In message <61efb045-f2dc-b274-93b9-515491a97c97@foobar.org>, Nick Hilliard <nick@foobar.org> wrote:
who is liable if a mistake is made?
This is a rubbish argument, as I already pointed out. Who is "liable" if, when you get up to the counter at the airport, Hertz or Avis tells you that they will no longer rent cars to you because the last time they did, you left feces in it. It is pretty obvious to me, as I can only hope it is also to everyone else, that all of the folks on this list who appear to be getting sweaty palms and/or brows over this ludicrous and throughly made up "liability" non-issue are themselves in fact neither lawyers nor people who, in all probability, have ever even set foot in a courtroom. More specifically, they are not -contract- lawyers, and they are thus predisposed to imagine all sorts of fanciful demonds and dragons, as may seem useful in order to support their otherwise unsupportable positions. In short, this made-up "liability" concern is the "WMD" of this entire discusion... just scary enough so that most people won't even give it any ernset thought or consideration, but will instead be stampeded, like some blind herd, towards whetever outocome is desired on the part of the manipulators. Perhaps before entertaining this ridiculous notion any further, those who raise the question should endeavor to answer it themselves and to present their actual factual findings here. Who is "liable" if Hertz won't rent you a car anymore because you have deminstratably behaved like a perfect s***head in the past? And precisely how many such frivilous lawsuits does Hertz find itself having to defend itself against on an annual basis? I frankly do not now why some of the people who raise this kind of "issue" have elected to remain so restrained in their retoric. Why not just say that if a mistake is made, by RIPE, and some RIPE member is determined to be a hijacker, and is thus kicked to the curb, that this mistake will necessarily and inevitably lead to a plague of locusts descending upon the land, in addition to floods, earthquakes, and finally, inevitably, nuclear winter. Oh yea, and don't forget the WMD! And the smoking gun that turns into a mushroom cloud! I always say, if you're going to do something, you should do it all the way, even when it comes to trying to scare people out of whatever little wits they had to begin with, using baseless hypotheticals grounded in nothing more substantial than moonbeams and unicorn tears. Regards, rfg P.S. I apologize in advance to Eric Bais for my mention of the historical and painful canard that was "WMD", but would like to remind him that my own country, the United States, lost more lives, arguably needlessly, as a result of that particular false bogeman than did any other. So if I can stand to hear it spoken of, or to even talk about it myself, then perhaps he can summon up the intestinal fortitude to avert his eyes just long enough to avoid having his delicate sensibilites offended, yet again.