Abuse and abusive behavior

If you expected a long essay here, I'm sorry, but you won't find one. I only took some dictionaries and looked up a few terms. If you want to know how to deal with Usenet abuse, read the closing words of this chapter.

Rights

"The right (objective right) is the entirety of all rules (norms), which regulate the behavior of human beings and there life circumstances inside an ordered society. You must distinguish between written right and unwritten right (custom right).
Your personal rights (subjective right) are claims which can be derivated of the objective right."

        - (c) 1998 New Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Edito Service S.A.

Properties of personal rights

• You can't lose your rights. They can be restricted, but they can't be taken away.
• Rights of an individual sometimes have to be restricted to protect the rights of a group.
• Rights belong to you indipendend of age, ancestory, sex and rank within society.
• "You can make use of your rights as long as you don't violate the rights of any other individual in that process"

Abuse

Definition

"Abuse:

1. wrong or excessive use of something
2. wrong or excessive use of one's power, position, etc.
3. unfair or illegal practice
4. cruel treatment of a person or animal
5. rude and offensive remarks about a person"

            - (c) 1995 Oxford University Press

Properties of abuse

• Abuse may mean a violation of other people's personal rights.
• Abuse is a quite subjective subject and can never have an objective definition.
• Abuse usually is a question of what counts more, the rights of an individual or the rights of a group.

Abusive Behavior

Definition

"abusive:
offensive and insulting; criticizing harshly and rudely"

        - (c) 1995 Oxford University Press

Properties of abusive behavior

• Abusive behavior doesn't violate your rights, but it's getting close to that.
• Abusive behavior is even more subjective than abuse.
• There is no definition for a border between abusive behavior and abuse, very often such a border is drawn on a case to case decision.

Annoying behavior

Definition

"annoy:
make somebody fairly angry; to irritate somebody"

        - (c) 1995 Oxford University Press

Properties of annoying behavior

• Annoying behavior doesn't violate your rights, nor does it endanger them.
• Everybody certain must accept annoying behavior up to a certain degree when interacting with human beings.

Closing words

(also my closing comment to the all-time topic "Newsgroup charters and how much power do they really have?")

"You can certainly request that other people play nicely in the newsgroups you choose to participate in. But remember that each and every one of them has as much right to post there as you do. Newsgroups are not membership organizations. If you want to take the time and trouble to complain to people's ISPs, you can do that. Some of them may take action; others will not. And that's as far as you can go. Beyond that, ignore or killfile people whose posts you object to."

        - Some poster from NANAU