Larztheloser is a troll

In this round I will deal with my opponent's arguments in reverse order, and summarise the debate. My opponent claims that I slandered him first. Firstly, whether I did or not, this actually has no bearing at all on the motion at hand (which is about my opponent slandering me) and is completely irrelevant. Secondly, if you look back on the original comment, you will note that I did not call my opponent's mind warped, but rather said that you need a warped mind to take the debate (not instigate the debate). I never said the motion was irrational from the perspective of pro, but only that it made no sense from the perspective of con. Thirdly, even if it was directed at my opponent (a barefaced lie) then it still would not count as slander, which requires me to make baseless accusations. In fact, if you look back over the many comments I made on that debate, you will see that I had considerable grounds to believe my statement was true. The very fact that the debate was troll killed provides very strong evidence in support of my statement. My opponent claims that conspiracies may be true because lots of people attest to them. Well, in Ancient Egypt, an awfully large quantity of people actually believed their king was a God. Same thing applies to the Incans, Aztecs, Romans (for a time) and most South-East Asian cultures, among others. That does not mean that all those rulers actually had any God-like powers. You can imagine, however, an ancient Egyptian philosopher going around saying - "It seems 99% of the population believes the Pharaoh has magical powers. Therefore it must be true! " It wasn't true then, and it isn't now. It doesn't matter one bit how many people believe in the yeti. What matters is whether they have seen the yeti - whether they actually have any basis to their claims. Then my opponent goes on to tell you what a "rational person" would start to think. I have already proven each of the thoughts my opponent lists here to be irrational, so I wonder why a rational person would start to think such irrational thoughts? That simply does not make sense. The final part of his 'conspiracy' argument was his claim that I cannot prove the contrary. It is not my burden to do so, it is irrelevant to the motion, and this was never about proof. This was questioning whether my opponent had any evidence (as opposed to proof) to support his accusation, which I have already established he didn't. Finally, that my opponent has a "right" to slander. Interestingly he accuses me of vote bombing here, trying to undermine my character still further. A vote bomb is an unjustified vote. I encourage voters to actually look at the vote (here: . http://www.debate.org...) and ask themselves if it had a justification or not, as my vote did include a reasoned and concise explanation of why I awarded it the way I did - more detailed than both of the other votes on that debate, which were both from experienced debaters! As with all of my votes, I am happy to send a longer justification with feedback to anybody who can be bothered reading it, if they simply ask. In my experience, however, 99% of the time debaters don't really care for a explanation that's sometimes longer than the debate itself, so I'm rarely bothered writing one unless asked. I would contest that calling me a vote bomber is just as slanderous as calling me a troll, and should be taken into account by voters when casting their conduct vote. Anyway, I just got sidetracked on issues completely irrelevant to the motion. Free speech is not absolute. There are times when you can't say whatever you want, wherever you want. For example, I couldn't demand money from you in return for not revealing something bad about you, because that would be the crime of blackmail. I couldn't tell people who buy goods from me misleading or false information, because I would run afoul of the various consumer protection laws. I couldn't put little cards in all the letterboxes in your neighbourhood warning everybody that you are a pedophile, because that would be slander. In most countries slander is a crime too. The exception to this is if I had just seen you sleep with some child or similar. In that case I would be able to stand before the judge and say, "Your honor, I had reasonable cause to believe that the statement I made was true, and therefore was simply exercising my free speech rights. " Otherwise, the judge would simply point out that free speech is not an excuse to bully, defraud, blackmail, mislead, and most relevantly, to slander, and neither does free speech allow anybody to get away with these things. In the debate-dot-org court of law, the following legislation (from the terms of use) is an example of that which limits your freedom of speech:Will not upload . .. Content that is unlawful . .. defamatory . .. harmful, hateful . .. or violate any . .. national . .. law or regulation, or that is otherwise inappropriate. My opponent has actually run afoul of all of the above. Slander/defamation is unlawful in my nation and yours. Posting derogatory comments is hateful and could possibly be harmful towards me. As I said, freedom of speech is not absolute. My opponent has clearly crossed the boundaries. I should add, on an unrelated note but vaguely relevant to the motion, that my opponent also broke the terms of service by launching a personal attack against me. I don't really care much for the terms of use, however. All I want to show is that there are reasonable restrictions on free speech. Not slandering me is one such reasonable restriction. Therefore, while having facts or reasonable cause for belief does not magically "enable" free speech, it does enable your ability to defame somebody (except that it wouldn't legally then be defamation, it would simply be posting something you have good cause to believe to be a fact). Before you go around posting defamatory comments about site members, you should be aware that you may well be committing slander. For instance, the phrase, "I think randomDDOuser1 is a mafia member" is not defamatory and so does not come under the definition of slander. "I think randomDDOuser1 is Asian" is not defamatory and so does not fall under the definition of slander. "I believe randomDDOuser1 is creating a dual account and stalking me" is probably slander, although it depends on whether you actually have any evidence to believe that. This isn't just for the purpose of pandering to randomDDOuser1's ego, but for the purposes of not bringing them to undue disrepute. Even if it was just for the purposes of pandering to randomDDOuser1's ego, why not do so when you don't even care? That's the question I posed last round which my opponent is still unable to answer. With this, the debate for me comes to a close. I believe that I have shown three facts. The first is that my opponent has no basis for calling me a derogatory name. The second is that he called me a troll willingly, to a public audience. The third is that this meets the definition of slander, which is unjustifiable given the first and second facts. The conclusion from the above facts is as simple as it is obvious - Marauder should retract his statement. On top of this, I have also provided rebuttals to my opponent's case, even though it seemed like half of them weren't even connected to the motion. This issue is simple for DDO users. Do you want a website where people can say whatever lies they want about you, even if they have no sound reason to believe that those lies are true? I know that I don't.