Since Rebecca Hiles broke her WP, here's some comments to stuff on her site

Her mom (presumably ?) says

I can see both sides of the argument. I am on a site that would be embarrassing to some family and friends…so I post very little and do not have a pic on there. My belief is that there is ALWAYS a chance for someone to “hack” which is why I try to be careful and also feel that anyone no matter sex, creed, sexual orientation should be able to be free about who they are without judgment, sadly I don’t think that will ever happen ….BUT it is called the “Worldwide Web” so there really is NO chance of any site being 100% secure. But feel that if fetlife knew there was an issue with this List that was gathered either by an employee or result of a hack, there SHOULD have at least been a letter of acknowledgement and/or apologies. Hell…those things are done by banks, credit card companies and I got a similar letter from the place I get my car repaired (and that’s just a mom & pop place).

Also anyone that feels the need to bash my daughter “Frisky Fairy” because she speaks her mind and wants to protect those that color outside the lines from the way “Normal” society feels they should enjoy their sexuality and would want to color me a bad person/mother because I support her and anyone that might be a little different than me unconditionally….you can take a long walk off a short pier and color me PROUD.

The problem with this is that... well... it's simply not true. It's just a convenient line that inept pseudocoders push, as if "industry standard" could possibly mean bridges that don't stay up and nuclear plants that blow. Sadly they seem to have managed to convince the general (and generally innocent) public.

Nevertheless, the experience of Bitcoin has clearly shown both that "a 100% secure site" is possible, and - much more importantly - that users do not have to forfeit any of their privacy to participate in networked activity. To satisfy these requirements however the sites in question have to be well designed, by people who understand the field, professionally, rather than hacked together by mendacious hacks. This is difficult and relies on rare skills, and so is not merely expensive - it is outright exclusionary.ⁱ

A similar situation existed in early medicine (note that CS is really very, very young), where all sorts of quacks pretended that they're doctors, and hey, "no cure works well". Sure, bloodletting doesn't work well, but then again that's not a cure, that's just something quacks do to justify sending a bill.

The problem with Fetlife is that Baku lies. First and foremost to himself, when he tells himself that he's an entrepreneur, and part of a technology company. He's not an entrepreneur, he's a politician. The two are exactly opposite : an entrepreneur builds, a politician is the crab in the proverbial pot, trying to drag everything else down. That's what sending fraudulent DMCA notices to people who expose your holes is : politicing. It never fixed anything, and more importantly - it never produced any value. Not ever. Sure, it's the first and usually also the last attempt of the worthless. That's not really relevant. He's also not part of a technology company, he's part of a scam ring. Irrespective of how persuasive his con may seem to the uninformed, he is exactly undifferent from Jonathan Ryan Owens, Alberto Armandi, Meni Rosenfeld & friends, and Fetlife is exactly Bitdaytrade.

Moving on to lighter matter, two different idiots say, respectively :

Brendan T, April 11, 2015 at 9:09 pm

For what it’s worth, I haven’t been able to find any evidence that a DMCA claim requires suing provided the information is removed in a timely manner (which, at the time, it was). Lawsuits are costly and very likely a money losing proposition in this matter…I doubt the dude has enough cash to recoup the cost of the suit. If he were posting anything that wasn’t publicly viewable on the site then he could be brought in on other charges, but yeah…his claim that they didn’t sue in time made the DMCA fraudulent is basically nonsense and a clear misunderstanding of the law.

Basically in this instance, I don’t know what else Fetlife could have done beyond possibly notifying their members, and I can understand the business reasons why they might not want to, especially given it wouldn’t offer further protections for people who want to use the service as they are.

I’m not saying Fetlife is flawless. Their treatment (or lack thereof) of known abusers and perpetrators of sexual assault is gross and there definitely seems to be some degree of profiteering off sleazy guys and the use of the site as a pseudo-porn site. There’s a ton of valid complaints to be made. I just don’t know how much more they could have realistically done in this particular instance.

lawjunkie April 11, 2015 at 4:36 pm

As a lawyer who handles cases like this, I can honestly say its really hard to track down people like this and then find a forum to sue them. It takes more resources than they probably have to fund what would likely be a useless suit. The court would order him to take it down, big whoop. Assuming this asshat has any money, they might get something to cover an iota of their expert fees and maybe they could just give their attorneys whatever crap car the guy has. This would be a gigantic expensive suit against a penniless scoundrel- welcome to not worth it land.

The problem with these is, obviously, the sufficientⁱⁱ imbecility they ooze. So... "the dude" couldn't afford litigation ? Yeah, totally. Nice failing to as much as use google on that research paper.

Derp "doesn't know what they could have done" ? Because what, derp's ignorance is the measure of existence and everything else ? How about... doing what they were told to do ?

The entire rambling nonsense is rife and in last analysis directly derived and entirely consubstantial with this bizarre form of solipsistic narcisism, which is the fundamental culture clash here. Baku & friends come from this imaginary world where DWIM somehow exists, it's a thing, as much part of the world as gravity or thermodynamics. The fact that "they put X in their TOS" makes the Geneva Convention pale in importance. According to their ideology, the world actually has to ask for permission to interact with them, and may only interact with them if such permission is explicitly obtained - which is why the plaintive lament of the derp that fucked up is "but nobody had told me" blablabla, and which is why Bitlove seriously expected (contrary to reality) that their assorted complaints will actually have some sort of significant positive effect.

Meanwhile, I come from a different imaginary world, one where the rules of the universe are the rules of the universe, and woe upon whosoever misreads them. In this worldview, being a slave is not an option, in the sense that you don't have the option to be a slave or something else. You either are or are not a slave, and have the option to live in harmony with that or live in (very painful) denial of it. Nothing more. Which is why when I said "do this", my expectation was that Bitlove does, immediately, groveling abjectly in gratitude. You could say that I hold a BDSM-oriented view of the world.

Obviously inasmuch as imaginary worlds are imaginary, all this is imagined. Nevertheless, once imaginary worlds clash, the contest is going to be resolved by the stale old actual rules of the universe, such as they are. And woe upon whosoever misrepresented them. Which is something I think I said once before.

1. See the entire "diamonds train" discussion for how this works. If all you have in the entire world are five people who could X (which, as technology progresses, is more and more commonly the case for all interesting Xes) then not only will doing X be insanely expensive - it will also be inelastic. Which is to say, after 5 units of X have been comissioned, no further units may be comissioned at any price until one is completed. This likely means that bullshit like "social media sites" may not ever get to actually exist, but hey - them's the breaks. [↩]
2. In their move from the written page to the shitted page of the Internet, English dictionaries have apparently managed to lose one meaning of the adjective sufficient. To be sufficient as used here is to be ignorant and unconcerned with it. [↩]