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>the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know the substance of this legal threat as it contains some kind of gag order preventing its broader discussion within staff.

Is there any more context about this? I'd be interested to read logs. Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode?

Log (#freenode): https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c...

Log from after that one (#freenode-staff-discussion): https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...

I skimmed these logs and it is not clear what legal order they are talking about or in what way there is a gag. Are there specific lines in these logs that go into detail?

> Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode?

no of course they are not saying that, they would be punished if they did (because it would be illegal).

now, that such a thing exists in a "democracy"... is a topic on its own broader scope.

Apparently it’s in the UK, where judges are prompt to issue “superinjunctions” where even discussing the injunction is contempt of court and can incur a prison sentence.

Whether a monarchy without a written constitution, or separation of Church and State can be considered a democracy is left as an exercise to the reader.

The constitution is entirely written, we're just not sure which documents are part of it...

Source? Everything I've ever heard about the UK constitution is that it has both written and unwritten elements. Indeed, no statute or court ruling even defines the important head of government role of Prime Minister.

> Whether a monarchy without a written constitution, or separation of Church and State can be considered a democracy is left as an exercise to the reader.

That's begging the question, since it assumes an objective answer. Rather, "it is up to the reader whether they consider a monarchy without a written consistution, or separation of Church and State, to be a democracy".

Even that is rather silly, since it's drawing arbitrary lines on a spectrum of more/less democratic. Some are pretty clean, e.g. direct democracy is more democratic than representative democracy; an elected head of a republic is more democratic than an inherited head of a monarchy. Others have more overlap, and hence aren't strictly ordered in the abstract, e.g. written versus unwritten constitutions, sortition versus election, etc.

>Some are pretty clean, e.g. direct democracy is more democratic than representative democracy //

Unless the people want representational democracy but are forced into direct democracy.

Or, in theory (and I can't stress that enough that this is theoretical), representational democracy could better represent people than they can represent for themselves .. I can fix my own windows, but the glazier will probably do a better job. In the same way a group of professional politicians, in theory, could more closely represent the combined will of the demos than could direct democracy -- like how an adult stops a child from eating cake before they're sick -- knowing what is best for oneself, and what's best for society according to ones own choice of self-societal balance, is a hard thing that needs professional input.

I might add I think UK (and probably USA) democracy is seriously broken and that representational democracy isn't working well; but direct democracy is too easy to pervert with propaganda.

> Unless the people want representational democracy but are forced into direct democracy.

That's a category error; you're comparing a decision-making process to a decision. A totalitarian dictatorship is not more democratic than a body of elected representatives, even if the people voted to implement that dictatorship. It's like the XKCD comic which claims the number 4 is random, because it came up in a die roll.

> Or, in theory (and I can't stress that enough that this is theoretical), representational democracy could better represent people than they can represent for themselves

Sure, but what has that got to do with the relative level of democracy between those systems? "Democratic" isn't a synonym for "good" or "best". It's perfectly possible for a more democratic system of governance to produce outcomes which are "worse" (according to whatever measure we care about). The rest of your comment seems to be further conflation between "democratic" and "good".

I don't think I made a category error, the process is not democratic and the continued decision making by the demos would be contrary to their desire (to have a less direct democracy) so would remain undemocratic. Votes within the system would be democratic inasmuch as they were 'by the people' but they wouldn't have supreme power -- as they couldn't choose to change the system -- and so it would fall short of being democratic. It was, and remains, a cutesy and non-productive comment.

>A totalitarian dictatorship is not more democratic than a body of elected representatives, even if the people voted to implement that dictatorship. //

To press the useless point: yes, a dictatorship is less democratic as the people no longer have the power vested in them (and would have to reclaim it by a coup, or similar).

On your second point, you're right. My go to for reflecting on democracy is 'government by the people and _for_ the people' and that has coloured my response. I do think there's an element of necessary agency, which suggests a qualitative aspect, however.

But strictly, I concede, government to the utmost detriment of the demos could be democratic in the primary sense of the word.

When a God-appointed King tells his subjects they live in a democracy, the subjects agree.

"... now, that such a thing exists in a "democracy"... is a topic on its own broader scope."

In other news, the rsync.net Warrant Canary turned 15 years old last month:

https://twitter.com/rsyncnet/status/1387090538273206274

Are these reliable? Can a judge compel someone to continue publishing a canary to prevent leaking the information?

And is it unthinkable someone would do it without a legal requirement, to keep their business afloat?

Actually, yes. Likely fewer people would leave and there would be far fewer repercussions to be honest about the canary than for someone to discover it was falsely put up. The longer the charade goes on, the worse the blowback will be.

There are numerous situations where gag orders can be issued, both in the US and the UK, not just NSLs. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_order

A lot of questions here:

> christel, now former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party

why was the previous owner/director(s) of this company (presumably christel) and what rights did they have to sell - and where did the money go?

EDIT: yes https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/10308021 also, it is claimed by AL that christel was harrassed. Fuchs contests this.

> it seems that Andrew Lee - despite zero involvement in the day-to-day operations of Freenode - has decided that ownership of the domains entitles him to ownership of Freenode as a network and community, and intended to give his own people administrative access to the network

so, did AL get access to "the network" and if so, how? It seems AL sponsored ~3k/month, but did they also sponsor, and thus control, the hardware too?

> this company has absolutely no operational involvement. It does not own any servers, it does not employ any of the staff

Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from?

> The democratically elected ... were removed by force[3]

The link shows the 'people' page listing different people in various roles. What does "changed by force means"? That someone was able to edit a webpage? Or something more (like access revoked)?

How did the website content get changed? By someone with access to the original site, or a clone? Was the domain redirected at any point?

EDIT: AL claims "tomaw" changed the staff page. Fuchs says he made the change - which further complicates what is meant by "by force"...

> have been informed that they are not entitled to act in their respective capacity

How, and by who?

> Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from?

Freenode the vaguely defined project staff, not Freenode the company staff.

Freenode didn't fall. They just had to change to a new name.

It's a better name anyway.

People that are not able to adjust to a new name, you should feel sorry for them.

Dang should pin an announcement about the new domain for a few weeks. Or all the subreddits and other forums the maintainers use can do something like that. The word will get out.

I think this is a matter of opinion but how is libera or libera.chat a better name than FreeNode?

How do you even pronounce that? Lee-Bear-Ah? Lee-Bera? Libra? Leebra? Liberia? That last one is a joke.

In Latin Libera is to deliver and pronounced Lee-Bera In Spanish Libera is to liberate and pronounced Lee-Bear-Ah

I can't say either of those roll off the tongue in either language and any English mispronunciation of it is just awful. Lee-brah and the like to me is about as grating as Tay-Co (taco), Jal-Ah-Peeno (jalapeño) or Ques-Aaadla (quesadilla).

This is a major loss of brand for the network. I'm sure I'll get downvoted into oblivion.

OTOH freenode sounds like freedom fries to me, like American political talk.