asbestosman wrote:Surely you jest. A sage of your caliber most certainly realizes that while the word, public was important, it was not refering to the noun information, but rather the noun figure. It cannot be that you fail to see an important distinction between Mr. Coffee and movie stars, politicians, or Mormon leaders.
Again why are you making the argument that Coffee is NOT a public figure? Are you implying that the magnitude of publicity matters? It would seem that the main criteria for being a public figure would necessitate being a figure, and being in the public. You are applying an imaginary metric for the term based on the level of publicity, which is poor reasoning. If Coffee puts information about himself into a public forum, he is a public figure.
Likewise you are a public figure. Your public figure is Asbestosman. If your real name is John Doe, and you never provide that information publicly, then John Doe is not a public figure, but Asbestosman is and due to archiving, always will be. A figure does not have to be on CNN to qualify. Your imaginary metric is simply a pathetic attempt to hide shoddy reasoning.
Likewise if he willingly puts information into a public forum, that information is public, and as such using it is not stalking, unethical, or wrong in any way. Coffee WANTED people to know how tough and manly he was. The fact that he lied about it all does not change the public nature. He simply lied publicly.
You're telling me that the link to the Bebo website with his picture is one he gave of himself here? That's the one I was referring to. You must be talking about gun pic. or something like that. I don't mind you reposting the gun pic. I do mind the bebo link. That is stalkerish even if that information is publicly available via Google.
Why? The information is publicly available. When Coffee, in his teenager or tough-guy Marine pose, put information on the Internet and made it available to everyone he made it public. The fact that most people are too stupid to correlate information is not my problem.
Everything I referenced was publicly available. No passwords were required. No special restrictions were placed on the information at all. Why are you creating imaginary metrics?
Here is a random guy…
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/bio.html
I don't know him. I have never interacted with him. I do know he runs a website called news of the weird. All of this information is publicly available. I am not stalking him by posting his picture. He has made himself a public figure independent of how many people even know he exists.