"Digital Mao-ism"

WINE TALK
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You have decided to restrict access to your forum to your subscribers. What are the reasons?



The internet is a wonderful place that I have adopted vigorously. At the same time, it is a place of anarchy, chaos, and anonymity. Many unsavory troublemakers inhabit the internet blogs with the sole purpose of creating chaos and negativity through misrepresentation, the dissemination of false information, and character assassination. We are confronted with a sort of digital Mao-ism that I began to notice when I was hired as the first wine blogger for a service called Prodigy. It started off civilized, but then disintegrated into a polarized community driven by a minority of malicious posters. The same thing began to happen on my public forum at http://www.erobertparker.com” onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. We decided several years ago that if it did not stop, we would change it to subscription only. We have done that and we are thrilled with the results. The commentary is at a far higher level of intelligence, and far more civilized. People still disagree, but they do it in a much more polite manner.


Can’t see the forest for the trees department:

Through forums and the blogs, consumers talk to consumers. Is there always a place for impartial critics such as Robert Parker? How “Parker System” suits he face this new situation?



It is my experience that the more “white noise” that comes from free wine forums and blogs, the higher the amount of irrelevant, badly written, grossly incompetent, and negligent wine information is posted. If anything, the proliferation of free wine forums and blogs has actually pushed more and more people to seek out experts who do the work, who have no agenda, who study and appraise the situation fully. There is no substitute for full-time professionals immersed in their field, and intelligent people recognize this. This has only benefited people such as me and other experts in the field.

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No one else nearly peed themselves laughing over this?

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I was more confused than amused… how is a decline in civil discourse “Mao-ism?” An I thought that “white noise” was a pleasant background hum that drowns out unpleasant sounds… oh well…

Anyway, I have always preferred Todd’s approach to the forum experience – rowdy is cool, obnoxious and personal is not. Besides, I have learned to ignore the occasional jerk tor two that posts here.

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I keep rereading this sentence and it doesn’t make sense to me. I suppose it is just a bad translation from the French?

Parker’s justification of eBob “going private” is utterly ridonkulouse.

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This is fascinating. So he is admitting that this was planned years ago, but he failed to disclose the plan. Instead, he induced people to post their own content on his BB and then without notice he locked them out and continued to sell their content that he obtained through a failure to disclose his intention. In New York, that may not be fraudulent (it’s close) but if this were a security, the SEC would be up his derriere for failing to make a statement necessary to make the statements made not misleading. Sorry lay people, but the attorneys here will understand how dumb it is for someone who professes to be attorney to have admitted what he just admitted.

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It seems like every time he opens his mouth he just comes across as a complete ass…pretty disapointing really.

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Class action suit?

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Jay not to get into a huge debate but I agree and disagree with your statement at the same time. On one hand I would not advise a client to make statements of that nature. That being said I don’t believe this rises to any major degree of fraud. Parker offered a free service to presumable drive sales of his magazine. At some point he decided to drive more sales by offering his web forum on a fee basis. I don’t understand your basis on how he “induced people” to post. People posted on their own will to gain/share information.

For example do you think newspapers who previously offered free web articles committed fraud because they now charge for their websites. I don’t know if they had the motive previously but its obvious that due to hard times they did not have a choice. Maybe Parker realized that magazine sales were down and a generation going towards electronic communication would support a fee based forum.

To sum up the majority of free content put out by any company is trying to drive sales of some nature.

thanks,
Matt

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I’m nor an attorney, but perhaps the point is that non subscribers were induced to provide content that they may not have otherwise, particularly if they were aware of said plan.

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good summation.
alan

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“For example do you think newspapers who previously offered free web articles committed fraud because they now charge for their websites.”

In that scenario the NEWSPAPERS generate the content, not the readers. VERY different. I and others have thousands of pages worth of material on there (and some of us used it like “the cloud” for that material) that disappeared in an instant. Pure evil.

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I am one of the digital Maoists that Parker speaks of. However, if I am a digital Maoist, then Parker and his Sancho Panza Squires are digital STALINISTS, having conducted a purge that does old Josef proud!

Roberto, I responded to that quote Over Yonder as follows:

“Allright, I know that I am in there! If I do not come out with my hands up, I am coming in after me!” Nobody over there found that humorous…

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Nobody here either… [wow.gif]
Sorry,Bill.Couldn’t resist. [cheers.gif]

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Robert I understand your upset but you could have provided the content elsewhere. Nobody forced you to participate there or anywhere for that matter. You choose to be part of a community which you enjoyed. If Todd announced today that this site would become a pay site in 2 years would you stop posting? I think we all yearn for learning and while its unfortunate you lost access to a database you learned from you still have the knowledge from which you have gained.

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Does anyone recall what the terms were when we signed up for eBob? I would guess there was some boilerplate in there about Squires et al. owning the content.

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Yup. He pretty much stated that once posted, the content was his.

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[winner.gif] Not bad for a non-lawyer. That is precisely the point.

As I see it, there are two issues. First, the layman’s issue. RMP/Squires ran a BB and induced me and hundreds of other people to create content and express opinions about wine. While they were hosting a free BB and inducing us to create content for their BB, they already were developing a plan to lock people out (I was a subscriber, so that raises a different issue). The did not tell people about the conditional plan to lock people out, which they now admit was discussed “several years ago.” By failing to disclose that, people were induced for “several years” to create content and share it on their bulletin board. In a laymen’s sense, that is a fraudulent inducement by them. Now they are actually using the content that other people created as a result of the fraudulent inducement and selling it to third parties as part of their bundle of products you get in exchange for a subscription.

As a technical matter, in some states a failure to make a statement cannot be fraud because you are permitted to tell a half-truth, so long as there is no lie. New York is such a state. However, in other states, leaving out a material fact is a fraud. Under the United States securities laws, for example, failing to make a statement necessary to make the statements actually made not misleading is fraudulent in connection with the purchase or sale of securities. That does not apply here, because there are no securities, but it is instructive as to what is appropriate human behavior, at least in a moral sense.

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By the way - I was about to re-subscribe because there is other content on ERP that I like and there are people that I would like to continue to communicate with. However, every time I get close to giving them my money, they manage to publish some obnoxious comment that reminds me why I shouldn’t.

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So Jay, hypothetical here…

In January my membership to eBob expires as I have disabled the auto-renew feature. I might go a month and then join up again for a month to see if Mr. Squires will allow me to post again. If he does not, do I have any recourse as I have joined his locked board in good faith and paid my money? I cannot post now, and I think others have answered as to why I am not allowed since my membership was in effect before the lockout.

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Jay – If the terms made it clear they would own the content, doesn’t that answer your objection?