I’m not sure if this was unclear in our response, but an individual IP is *not* necessarily linked to a single person. An individual IP address can represent hundreds (or even thousands) of individuals on a shared address, and it can also be reassigned, sometimes in just a matter of minutes to another party, who may be completely innocent. For that reason, IP banning is often useful at the level of managing an offensive or unwanted commenter for a single site, but is not practical, or even always desirable, for an entire service that’s in numerous countries and languages around the world.

But it’s even bigger than that, since a given IP could be assigned to a publicly available machine in an airport, a coffeehouse, or whatever. If TypePad were to place a global block on such an IP, then no one using that machine would ever be able to access their services.

TRANSLATION: If you’re willing to risk locking out innocent access to your blog, that’s one thing. But you can’t reasonable ask a larger entity to do the same.

But I was told by a TP staff member: “we don’t censor.” That response indicated that TP wouldn’t ban the abuser even if they could. So I’d like TP to tell me whether they would ban him if they could do so technically. A positive response would help relieve some of my intense disappointment in their response to this incident.

But even if what they say about IPs is true, Roger & Anil are only proving the point that Typepad has no robust technical ways of identifying abusers and preventing their participation at TP blogs. Perhaps it’s not only Typepad that has this problem. But TP is my blogging service so my frustration naturally is addressed to them.

In addition (& on a slightly different subject), the methods TP provides to users to ban spam which evades their filters is cumbersome & time-consuming beyond belief. I’ve been leaving Help tickets about this for more than a year and this situation has improved only slightly.

Richard: I can’t talk hard stats here, but I think you’re overestimating the static IPs out there. If you’re on DSL or cable modem in the U.S., you’re usually on PPPoE or DHCP, meaning you get a dynamic IP. If you’re on dial-up, there’s probably a 99% chance that you’ve got a dynamic IP. And if you’re behind a corporate firewall, your requests are most likely funneled through a proxy server that has a single IP for dozens or hundreds of users.

“So I’d like TP to tell me whether they would ban him if they could do so technically.”

I’m neither a 6A employee nor a user… closer to a itsy-bitsy competitor, actually. But I’d probably respond much as they have, so I’m interested.

Let’s put aside the tech. Let’s also put aside any wrangling over the TOS and/or legalisms. Sincere question: why *should* they ban him, service-wide?

Granted, nuking this individual’s sub-literate offerings across the board wouldn’t be much of a loss; I prefer my extremist rants to come in the form of coherent sentences, thanks. But there’s nothing inherent in that guy’s mindset that makes him incompatible with all civil conversation is all contexts.

He could conceivably be a frequent and positive contributor to a blog about gardening, for example. I understand your desire to put a muzzle on him when he comes sniffing around your virtual home, but does that justify effectively cutting out his larynx? Does mean-spirited stupidity in one instance disqualify him from speech ever-after?

“Typepad has no robust technical ways of identifying abusers and preventing their participation at TP blogs.”

They have TypeKey. I don’t know if they do global bans with it, but the technical capability is there. (Anil can correct me if I’m wrong.)

You’re going to get a great deal of attention, now, as this issue has been linked from a number of blogs and other resources. Hang on!

You may reply that neither you nor Typepad wishes to get into the business of policing their blog space on behalf of their users, but if there is a potential for such speech to rise to the level of a crime then I believe Typepad & other providers have a moral, if not legal, responsiblity to deal with it more robustly than they’ve indicated that they’re willing to do.

Roger, you’re echoing Anil (have you guys been cribbing fr. ea. other’s notes on this?) in saying that a serial abuser who writes about gardening (the example I used with Anil was someone who abused & wrote about roses) somehow mitigates his offense by otherwise being a good citizen in other ways.

Look at it this way–if I was a serial criminal offender brought up on charges, surely my lawyer would try to use the fact that I tended the roses at my local park and kissed baby’s on Mother’s Day. But does that mean that I wouldn’t be convicted or that my mitigating factors would somehow be viewed as credible by judge or jury? I don’t think so. I could grant the smallest amt. of credence to your example if this offender wrote one nasty comment. But he wrote four & that puts him in a more serious category of offender at least IMO.

As for Typekey, the 6A Typekey website indicates it’s designed for Movable Type sites. I don’t know if TP or TP users can use it to monitor Typepad sites or not. It doesn’t say at the site that they can. There is a provision for 3rd party apps, but again this is meant for users. I don’t know what 6A is capable of doing with it themselves in terms of monitoring or banning hate speech globally. I’d like to find out more, though.

The user in question on such a typepad blog can state he want just users with Typekey identity to be able to comment. Btu then again, if somebody wants to comment, he gets in. I don’t know if Typeped offeres moderated comments, but I think they do.

But then: Criminal and hate speech under which juristiction? Moral values and ethics under which culture? Who defines what is right and what is wrong? You can only define what is wrong from *your* point of view, but you will never define what is wrong or right in my point of view.

The same moment, Typepad would ban based on those keywords, they would have lawsuits at their hands about censoring. And it would be right they have. This is _your_ responsibility.

As you speak of ‘have a moral, if not legal, responsiblity’, if they would go for that, any pro homo marriage blog must be banned from Typepad – as most of the Americans seem not to want that and find it imoral.

And if the law says that (which law again? Applying where? What do you do when the commenter in question cannot be held under that law?) has probably exactly written down how things are to be done in which order.

If you have not been aware of the fact, that the way YOU write on the internet exposes you, your believes, values etc and will attract commenters like this, now you are. If you have not been aware of the fact, that a combination like Gay, Israel and American is a 100% chance of getting such comments, you must be very naive.

Is this right? Probably not. Will this go away, by banning it? No, of course not. If it was so easy to ban hate speech and other stuff, we would not have this.

Btw, given they would do what you ask for – your blog would be the first to be banned. Because you display hate speech in this very entry and encourage therefor the content of it.

If you con’t want this kind of comment, turn off comments. Switch to a host server where you are in charge of censoring comments (which you do at that moment), which is called moderated comments aka you see them first before they go online.

There are federal & state statutes barring hate speech or incitement to violence. As I say, invididuals have been successfully prosecuted for such offenses here in the U.S. Once society passes laws saying these things ARE criminal offenses, then that gives us a more objective means of defining them. If someone says in your blog (if you have one) that they will kill you because you are a Jew or a Latino or Chinese or even German, they have violated the law. YOu may not believe that they have (at least to your satisfaction), but society says differently.

No one is talking here about banning based on keywords, so you’ll have to be clearer about what you mean because that part of your comment seems wrongheaded to me.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult to get some folks to understand that my abuser was not advocating banning gay marriage. He was advocating killing Jews. You do understand that there’s a difference don’t you? Besides, there is a strong minority of Americans who support the idea of gay marriage. There are probably only a few thousand Americans who advocate genocide against the Jews (thank God it’s not larger). Gay marriage is not a universally decried moral position. Advocating genocide is.

“…Your blog would be the first to be banned. Because you display hate speech in this very entry and encourage therefor the content of it.”

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying because I’m quoting in this post comments made by a hater that I myself am guilty of hate speech? If so, I’m afraid you’ve taken leave of logic & reason. That would mean that if a commenter leaves hate speech at my blog & I don’t remove it that I should be prosecuted for hate speech myself. That sure makes a lot of sense to me.