From - Wed Feb 16 15:22:11 2000 Return-Path: Received: from gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au ([131.170.42.16]) by osgood.mail.mindspring.net (Mindspring Mail Service) with ESMTP id sak735.giq.30ahi43 for ; Tue, 15 Feb 2000 22:41:23 -0500 (EST) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA21676 for agora-official-list; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 03:30:46 GMT Received: from fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (fw-in.serc.rmit.edu.au [131.170.42.1]) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id DAA21670 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 03:30:44 GMT Received: (from mail@localhost) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.1) id OAA48835 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:47:17 +1100 (EST) Received: from msuacad.morehead-st.edu(147.133.1.1) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au via smap (V2.1) id xma048831; Wed, 16 Feb 00 14:47:07 +1100 Received: (from mpslon01@localhost) by msuacad.morehead-st.edu (8.7.1/8.7.1) id WAA08529 for agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au; Tue, 15 Feb 2000 22:33:55 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Slone Message-Id: <200002160333.WAA08529@msuacad.morehead-st.edu> Subject: OFF: CFJ 1194 Judged TRUE To: agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (agora-official) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 22:33:54 EST X-Mailer: Elm [revision: 212.4] Sender: owner-agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au Precedence: bulk Reply-To: agora-discussion@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: sak735.giq.30ahi43 ====================================================================== CFJ 1194 A breach of the Rules in Agora is considered (By Agora) to be illegal. ====================================================================== Called by: Peekee Judge: t Judgement: Judge selection: Eligible: Anthony, Sherlock, Steve, t, Wes Not eligible: Caller: Peekee Barred: - Had their turn: Blob, Chuck, Crito, elJefe, Elysion, Harlequin, harvel, Lee, Murphy Already served: - Defaulted: - By request: Michael On Hold: Oerjan, Palnatoke ====================================================================== History: Called by Peekee: 13 Feb 2000 12:39:48 +0000 Assigned to t: 13 Feb 2000 11:32:24 -0500 Judged TRUE: 16 Feb 2000 03:21:01 +0200 Judgement published: As of this message ===================================================================== Caller's Arguments: ====================================================================== Evidence attached by the Caller: ====================================================================== Judge's Arguments: I find this statement to be TRUE. As this CFJ will be archived somewhere, I should probably now justify my decision somehow. To begin with, I'll now summarize the recent discussion (hundreds of messages during the last few days) which was the reason why this CFJ 1194 was called. It all began when Anthony, a new Player, submitted a "Rule Proposal" intended to force people to spell out the first occurrence of each acronym in each Rule. There has been controversy both about the validity of the Proposal (CFJ 1196 found it valid) and the legality of its contents - namely whether allowing the Promotor to refuse to distribute some types of Proposals makes those Proposals illegal which is explicitly prohibited by Rule 404 (rule text in full: "No Rule shall have any effect which seeks to make the legality of making a Proposal conditional upon its content."). The latter issue was a starting point of discussion about laws, legality and other matters. This discussion has generated the hundreds of messages mentioned above and a lot of picked nits. In short, people have argued that something is illegal if it is prohibited but others claim that things aren't illegal unless there is a penalty associated with them. Also, it has been claimed that there is a distinction between the sets of prohibited and penalized actions, that the first set doesn't include all of the actions of the second one. Then, it has been pointed out that murder is generally held to be a crime and illegal but in at least British law it is not explicitly prohibited. Platonism and Pragmatism have been brought out again. There has been still a lot of discussion, much of it just repeating what has been already said three times, but still running strong like this paragraph. The discussion has generated some new discussion about new things but as the discussion about illegality doesn't seem to be going any further in any direction it seems justified to to note that this judgement can be made without needing to observe the discussion about current hot topics any more. After summarizing the discussion I will now justify my decision as I promised. The Rules do use the word "illegal" but don't define it. Therefore, it has the same meaning in Agora as in normal usage, as appropriate. In fact, "Breach of the rules" happens to be practically the same as the common dictionary definition of "illegal". Therefore, this CFJ must be TRUE. I wish to state that I have also consulted dictionaries of other languages as English - as "illegal" is an English word this might not be necessary but as it has been pointed out that people can be culturally prejudiced to attach new ideas to common terms so that they begin to hold these ideas as a part of the term I felt it useful to check if the idea of illegality is to such degree a culturally loaded term in English that it would effect this judgement. As I expected, this turned out not to be the case - for example "Suomen perussanakirja" defines "laiton" as "lakien vastainen, sääntöjen vastainen", the second part of which is "against the rules" in English. The words "breach of the rules" appear to describe the nucleus of the term "illegal" rather well. ====================================================================== -- Michael Slone - http://vir.fclib.org/~harvel/ It is very old that they like a chateau. Oh well who can be better. -- Gertrude Stein