In all fairness to Jim Robinson, he has been hit with copyright infringment lawsuits in the past, so he is rightly a little cautious about what gets posted on FR. I would not put the blame on Jim Robinson.
After all this thread has been through, we shouldn't have to be reminded that this is JR's sandbox, and if we don't like the rules we can go play somewhere else. With that said, in my opinion, "you know who" came here looking for trouble in the hopes of (a) getting the critical posts zapped; and (b) drawing hits to his website from those who want to see what all the fuss is about. Either way he wins, and he did, and I'm partially at fault for going toe to toe. I apologize to all, especially JR. We lost a lot of good stuff today. Unfortunately, if the pattern holds true, in a few weeks some newbies (or even some TN veterns), will post references to some report at that website and the whole cycle will start all over again with "you know who" right smack in the middle.
Lastly, in my opinion, nothing that I saw posted today was copyright protected or defamatory. Although I am by no means an expert on copyyright law, my opinion is based upon twenty years in the courtroom litigating complicated commercial cases, including cases involving libel, slander, defamation, civil RICO, and fraud. The so-called intelligence report in question was posted word for word here yesterday, and while I believe it was allowed under the "fair use doctrine," out of an abundance of caution the posters of the report had it removed at my suggestion.
Unfortunately, as Mr. Robinson can certainly attest, being right on the merits is not necessarily an effective shield against time consuming and expensive litigation in a society that allows just about any person to sue for any reason or no reason at all, with vitually no reprecussions when the suit is eventually tossed. As much as we hate to lose hundreds of posts because of this incident, Mr. Robinson did the right thing under the circumstances.
Now back to your regular programing.
That's right, thecabal. I agree with you. And, unfortunately, axing lots of innocent posts was probably the most efficient and quickest way for JR to eliminate the problem posts. The same thing on a smaller scale happened over the weekend, some of my innoucuous posts were vanished. Maybe folks can repost the unrelated posts they feel are crucial.
Proprietary info does not belong here unless an organization posts it themselves; that is only fair business and legal practice. If we do otherwise -- even if other organizations choose to do that -- we will endanger the Robinsons and Free Republic.
I will be able to catch up this evening much quicker than I imagined! Oh well...
The main difference here is:
1. The link was posted as the 2nd source and she had no knowledge, so I asked mods to delete
2. Then I, the third source posted the article and after checking I also asked that be deleted very quickly
3. Labyrinthos explained 'law' to Sean
4. Doug then brought it much later to JR,and I cannot blame JR also after what he's been through but not one thing was intent maliciousness on 'TM'rs" We followed the rules and promptly, so very glad the mods were contacted 'before' Doug contacted JR
All done with gone