Thursday, August 6, 2009

Subject: Alan Maki Suspension Due to Legal Threat, Multiple Forum Concerns

From: Steven Clift Date: Aug 05 17:09 UTC Short link

It is extremely rare for E-Democracy.org to suspend a participant
outside the usual warning and suspension process administered by local
forum managers. It is extremely rare that anyone is ever suspended for
more than two weeks (what happens when you receive two official formal
warnings within a year).

Under our system - http://e-democracy.org/rules - in exchange for
using your real name you have the right to participate. You can only
lose that right based on your actions and we don't, except under
situations of libel and privacy violations, remove or edit your posts
even if they violate our rules. Extremely few commercial or non-profit
sites take as strong of an anti-censorship position online nor limit
their power to do whatever they want. Websites/forums are normally the
complete and arbitrary domain of the owner, not with E-Democracy.org.

That said, due to Alan Maki's written suggestion that he is
considering taking legal action against E-Democracy.org, parallel
forum warnings and his difficult interactions with our volunteers, as
the overall organization Board's designee I have suspended his
participation for at least six months. If he lifts his legal threats
in writing, then we are open to discussing his return with a full
understanding of what our rules require. Our non-profit organization's
right of assembly under the First Amendment is fundamentally
threatened by any legal action due to the cost and our mission to
expand participation and building community is not compatible with
such legal threats or interactions that exhaust our volunteer
capacity. While our Issues Forums are designed to be as close to
"public forums" as possible, we are not a government organization.

Please do not forward forum topic comments from Alan Maki publicly to
forums hosted by E-Democracy.org if he requests such assistance. This
may lead to further sanctions. You may of course take your own
initiative and post links to his (and others) blog posts or
announcements (where he can do and say whatever he likes) -
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com - if the content relates directly to
the scope of a specific forum.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, further information,
etc. please contact E-Democracy.org directly (discussion of forum
administration on the forum itself is outside the scope of our forums)
at: OR http://e-democracy.org/contact

Sincerely,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org



-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Clift [mailto:clift@e-democracy.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 11:36 AM
To: Alan L. Maki
Subject: Alan Maki Suspension Due to Legal Threat, Multiple Forum Concerns

Alan,

Your suggestion that you are considering taking legal action against E-Democracy.Org requires me as the Board designee to remove review of your posts from local Forum Managers and place you on moderated status universally.

As a small independent non-profit, legal threats like this threaten our ability to exercise our First Amendment right of the freedom of assembly where our participants voluntarily agree to communicate under rules and policies consistent with our mission. We are not a government agency and have extremely limited resources, but we do have very very basic due process laid out in our rules which I am following here. We also do not have the capacity to deal with the volume of activity you are producing across so many local forums outside of the actual area where you live. No member in our 15+ year history has attempted to be active across as many forums at the same time making timely moderation something unreasonable to administer.

Also as you know, your communication with and about our volunteers is harsh to put it lightly and you've attracted a number of informal rule advisories and some official rule warnings on various forums. Based on my evaluation of our mission tied to Rule #10 under suspension and your legal threats, I am fully suspending your participation on any and all E-Democracy.org forums and web sites. Your existing account is now suspended and any attempt to login, post, or create additional accounts using any e-mail address will be considered an unauthorized attempt to access our computer system.

We will assume your consideration of legal action against us remains active until such time that we receive a notarized letter stating that no legal action of any kind by you are under consideration is received. If your threat of legal action is lifted clearly in writing, we will at that time discuss your interest returning to E-Democracy.org forums under the rules and policies all participants agree to follow. We will not discuss your interest for at least six months from today, Wednesday, August 5, 2009.

In summary, our organization's view of expanding participation and building community in local democracy appears vastly different than your view. I encourage you to continue the use of your own online tools and web sites using the same First Amendment rights our voluntary association also uses to have your own say free from our limited (but clearly offensive to you) restrictions.

Sincerely,
Steven Clift
Executive Director, E-Democracy.Org

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Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org