for all those who opposed pootergeek’s action… Honestly what harm was done? He was just sent home for a day. that’s it. no serious punishment.
why take such a small punishment to an epic level?

Kids need punishment to keep them in their place, I’d never oppose the idea, because I was punished often for doing idiotic things once I was a kid.

I honestly can’t say much because this is my first year of ever having internet, or even a modern operating system above DOS for that matter.

but please take into consideration that a punishment is a small price to pay to teach a child/teen their place in this world.

(just look at the time. It took forever to read all of those posts XD)

for all those who opposed pootergeek’s action… Honestly what harm was done? He was just sent home for a day. that’s it. no serious punishment.
why take such a small punishment to an epic level?

Kids need punishment to keep them in their place, I’d never oppose the idea, because I was punished often for doing idiotic things once I was a kid.

I honestly can’t say much because this is my first year of ever having internet, or even a modern operating system above DOS for that matter.

but please take into consideration that a punishment is a small price to pay to teach a child/teen their place in this world.

Urban 75 used to print the IP addresses and Email’s of those who left troll posts. Along with grovelling pleas for forgiveness from the perpetrators as they suffered a hail of flame mail.

Big Rule # ONE (Number 1 for those from the California School System): I own this blog. It is mine, not yours. Therefore, I rule here with an iron fist. If you wish to comment, you will follow the rules to the letter. As La Shawn says, “this is my weblog and I pay for the hosting. The First Amendment protects my right to speak on this site, not yours. The amendment prohibits government from infringing on my right of free expression. On this blog, your expression is a privilege. On your own blog, your expression is a right. Learn the distinction.”

Pootergeek has done this kid a service, he has shamed his ignorant pig headedness.

Note to PG: if this story makes it into Hollywood, you probably won’t get a mention; you’ll only be referred to as the “‘blog guy”. It’s unfair, I know, but hey—that’s show business.

Ummm….. has anyone on this thread ever attempted to deny that?

PooterGeek has not infringed his right of free speech in any way whatsoever. Free Speech acts for all. The boy has the right to make his offensive remarks, and PooterGeek has the right to say “This boy must be fairly loathsome and others ought to know that this is what he said”. The difference is that PooterGeek will be able to back up his assertion if challenged.

It would be insane to suggest that free speech means the right to say anything you like without being held to account for what you say.

Indeed, this is a rather important lesson for our young scrote to learn…

Well that’s easier for you to respond to than actually taking my point that freedom of speech does not require that you devote your own time and resources to assist abuse directed at you that would not otherwise see the light of day. Well done.

If freedom of speech covers posting to a blog comments page, it covers phone calls to teachers as well. We then get to the substantive content of the speech. You are making excuses for hate speech but not for critique of hate speech. Why is that?

I reported it to the school board and asked for the video tapes. Did I interfere with his right of free expresion? Or bully him?

One day they are throwing things out a school bus window, the next day they are dropping cinder blocks off a interstate overpass and killing people.

Why? Because they don’t realize it is wrong! No one ever chatised them. No one caught them or cared when they were young.

Liberal civilisation as we have come to understand it from our own history also depends on people understanding that there is a context in which people should exercise their liberty.

I assume since it were possible to identify the school the boy went to, this meant that he was accessing this site through school equipment. Are we being asked to take seriously the idea that a commitment to free-speech necessitates the use of resources that are intended to assist teaching and learning should be used to deposit racist absuse on people’s blogs?

Yeah, all he did was express an opinion (with whose central premise many of us find that we have little basis upon which to honestly say we agree, though none of us, we must admit, has had the integrity to offer one iota of support for our side in this controversy).

There’s no reason to get personal or to taint the discourse by injecting a tone of judgement or hostility. Why, what if this tiny human soul were to feel loathe to share his opinions in future on account of the abuse that was his only recompense for the fragile gift of trust given us by this yearning, questioning infant mind? He, innocent of the depths of human experience into which he has wandered, reaches out a trembling hand, seeking nothing more than our guidance and, because we happen to find fault with the empiricism of his piquant hypothesis, can think of no better way to conduct ourselves than to be arch and accusatory, to pay him not with wisdom but with vile contumely.

O, Sweet Judas…what…have…we…wrought?

“No, i am not Benji, whoever he is, nor am i Lone Voice in another guise, merely someone who disagrees with your heavy handed approach.”

Having checked your IP address properly now , I have to admit you probably aren’t. Sorry about that.

“Ignore him, ridicule him, laugh at him, be rude about him. Just don’t take his IP address and report him to teacher.”

But, like Benji, you’re still comprehensively wrong.

Not only do I not have to justify my actions to you or anyone else, I really can’t be bothered.

( In the teaching profession, toe-rag is a term of affectionate exasperation.)

His comment is stupid and unpleasant but that hardly makes him the first schoolboy to make dumbass remarks. I used to think i was a Leninist-Stalinist when i was fourteen. Luckily no-one reported me to my school headmaster for supporting the views of people responsible for the deaths of millions.

Ignore him, ridicule him, laugh at him, be rude about him. Just don’t take his IP address and report him to teacher.

If there isn’t, I’d like to start one.

I’ve let you post this one just for amusement. It’s so gloriously stupid. I’ll be deleting any other false identities you adopt today.

Poor old Lone Voice.

“We know now that it was a student at the school. What if it had been the janitor?”

Maybe it was and, in a Scooby-Dooian reverse, thanks to those pesky kids he got away with it.

Fucking well done.

I think PooterGeek’s entirely justified in investigating and identifying the individual. He’s learned something very important about the internet for a start, and his family and school have learned something important about him.

* conspiracy theory; it was the Head of Year herself and the thing with the kid is just a cover story.

Chilling? Oo.

“It’s more the pleased gloating about it that annoys me. One doesn’t need to be a *NIX guru to track an IP. Track the IP back through a dozen anonymous proxies and I’d be impressed. But frankly this is kid’s stuff.”

Anyone with an ordinary Windows box and a Sitemeter tracker could have done most of what I did. And grepping through Webserver logfiles is trivial for a modestly experienced UNIX user. The rest was, as usual with these things, down to social engineering and a basic understanding of how people set networks up in schools. So yes, you probably do have a bigger penis than I do, Andrew.