From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Fri Mar 28 1997 - 14:38:36 MST
> [Re the kook who talked about the UFO in Hale-Bopp on Art Bell]
> Fraud is a felony, is it not? If so, the law in California clearly
> states that any deaths occuring during the the commission of a felony
> are to considered homicides. Ergo, charge the bastard with murder.
There is no fraud here. Fraud is the act of using deceit to obtain
consent from someone to a proposal of yours that materially harms
them in some way. The lunatic made no proposals to anyone--he
wasn't selling tickets to the UFO, or telling anyone to kill himself.
He was just spouting entertaining nonsense. Just plain lying is not
a crime.
If we jailed people for irresponsible speech, we reinforce the
illusion that most speech is responsible. Every news report is biased,
and based on bad evidence, and should be suspect. The pretense of
objectivity in the media does far more harm than a few kooks, because
it causes our ability to spot the kooks to atrophy.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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