I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well, but I still can't understand those that threatened or spat on him. Michael, I hope you return to regular writing after Feb, but if you don't, thanks for all the great work so far.
When your company goes public, a decision Steve himself made long ago, you know that from then on, what you disclose to owners of the company you effectively disclose to everyone. He knew what he was getting.
Speculating as to his health doesn't worsen it or harm him in any way. If anything is immoral, it's Steve's purposely hiding it and even, this year, lying about it.
0) speculation that isn't mean
1) insults and mean rumors
2) spitting
3) death threatsInstead he treated AAPL owners largely with contempt (pretty much the way he treats everyone from the sound of it) by not speaking about it, or saying one day that he's well and a week later that he's not, while 10s of billions of dollars are on the line.
There's nothing special about our industry, crazy people are everywhere.
It's a simple numbers game, become popular enough and your popularity will cover some number of mentally unstable individuals.
Actresses, singers and presidents have all been shot for no other reason then they were famous.
Public criticism or lack of coverage probably makes things worse for Arrington, but I'm guessing not by much. Crazy people by definition do not behave rationally.
I'm not sure there is a solution to that beyond, make sure you keep as much of your life as you can secret.
The name of the young actress who was killed by her stalker some years ago escapes me, but I think he was able to get her address form the DMV.
Arrington can either quit, or keep paying for security, or find a way to keep his office and his home secret.
(Honestly, it seems the kind of circumstance where I can't really think of anything the police should be able to do to anyone who seems dangerous or "suspicious", because both are very much judgement calls.)
Assault: (Law) an act, criminal or tortious, that threatens physical harm to a person, whether or not actual harm is done
So now what ? Is the situation better or worse ? It better be LOT better, because society is collectively out of quite a bit of money by the time all that is said and done.
I don't think Arrington is necessarily over reacting to the threat, either. Without knowing the details it's impossible to tell, and even if you knew the details you might be uncertain. There is a very wide zone between something that will justify society's all-out response and what makes you feel creepy.
There is probably no way for society to make everyone feel warm and comfy about all their interactions with each other. Think about if we had a general policy of jailing people based on a definition of "threatens physical harm" that was that lose. Think back over every bad relationship you ever had . . . are you absolutely sure that some disasterous former manager or former employee could not have gotten you jailed ? Absolutely sure ?
Not trying to argue. Just don't see why that wouldn't work. the jury should just be like "well, it's a crime, and he did it" instead of saying it's common so we'll ignore it.
I have threatened bloody murder to many a bad library author, and the last thing I need is to get jailed because of that ;)
The reason I've heard that assault charges aren't always filed is that there has to be, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording, "sufficient reason " to believe that the accuser can and will carry out his/her thread in order to make it assault.
The situation often cited for this is a 90 lb weakling gets drunk and threatens to beat up someone who fights in MMA for a living. Since the thread isn't credible this technically isn't assault.
On the other hand, if I shove a gun in your face and threaten to kill you then that very much is assault as my threat is very credible.
Some where in between is the line between assault and just being a dick, which isn't a crime.
This is often why many verbal assault cases aren't tried.
The other, unfortunate, reason is that court time is very finite. Prosecutors can only take so many cases to court and prosecutors know that people will often make these types of threats for a short period of time and then just leave that person's life.
If that's the case then the situation often resolves itself and they don't have to take up their valuable court space with this case.
It sucks but that's the way things are:(.
When you set policy for things like police, you get tradeoffs. Protect one person's rights, and you'll block actions the police could have taken to stop another. This isn't intended as political commentary and I don't have any particular thing in mind; think of it as an engineering view of law enforcement. You Can't Have It All. (And Certainly Not For Free.)
I really don't understand all the apologizing for law enforcement that refuses to enforce the law in this case. The victim was harmed a lot, and still no one wants to see the crook stopped?
And with all due respect to TC and Mike, it often takes "pull" to get Federal law enforcement involved. They handle all the "big fish". For example, if your start up was hacked, they would be the ones to call, but they won't move on anything less than $50,000 or $500,0000 worth of damages.
Disclaimer: IANAL and IANALEO.
You must be new here...
And somehow I hope our industry is special, that we're less likely to do crazy things in general. We're trained in science and reasoning after all. How many techies do you know that are rabid fans of celebrities?
Ironically, many of the successful assassins either did not, or had nothing like a logical reason.
* Booth's assassination of Lincoln is... complicated but had to do with the Civil War. Call it rational-ish.
* Garfield was assassinated by a nutcase who thought Garfield owed him after the assassin's few hundred printed pamphlets putatively got him elected. Not rational.
* McKinley's assassin had a head full of anarchism. Call it rational if you like, but it certainly wasn't because of anything about McKinley himself.
* Kennedy's assassin's motives are unclear, but it looks like he generally just hated the US and wanted to take down Kennedy and thereby become a "great man".
I'm not arguing with anything you said, just find it interesting that of all the people who, like you say, may have some reason to want to pull this off, it's the crazies who succeed. Call it HN's goal of "interesting things".
As an astronaut, I have the same hope for my industry. Puts on diaper
Do you believe there are any cases where one could justifiably kill in self-defense, or are you a pure pacifist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Schaeffer
I read about her in Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, which incidentally is a pretty good book about such things. (de Becker is apparently the guy you call if you're a Hollywood star who gets a death threat -- protecting famous people is his company's business. And his published opinion is pretty much the same as yours: All famous people will get threats once they become famous enough, and the most famous people you can name have probably got dozens of stalkers of one sort or another.)
"I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well"
I don't really get this... startups don't fall or succeed based on tc coverage. It might spike traffic for a day with some geeks. That's all at the end of the day.
Seems like some of this is TC's own doing - they have made people believe you have to get techcrunched, or you won't succeed - which is completely false.
I think they do a great job in the main though.
And yet, for all of those startups, getting the TC story was a milestone of sorts.
Its like getting your first hundred users, it doesn't define your success or failure outright, but its a big psychological hurdle I think.
Completely agree, something I was involved in was on wired last year (twice) and I must admit it was a good feeling, but thats about it.
If anyone sees getting on TechCrunch as the goal of their startup rather than using it as a tool that can help them reach your goal, they have probably already failed - they just don't know it yet.
Regardless of how valuable TechCrunch is to us or any other startup, the fact remains that violence and threats of violence against bloggers is utterly unjustifiable. People act like Michael Arrington owes them something, and that's the fundamental problem underpinning the latest attacks.
In any case, yes, threats and violence are not cool in any way. I was just commenting on the effect that TechCrunch has on the community as a whole, which I don't think is all that huge. Its more a place to read about startup news, and can be solved by simply subscribing to something else in your RSS reader of choice.
In any case, I think fighting for press coverage is stupid. Press coverage is not going to make people use your product, and if enough people use your product you are guaranteed coverage. On the other hand, if you want to break into the public consciousness, traditional marketing will help, but there's no point doing that until you know you have a winner on your hands.
If fundraising is in your future, it's valuable.
If credibility is important, it probably helps a touch, too.
Sure, TC just covers start-ups, but actors just make movies and musicians just make music and people have been spitting on them and giving death threats forever. You just need considerably less fame to attract crazy people online because there are so many more of them.