Wal, Mart is a harasser here.

I stand to negate the resolution RESOLVED: Walmart is a harasser here. Preliminary clarifications must be made in order to maintain a fair debate. I accept Affirmative's conditions for Negation winning this debate. Walmart shall solely remain as the corporation on the NYSE under ID: (WMT). The Merriam Webster's dictionary defines harasser as: a person who causes repeated pain, distress, or annoyance to another. "Here" in the resolution must be broadened to anywhere within the United States. Affirmative cannot simply use a video of his screen to argue harassment from Walmart. Instead, the Affirmative must prove to win that he is the sole victim of this pop up, that Walmart Pharmaceuticals conduct these pop ups, and that these are in fact personalized attacks and not advertisement. Contention 1: Advertisement is not harassment. Sub-point 1: Marketing Strategy USA Today explains on January 26th 2012 that "Spam (including from corporations)...uses a marketing strategy that when someone replies to spam you verify to the company that your e-mail account is active, therefore telling the company to send more emails and pop ups". Understanding this we can understand that corporations use spam and these "annoyance" strategies to weed out the people who understand how spam works. And keep the ones who either may be interested in the product they're selling or have some reason to keep/respond to previous spam. Therefore, if Walmart pharmaceuticals is using this as that type of marketing, than it cannot be considered harassment. In addition, there is technology and instructions on the internet that helps a user completely get rid of spam and continued pop ups. In that sense the affirmative has done nothing to address their own problems and is arguable that they themselves are harassing them-self. Sub-point 2: Every company pushes for consumer response. A quick example to demonstrate. I work at Target, and in every transaction at the check lanes we have to ask the guest if they have a Target Red Card. If they don't we have to ask them if they want one. If they refuse, we're encouraged to push harder, until finally over a course of many trips the guest signs up for the card. My point: every company will push for consumer response, so until you show some step towards accepting or completely denying the company may continue advertisement. If Target does this, if Home Depot does this, if Kwik Trip does this, and none of them have ever been charged for harassment on those grounds, than Walmart cannot be classified as a harasser either. Contention 2: Walmart Pharmaceuticals is unable to target individuals Going back to the clarifications we can understand that a "Harasser" is a person who causes repeated pain, stress, annoyance, etc. The key word to understand in this argument is PERSON. Walmart pharmaceuticals is not a person it's a corporation at best and a group at worst. Therefore Walmart, by definition, cannot harass an individual. If however Walmart individually attacks an individual with annoyance, emotional trauma, or other instruments of traditional harassment, it must be considered a hate group. In summary, the foundation of affirmatives argument is, and will be, that Walmart is a harasser. however definitions and logic disprove that statement swiftly. Contention 3: Third parties operate pop ups and viruses An article from the BBC on August 23rd 2003 suggests that "Viruses are born...motivated by financial gain from hackers and spammers...to send out emails, pop ups, or messages, often without the owner's knowledge". First, we're seeing that viruses and pop ups are not being directly involved with the annoyance occurring on affirmative's computer. Instead as the world becomes more tech savy, hacker's, virus writers, spammers, are using Walmart pharmaceuticals as a cover up to access affirmative's computer. For what reason? who knows. but the point to understand is that Walmart has no link in the pop ups, they're all third party based. Second, as the BBC alludes to, a lot of so called "harassers" do not even realize that emails, pop ups, or messages are sent from their computer. Walmart Pharmaceuticals is a national organization with thousands upon thousands of computers. All computers that may easily be compromised and able to send mass messages to email lists without Walmart pharmaceutical knowledge. If the company itself does not fully know about the problem at hand, and if a computer in their company has been compromised by an outside source, than there is no way to blame Walmart pharmaceuticals and therefore Walmart pharmaceuticals is not the harasser. In conclusion the Negation wins in a number of ways. Understanding that a spam email or a pop up is not a form of individual attack but instead a marketing strategy and that other companies push for consumer response with similar strategies Walmart Pharmaceuticals cannot be considered a harasser. Knowing the definition of a "harasser" its easy to counter what affirmative claims by knowing that as a company or group it is impossible for Walmart pharmaceuticals to individually attack the affirmative. And finally, since viruses, spammers, and hackers are becoming third party based, there is no way to prove that Walmart Pharmaceuticals is directly involved in this annoyance. For all the reasons above I urge a vote in negation. Sources: Merriam Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com... USA Today: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk...