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Re:Richard M. Stallman resigns by DanBC on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @11:27AM (#20996317)
> He was not defending Minsky, he argued that the crime (which he states he had no reason to deny) as described was not "assault".

But he was wrong about English usage and about legal usage of the word "assault".

When we're talking about a child who has been trafficked and coerced into sex it's weird to "well actually, is it really assault?" into the conversation, especially if that's based on his misunderstanding of what the word means.

And the effect of his interject was to defend Minsky. When hundreds of people misinterpret him the blame lies with his poor communication, not their lack of comprehension.

Re:Richard M. Stallman resigns by afiori on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @12:18PM (#20996976)
Then I apologize on my understanding of the English language.

According to the quote I read of RMS (I did not read the original email fully) the salient part is his discussion where he claims that "sexual assault" as an expression (at least colloquially) implies the use of force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc. by Minsky.

He claims that given the official report as true and taking the the claim of the victim as correct none of those (force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc.) were likely.

This is independent on whether Minsky committed a crime or not. This is simply trying to properly understand what the accusations are. I honestly have no idea whether this would constitute rape/statutory rape/assault or any other crime, taking in goodwill what I have read it is likely that whatever happened (other witnesses claim to have seen Minsky decline the advances and the report does not claim any sexual encounter, "just" that Epstein instructed her to) Minsky did not use violence.

I actually believe I misrepresented RMS words here, as he truly only said that the violence implied by the word assault was unlikely.

(Also given that by other reports one of Epstein tactics was to lure guests into having sex with minors to blackmail them)

Re:Richard M. Stallman resigns by afiori on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:17AM (#21004515)
(I hope this is not entirely off topic) Since I first commented in this thread I saw a regular fluctuation in upvotes/downvtes (which is totally reasonable since the topic is divisive). I wonder how much that is due to a geographical distribution.

In this case the dataset would not be big enough to draw statistical conclusions, but this site (like most forums) slightly suffer from the duality of US-based and international, as it cannot be truly both at the same time.

I can see many reason to never implement something like a geographical indication of which countries upvoted/downvoted (especially as it would contradict the spirit of this site), but in contentious topics it would allow some useful insights.