npiazza83

That's the cost of starting a business impersonating a common carrier.

Please keep the discussion to how this affects Facebook stock prices and IPO or you will be removed by Hacker News' moderators.

Watch me make a grand jury disappear.

The law is designed to cover cases you might not immediately think of. Protecting men/women from "legal" harassing communication in the work place, protecting homosexual couples from discrimination, etc. eliminating such protections to stick it to nazis is, to put it mildly, naive

In making this argument to personal friends I have heard several times, "Well what about tow trucks? They have the right to enforce contracts on private property and they aren't officers of the law!?"

The answer is that there are existing federal statutes in place to allow this. They are controversial and often challenged. Tow truck drivers operate in a grey area of the law and are frequently found to be in violation of the law. I would hope that the BBC values their operating license more than my local tow company.

That's why I put in all my contracts that I may personally enforce fines and payment using the client's credit card info that I have incidentally acquired through managing their online services.

I sure hope that's legal!

Its A) codified into a business contract, not the actions of a private individual B) the use of private metadata and C) the stipulation that BBC is the enforcement mechanism that is problematic here.

Otherwise the BBC would quickly find that when they are late paying the contractors who work on their website their credit cards mysteriously get charged for the services rendered.

The court treats the actions of individuals on a case by case basis. Your analogy breaks down when codified into a business contract. By stipulating a course of action that may cause real financial harm. Even if they were to stipulate fines or other remedies in response to perceived financial harm on their part the enforcement of such penalties is not their responsibility. They have taken enforcement powers away from the government.

Think of it like this: If I'm a web developer and I haven't received payment for my services I can withhold those services or even retain control of the product I am providing or use the courts to enforce the contract, but if I used the client's credit card info to enforce fines and pay myself I have broken the law regardless of whether I put it in the contract.

Funny, I've never heard of an Officer of the BBC. I've heard of an Officer of the law and an Officer of the court. They're generally responsible for enforcing penalties, fines, jail sentences, probation, sex offender lists, etc.

If you'd like to add, "tattling to your employer" to that list I suggest you talk to parliament. They get awfully upset when you try to "do things for them" via cellophane business contracts.