Calumny, Libel, Joerg Jaspert & debian-private untouchable cyberbullies
Defamation comes in many forms.
Slander is garden-variety rumours spread by word of mouth, whether at the pub or spoken in a meeting. Australia's former defence minister Linda Reynolds allegedly paid $10,000 for calling Brittany Higgins a lying cow in a private meeting with a small number of her immediate staff. This was a comment Reynolds made in the heat of the moment rather than a pre-meditated insult.
Libel is the written form of slander, which includes social media. Whether or not it is visible in a search engine is irrelevant: laws about libel existed before the creation of the Internet.
Slander and libel could come about by accident, for example, by repeating or republishing defamation from a third party.
Calumny is a more malicious form of slander and libel. It occurs when the author knows they are saying something that will hurt the victim and moreover, they say it anyway with the intent to inflict that harm.
In the next email from the debian-private (leaked) gossip network, we can see that Joerg Jaspert is libelling another member of the open source software community. I removed the name of the person because I don't want to be accused of libel too. Nonetheless, it demonstrates the attitude that denouncing people is acceptable if the victim can't see it.
The key things to note: Jaspert explicitly confesses the comments are defamation and the message is intended to have a negative impact on the manner in which other people interact with his victim.
If you admit you are libelling somebody then it seems fair to say it is an example of calumny.
There is a growing archive of tens of thousands of these messages that nobody consented to.
Jaspert's country, Germany, had a disturbing history of building dossiers on anybody who was perceived to be guilty of free thinking.
Subject: Software from hostile upstreams Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:00:11 +0100 From: Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> Organization: Goliath-BBS To: debian-private@lists.debian.org Hi this is on -private on purpose so that a.) someone can't claim I am doing slander and want to lower his reputation, and b.) we dont really need more public discussion about it, since we already had that some while ago, and its mostly an informational text now. I finally did the [redacted] reject from NEW some days ago, based on the "Hostile upstream" disucssion we had a while ago. This also means that no new software from [victim] will ever enter the Debian archive. The only software from him currently in the archive ([redacted]) could stay (ie. it only affects NEW), but as both packages are buggy/unmaintained they are bound for removals. Of course this is a very drastic action and as such none to be taken lightly. But we think it is acceptable in this situation, as the past has shown there is a lot of very heated discussions ongoing, sometimes downright to threats of law suits, and we fear that adding new software From him to the archive will only add more of those. -- bye, Joerg FTPMaster of the day
Jaspert's comment that "no new software from [victim] will ever enter the Debian archive" gives us a hint that Jaspert intends to be a dictator-for-life and cling on to his FTP Master powers forever and a day.
When Jaspert was granted all-encompassing powers by Sam Hocevar, Jaspert became untouchable and these practices have been perpetuated as part of the Debian culture. Reading through debian-private feels like a trip down memory lane with the Cold War-era Stasi archives.
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.