and has happened - so I think not getting too dictatorial is the most prudent course of action.
My 2 cents. I respect your disagreement, but they aren't my rules in the first place.
The courts issued an order, followed by a temporary restraining order (when the refused to comply with the first order) against AOL to stop blocking the traffic.
AOL maintained that they owned their network, but the court said "no".
Personallu, I agree with AOL, and disagree with the court. And you probably do too.
But like I said, our opinions don't count in the matter.