The rules do not allow personal attacks on members. Dan Carr is a member. Being called a counterfeiter, in spite of never being charged or convicted of counterfeiting, is a personal attack. Do you or do you not acknowledge that? It does not fly in the face of anything to restrict discussion of the legality of these pieces. You're fond of saying that you make and enforce the rules, and if we don't like it, we can go make our own site with our own rules. Just make a new rule! Simple! You try and say that as long as it's about the coin, it's fair game, but I seem to recall a thread about the Trump dollar where mods wouldn't even allow a link to the official site that sells them because it contained a couple paragraphs of populist puffery. How can a link to the official sales site not be about the coin? You twist things around to suit yourself as much as anyone here. Kettle, meet pot.
You can call the coins counterfeits, you can call them fakes, you can them things of beauty. But I think you understand all too well, exactly what I mean when I say you cannot make things personal.
How is calling someone a counterfeiter not personal? If someone called me a counterfeiter on here when I hadn't been charged or convicted of counterfeiting, they'd be having a chat with my lawyer, and so would you.
No I do not acknowledge that, and I explained why. Nor does one have to be convicted of committing a crime to be a criminal. If someone is a thief, they are thief, a criminal, whether they are caught and convicted or not.
Do you call the people in China producing counterfeits, or any other country, a counterfeiter ? They haven't been convicted of it, and they are most definitely counterfeiters.
Are any of them members here? Besides, an attack on a group ("the Chinese") is, by definition, not a personal attack.
As a matter of fact, some of them have been in the past. But they are no longer. Also, it wouldn't matter if they were or not, and for the same reason - by definition, if you are producing counterfeit coins then you are a counterfeiter. The one and only thing open to question is whether the coins are counterfeits or not. And at this point, that is a question that is subject to debate, and with good reason, for it has been cited in case law. Now you can go on arguing the point until the end of time. But that is the way it is.
The difference being Carrs work couldn't be more out in the open as it has been for years and no charges have even been filed nor has he been shut down nor have the pieces been confiscated so apparently the government doesn't agree. There is no legal recourse or even a way to locate who is doing it in China as long as they remain on Chinese soil.
It might be open for debate, but it already has been debated to death by every armchair forum lawyer on the site. The debate needs to take place in a court of law, if at all. The federal government doesn't seem terribly interested in pursuing it, and none of the people who want to whine about it here do either. How many times do we need to have the same 25 page thread, over and over again?
There have been a great many people who did things that broke the law, and they were all quite open about it. And they all continued to do it for many years. And none of them were charged or convicted for many years. Some, even many, never were. But that doesn't change the fact that what they did was illegal for the entire time they were doing it. Others were eventually, sometimes many years later, charged and convicted. So at what point did any of those people become criminals ?
In the eyes of the law (including libel law), when they were convicted. Innocent until proven guilty, and all.
I guess you will have it as many times as all of you continue doing it. What shall I do make a rule that says you can't talk about this more than XX number of times ? And if so do you realize such a rule would also then apply to those posting threads or individual posts in favor of Carr's work ? The rules here apply to everyone equally, there will never be any taking sides when it comes to the rules. Which is why there will never be any rules like that. edit - and by the way Paul, your continued posting, arguing your point, is a perfect example of what you profess to be against. But that's not against the rules either.
This isn't robbing someone at gun point where it's clearly illegal, its a grey area that could go either way and people just have opinions on it that. We live in a society where if something is in doubt it is legal until proven otherwise, the proof would be a conviction not various parts of other case law from varying situations that contradicts itself at time and forming an opinion on how it should be read and applied.
If everyone is going to suggest new rules or tell the site administrators how to do their jobs better, then I have a suggestion too. Create a TOKENS/EXONUMIA FORUM apart from Coin Chat or U.S. Coins, and move all the DC threads there. Then the DC supporters can ooh & ahh under the relative safety net of "tokens," while the non-supporters don't have to see all those threads in their beloved Coin Chat Forum.
I might be in favor of that. Take a look at post #1 and post #2 in this thread. Would that be considered "in favor of" his work? Criticize the quality of the pieces if you must. Blast him for not using an original design, if you like. Lament the destruction of coins to make them if it bothers you. Say you don't like them! But just remember how lucky you are that it's not my work you're calling "counterfeit," and my good name you're tarnishing. I've seen no such thing. I handed you the solution to the 25 page threads on a silver platter. You refuse to acknowledge it. Yet, the moderators here will remove links to the official sales site of a silver round that happens to portray a political candidate, such site having all of maybe 5 tepid paragraphs of vague, pseudopolitical rhetoric. I'd go for that, too, provided that discussion of the legality of the pieces were suppressed or moved to partisanlines.com.
Do you really think that would keep people who wish to speak their opinions on the matter out of that section ? I can tell ya from experience it won't. The bullion section and the error section are perfect examples of that idea failing !
How does anyone know what the government ( USA ) thinks, they'll never tell, til they come to get you .....
