This is what a hypocrite looks like : Stefan Molyneux abusing DMCA to censor

FreedomFanatic said:
I would say that that authority includes a right to spank, regardless of whether that's a good parenting choice or not.



I wouldn't put him in the same category as Hitler (lol) but we agree that his reasoning there was really freaking stupid. I honestly think I'm more intelligent than he is.


Walter Block explains it really well.
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If Walter Block thinks blackmail and slander are not aggressive, then Walter Block is wrong.
 
GunnyFreedom said:
If Walter Block thinks blackmail and slander are not aggressive, then Walter Block is wrong.
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Walter Block is dead wrong.

Mises Daily



Defending the Blackmailer


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July 28, 2010Walter Block
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"This is my kid, Mr. T. He'll be blackmailing you from now on — I'm retiring to Florida."
At first glance it is not hard to answer the question, "Is blackmail really illegitimate?" The only problem it would seem to pose is, "Why is it being asked at all?"
Do not blackmailers, well, blackmail people? And what could be worse? Blackmailers prey on people's dark, hidden secrets. They threaten to expose and publicize them. They bleed their victims and often drive them to suicide.
We will find, however, that the case against the blackmailer cannot stand serious analysis; that it is based upon a tissue of unexamined shibboleths and deep philosophical misunderstandings.
What exactly is blackmail? Blackmail is the offer of trade. It is the offer to trade something, usually silence, for some other good, usually money. If the offer of the trade is accepted, the blackmailer then maintains his silence and the blackmailed pays the agreed-upon price.
If the blackmail offer is rejected, the blackmailer may exercise his rights of free speech and publicize the secret. There is nothing amiss here. All that is happening is that an offer to maintain silence is being made. If the offer is rejected, the blackmailer does no more than exercise his right of free speech.
The sole difference between a gossip and a blackmailer is that the blackmailer will refrain from speaking — for a price. In a sense, the gossip is much worse than the blackmailer, for the blackmailer has given the blackmailed a chance to silence him. The gossip exposes the secret without warning. Is not the person with a secret better off at the hands of a blackmailer than a gossip?
With the gossip, all is lost; with the blackmailer, one can only gain, or at least be no worse off. If the price requested by the blackmailer is lower than the secret is worth, the secret-keeper will pay the blackmailer — this being the lesser of the two evils. He thus gains the difference to him between the value of the secret and the price of the blackmail.
When the blackmailer demands more than the secret is worth, his demand will not be met and the information will become public. However, in this case the person is no worse off with the blackmailer than he would have been with the inveterate gossip. It is indeed difficult then to account for the vilification suffered by the blackmailer, at least compared to the gossip, who is usually dismissed with slight contempt and smugness.
Blackmail need not entail the offer of silence in return for money. This is only the best known form: it may be defined without reference to either. Defined in general terms, blackmail is the threat to do something — anything that is not in itself illegal — unless certain demands are met.
Many actions in the public arena qualify as acts of blackmail, but, instead of being vilified, they have often attained a status of respectability! For example, the recent lettuce boycott is a form of blackmail. Through the lettuce boycott (or any boycott), threats are made to retailers and wholesalers of fruits and vegetables. If they handle nonunion lettuce, the boycotters assert, people will be asked not to patronize their establishments. This conforms perfectly to the definition: a threat that something, not in itself illegal, will take place unless certain demands are met.
But what about the threats involved in blackmail? This perhaps more than anything else is the aspect of blackmail that is most misunderstood and feared. At first glance, one is inclined to agree that threats are immoral. The usual dictum against aggression, for example, warns not only against aggression per se but also against the threat of aggression. If a highwayman accosts a traveler, it is usually the threat of aggression alone that will compel obedience.
"The sole difference between a gossip and a blackmailer is that the blackmailer will refrain from speaking — for a price."Consider the nature of threats. When what is threatened is aggressive violence, the threat is condemnable. No individual has the right to initiate aggressive violence against another.
In blackmail, however, what is being "threatened" is something that the blackmailer does have a right to do — whether it be exercising the right of free speech, refusing to patronize certain stores, or persuading others to do likewise. What is being threatened is not in itself illegitimate; it is, therefore, not possible to call the "threat" an illegitimate threat.
Blackmail can only be illegitimate when there is a special foresworn relationship between the blackmailer and the blackmailed. A secret-keeper may take a lawyer or a private investigator into his confidence on the condition that the confidence be maintained in secrecy.
If the lawyer or private investigator attempts to blackmail the secret-keeper, that would be in violation of the contract and, therefore, illegitimate. However, if a stranger holds the secret without contractual obligations, then it is legitimate to offer to "sell" his silence.
In addition to being a legitimate activity, blackmail has some good effects, litanies to the contrary notwithstanding. Apart from some innocent victims who are caught in the net, who does the blackmailer usually prey upon?
In the main, there are two groups. One group is composed of criminals: murderers, thieves, swindlers, embezzlers, cheaters, rapists, etc. The other group consists of people who engage in activities, not illegitimate in themselves, that are contrary to the mores and habits of the majority: homosexuals, sadomasochists, sexual perverts, communists, adulterers, etc. The institution of blackmail has beneficial, but different, effects upon each of these groups.
In the case of criminals, blackmail and the threat of blackmail serve as deterrents. They add to the risks involved in criminal activity. How many of the anonymous tips received by the police — the value of which cannot be overestimated — can be traced, directly or indirectly, to blackmail? How many criminals are led to pursue crime on their own, eschewing the aid of fellow criminals in "jobs" that call for cooperation, out of the fear of possible blackmail?
Finally, there are those individuals who are on the verge of committing crimes, or at the "margin of criminality" (as the economist would say), where the least factor will propel them one way or another. The additional fear of blackmail may be enough, in some cases, to dissuade them from crime.
If blackmail itself were legalized, it would undoubtedly be an even more effective deterrent. Legalization would undoubtedly result in an increase in blackmail, with attendant depredations upon the criminal class.
It is sometimes said that what diminishes crime is not the penalty attached to the crime but the certainty of being caught. Although this controversy rages with great relevance in current debates on capital punishment, it will suffice to point out that the institution of blackmail does both. It increases the penalty associated with crime, as it forces criminals to share part of their loot with the blackmailer. It also raises the probability of being apprehended, as blackmailers are added to police forces, private citizen and vigilante groups, and other anticrime units.
Blackmailers, who are often members in good standing in the criminal world, are in an advantageous position to foil crimes. Their "inside" status surpasses even that of the spy or infiltrator, who is forced to play a role.
Legalizing blackmail would thus allow anticrime units to take advantage of two basic crime fighting adages at the same time: "divide and conquer," and "lack of honor among thieves." It is quite clear that one important effect of legalizing blackmail would be to diminish crime — real crime, that is.
The legalization of blackmail would also have a beneficial effect upon actions that do not involve aggression, but are at variance with the mores of society as a whole. On these actions, the legalization of blackmail would have a liberating effect. Even with blackmail still illegal, we are witnessing some of its beneficial effects.
Homosexuality, for instance, is technically illegal in some instances, but not really criminal, since it involves no aggression. For individual homosexuals, blackmail very often causes considerable harm and can hardly be considered beneficial. But for the group as a whole, that is, for each individual as a member of the group, blackmail has helped by making the public more aware and accustomed to homosexuality.


