По ссылке, которую я дал выше — запись в широкоизвестном веблоге Лоренса Лессига об этом случае, со ссылкой на письмо Гилмора, пересказывающее инцидент; а также много всяких комментов "за" и "против" Гилмора. Мне его поведение кажется в данном случае очевидно провокативным; собственно в этих комментах лучше всего, на мой взгляд, высказался (неоднократно) некий Seth Finkelstein, например:
I’ve finally figured out what bothers me so much about this.Вот ещё ссылки на эту же тему: письмо Гилмора в ответ на пролинкованную выше дискуссию; мнение самого Лессига и новая волна комментов.
In effect, Gilmore was doing a millionaire’s version of trolling.
It’s a super-scaled-up version of what kiddies do on discussion boards and blog
comments.
Do something you *know* will provoke people. Then, when you find someone who bites, when the provocation succeeds, slap your knee in glee that they have been so stupid, so dumb, such idiots, as to react to the obvious troll.
As the reaction progresses, fuel it with liberal amounts of accusations regarding free-speech and I’m-being-censored.
Almost everyone has to content themselves with doing this in comment sections, to a minor audience. Gilmore has managed this on an airplane, and to a huge audience.
I wonder if there’s some sort of Troll Award for this stuff?
I should hasten to add that I absolutely believe he is sincere in his beliefs. But he’s still doing the 100% classic troll-pattern. Just not insincerely.
[...]
I understand it. It's like the stunt a while back when a feminist group did something along the lines of naming certain men “potential rapists”. They only said “potential”, see, can’t you read, it was for consciousness-raising, lighten up already, can’t you take a joke?
No, the crew didn’t find the “free speech” threatening. What they found threatening was the possibility that some dumb, stupid, idiot might get panicked by the speech. But given that they would have to deal with the panic, and Gilmore would not, they made it a condition of the flight that Gilmore not do the speech they feared might panic someone.
Gilmore can now - as he is doing - recite endlessly how dumb, how stupid, how idiotic, is anyone who bites at his troll, I mean would be panicked. So on and on about how his free speech must be defended and he is being censored.
Yet carefully omitting from the general principle that, in the specific context right here, in an airplane, the consequences of someone panicking could be severe. And it’s not obvious that he has a right to cause such an incident IN THIS TIME, PLACE, AND MANNER.
People won’t get that. They won’t. They will abstract it to a general proposition, and react to it endlessly.
That’s why, even though he’s sincere, it’s a masterful troll.
