I actually thought the proof presented was pretty convincing, if that holds up the lawyers for XS4ALL, ziggo and a bunch of other dutch providers will surely use this in their appeal.
Not exactly - in this case, a person on Twitter found a two-year-old article showing that this particular judge was corrupt in copyright monopoly cases. There is nothing denoting how "official" the conclusion is, not inherently in the expression.
In a juridical context, "found corrupt" means something like "a judge ruled that X is corrupt". It's easy to think that that is what the headline says.
So what does "found to be corrupt" mean in a blog context? "Please sue me for libel?" (Yes, I see the note. "I don't need journalistic integrity, I'm a registered journalist!")
Good job on finding the other common meaning; you'll have noticed that a search on "found to be corrupt" yields two meanings besides this article: corrupted data, and findings of a court or investigation.
There are a lot of ways to phrase the headline that wouldn't make a reasonable reader assume that this was an official ruling, e.g.
"X is corrupt",
"Why X is corrupt",
"Evidence that X is corrupt",
"X alleged to be corrupt",
or really anything but "found to be".
The facts by themselves are interesting, but the headline I found misleading.
... and time more people wrote about it, in whatever way they see fit. Your name sounds Dutch; are you? You agree with this '1-2tje' between Kuik & Hensen?
This is hardly the point. In my experience as a person and engineer I find that there are really no easy solutions or answers to anything. Not in life, not in technical stuff, nor in politics.
As such I have a healthy disdain for people who knowingly and willingly oversimplify or scream to make their point. This doesn't help anybody accept perhaps attracting a crowed that yells "me to" or "it is an outrage"
For this article he could have written or investigated quite a lot of things. For example the process or system that the Netherlands uses to assign a judge to a case. That is kind of vital information if you are going to establish a link between the judge presiding a case, the specific case, the plaintiffs and the outcome. Where is it?
Perhaps it would be nice to note for a (foreign) audience what exactly a Dutch judge does in a case. It is a far cry from an American judge, I can tell you that.
These court cases with the so called corrupt judge? Were they appealed? And if so successfully and why? An other bit of vital information that is no where to be found. What exactly does the dutch law say about copyright? How actually does one hire or fire a judge in the Netherlands? Surely, if anybody, the lawyer of the accused has reason to pursue action and to open his mouth. Etc etc etc.
If you are going to assert in a headline that "someone is proven to be corrupt" or "is proven to have robbed a bank" I expect to read an article that has a bit more to say than a vague accusation mixed in with the fact that you obviously don't agree with the guy.
You make a lot of valid points, but I don't think OP knows the answers to those things either. Maybe he is just opening up discussions and that's were I don't agree with you; as a tool to make people think he shouldn't have not written the article; it worked. People are reading it on HN and thinking about it.
I do think it helps. But it's very difficult to see what helped in the end. There were a lot of 'uninformed' articles about SOPA, especially in the big news outlets; I'm willing to bet (but have no proof) that those made the outcry larger than the technically correct and informative ones on HN etc.
But it's hard to tell what makes the pendulum swing and better researched at this time is better, but nothing at all is worse.
By this logic (something is good by virtue of the discussions it starts over and above its inherent truthfulness) I could make up BS about any worthy cause and claim that the ends justify the means.
OP asserted the judge is corrupt. Not that there is evidence that he is corrupt, but that he is corrupt. By stepping so far so early he is essentially playing the analogy of the Tea Party card - rally your base, i.e. those who already agree with you, while alienating the centre. It's immature righteous indignation instead of reasoned rhetoric.
It's ironic that OP misrepresents the facts in order to condemn a party for misrepresenting facts.