Forcing individual members of a socially oppressed group into the open, or "out of the closet," cannot, of course, be considered a service. The use of force is a violation of an individual's rights. But still, it does engender an awareness on the part of members of a group of one another's existence. In forcing this perception, blackmail can legitimately take some small share of the credit in liberating people whose only crime is a deviation from the norm in a noncriminal way.
In reflecting on the old aphorism, "the truth shall make you free," the only "weapon" at the disposal of the blackmailer is the truth. In using the truth to back up his threats (as on occasion he must), he sets the truth free, very often without intent, to do whatever good or bad it is capable of doing.
http://mises.org/library/defending-blackmailer
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William Tell said:
Walter Block is dead wrong.
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Ayup. Blackmail and slander are more aggressive than a punch in the eye. Modern humans are thinking beings who deal in information. Information is only irrelevant to non-rational animals. If we were monkeys and dogs and such, then maybe I could say "blackmail is not aggression" because monkeys and dogs and such are non-rational animals. Human beings operate within the realm of reason. Rational aggression is as real as physical. In the case of blackmail and such, rational aggression can be more harmful than physical.

Walter Block is about as wrong on this subject as Juan McFake is wrong on the wars.
 
Blackmail is not a nice candyland free market voluntary trade. It is a threat to destroy someones life, marriage, or who knows what else depending on the circumstances. Blackmailers are without honor, and often times are not even just telling the truth. Someone may purposefully get in a compromising situation with someone. when you pay the blackmailer, there is zero reason to even think he will keep quiet. Paying a blackmailer is a desperate last gasp of someone to defend his life as he knows it.

Blackmailers are the lowest of the low, and should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
 
HA haters. Stefan is like a light in a dark room for finding crazies.

Anyways can we clarify something? If he used DCMA how is he committing fraud? His reasons for using it can be anything, as long as it was his material that got shut down.

As far as Eric Gardner goes. He has spoke about it for about 4 hours. You can't just take things he takes out of context. In context he thinks that laws banning cigarette selling will always lead to cases like Eric Gardner. He is against laws like these. Now he also believes that the cops did nothing wrong from the point of view of the law. If you show resistance 10 out of 10 times the cops will take you down. We can debate on the role of police and the role of laws. But that is not relevant to what happened.
 
Sorry guys, I agree with Block.

But, if blackmail is so harmful because of social harms that come from it (which I agree that it is) why can't it be combated the same way? Through non-violent social ostracism?
 
GunnyFreedom said:
Ayup. Blackmail and slander are more aggressive than a punch in the eye. Modern humans are thinking beings who deal in information. Information is only irrelevant to non-rational animals. If we were monkeys and dogs and such, then maybe I could say "blackmail is not aggression" because monkeys and dogs and such are non-rational animals. Human beings operate within the realm of reason. Rational aggression is as real as physical. In the case of blackmail and such, rational aggression can be more harmful than physical.

Walter Block is about as wrong on this subject as Juan McFake is wrong on the wars.
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I'm still kind of undecided on this because it's not a pet issue I dwell on much and haven't thought it through. However, Block's argument is far more thoughtful than yours (and WT's). If you get around to refuting Block point-for-point, plz pm me because I'd like to read it. :) thnx.
 
William Tell said:
Blackmail is not a nice candyland free market voluntary trade. It is a threat to destroy someones life, marriage, or who knows what else depending on the circumstances. Blackmailers are without honor, and often times are not even just telling the truth. Someone may purposefully get in a compromising situation with someone. when you pay the blackmailer, there is zero reason to even think he will keep quiet. Paying a blackmailer is a desperate last gasp of someone to defend his life as he knows it.

Blackmailers are the lowest of the low, and should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
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I'd put child molesters and war pigs and lawyers and congressmen (just to name a few) below blackmailers.
 
Bored at work again so I had a 5 min. of my time to look at this.
1. Stefans wife is a psychologist and she was on Stefans show. People called in and she talked to them.
2. Some sick fuck used information in that conversation to track and stalk listeners that asked advice from psychologist (Stefans wife). They also used pictures/calls and videos of other people who called Stefans show to harass and stalk them online.
3. Listeners of Stefans show called in and informed Stefan that they were stalked and harassed and asked him to remove that content.
3. Stefans wife gets reprimanded and license suspended.
https://members.cpo.on.ca/public_register/show/19048?section=discipline#ui-tabs-12
4. Stefan takes only steps that government allows him to control damage created by sick stalking fucks.

"If you attack listeners you dont get to use any of our materials. Thats the line"- Stefan M. Show.
 
Blackmailers don't care about your cutesie "social ostracism" anymore than I do. You can't beat them by being a wuss. You have to beat them with a stick.
 
heavenlyboy34 said:
I'm still kind of undecided on this because it's not a pet issue I dwell on much and haven't thought it through. However, Block's argument is far more thoughtful than yours (and WT's). If you get around to refuting Block point-for-point, plz pm me because I'd like to read it. :) thnx.
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I think WT and Gunny are using a different basis for argumentation than Block. Block is using strict application of the NAP, while Will and Gunny are using a more generic "harm principle" (that is my best guess at what is happening. I am not sure.)

Its not a pet issue for me either. If the only "unjust" law was to prohibit blackmail, I probably wouldn't even bother with this movement. At the end of the day, though, I still agree with Block.
 
I think Gunny is using the NAP, and in a correct way. I myself don't personally care about the technical sacraments of the NAP people. So it wouldn't change my mind even if Gunny was not.
 
heavenlyboy34 said:
I'm still kind of undecided on this because it's not a pet issue I dwell on much and haven't thought it through. However, Block's argument is far more thoughtful than yours (and WT's). If you get around to refuting Block point-for-point, plz pm me because I'd like to read it. :) thnx.
Click to expand...

I don't see the point. I'm not stuck in the physical world. Blackmailers don't care about your arguments. Blackmail is not a business. Blackmail doesn't even have to be true, and it can kill. Slander, which is false by definition, can steal millions and impoverish extended families. That is aggression. What else do I need to know? They are aggressive, they cause harm.

Sometimes the simpler argument is simpler because it's true. You say Block's argument is more thoughtful, but what if it's just more elaborate?

It boils down to harm done. Aggression is not only that which is physical, aggression can be financial, emotional, psychological. Some chattel slaves were never hurt in their lives and yet they were still slaves. Were treated as slaves. Thought as slaves. I would say they were aggressed against merely by being owned. Ownership in this case is an ideological construct and not merely a physical one.

If slander can't be aggression just because it's words, then theft can't be aggression if a hacker does it by a computer from 1000 miles away. I reject the entire concept. All I need for aggression to take place is {doesharm}+{getsharmed}. Everything else is just dickering over price.
 
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