OT - Is Avsim American?

[Guest Richard_H]

On the current hot Mike Stone thread, I picked up on the following message:

[Guest]

Welcome, I spent some time in Crawley ----- loved your country.

[Guest]

you probably read to much into it.It's just a US figure of speech used by a US person...The Avsim staff seems pretty evenly divided over the world, actually. Relative to total population, I think the number of Dutch people here is higher than the number of US people.

[Guest Joshieca]

Yah I comma from Sweden! :)I think that most of the main staff is from the UK....No?[br][div align=center][link:members.cox.net/fstimes/wetimage.html]Click Here For Weather Image of the Day!

[Guest]

Richard,What was the purpose of your post? What difference does it make, where the site is located? Are you trying to tell us that we need to be "politically correct", when posting here?OT is putting it mildly! http://members.cox.net/pstepanoff/images/OK_c2.gifPete S

[Guest]

actually, i think this is a very astute observation of something which happens all the time but personally i'm too chicken to question for fear of being misunderstood.for those of us who do not live in the U.S., it's very curious that forums et.al. which exist on the www and are visited by peoples of all nationalities are often referred to or assumed to be "in" america, at least by americans ;)for someone to say "this is america" in a "place" which isn't even slightly "in" america or populated by mainly by americans is kinda funny to the rest of us. If i sat here and wrote a response saying, "hey, this is Canada, and blah blah blah" you'd all be laughing and scorning me for sure! I am in Canada, you are wherever you are, but THIS is the world wide web, regardless of where the harddrive resides.mp

[ErnieAlston 33]

>for those of us who do not live in the U.S., it's very curious that >forums et.al. which exist on the www and are >visited by peoples of >all nationalities are often referred to or assumed to be "in" >america, at least by >americans for someone to say "this is america" >in a "place" which isn't even slightly "in" america or populated >by >mainly by americans is kinda funny to the rest of us. >>If i sat here and wrote a response saying, "hey, this is Canada, and >blah blah blah" you'd all be laughing and >scorning me for sure! I >am in Canada, you are wherever you are, but THIS is the world wide >web, regardless of >where the harddrive resides.It interesting that you equate America as being only the United States. When clearly your own country Canada is part of America.Quite a few non-US residents who live in the 'Americas' would be quite upset at your assumption.Do you see how silly this is ?Just take what he said in the spirit it was said, and lets avoid this Politically correct nonsense.RegardsErnie.

[Guest]

Hoops!Here we go again!:-lol

[Francois_Dumas 10]

AVSIM was founded by Tom Allensworth. Tom is a US citizien.The majority of the senior and other staff are living in the US, but there is a fair contingent of Europeans on staff now too (7 out of the 35 or so).The servers AVSIM runs on are in the US.AVSIM readers will be mostly US, but non-US numbers are growing.Since we are on the www, anybody in the world can read it and join the forums, as long as they have internet access.Hope this answers your curiosity ;-) :-outta Francois :-wave[table border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0][tr][td valign=bottom" align="center]"At home in the wild"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:avsim.com/alaska/alaska_052.htm|Don's Alaskan Bush Charters]"Beavers Lead the Way"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:www.avsim.com/vfr_center/mainpages/vfr_flights_main_page.htm]VFR Flight Center]"Looking Good Outside"[/td][/tr][tr][td valign=top" align="center]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75b.gif[/td][td valign="top" align="left" colspan=2]http://www.fssupport.com/images/moose2.gif[/td][tr][/table]________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online![/bemail: fdumas@avsim.com________________________

[Guest RonB49]

Ain't technology wonderful? R-

[Guest]

OT, to be sure but to answer your question once and for all:Avsim's servers are based in the United States and as such are governed by the laws of the United States of America and further more by the regional laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia (assuming that is where is servers are co-located) and finally by the local laws within the county and city in which they are located.Regardless of where the staff is located or from where the subscribers of Avsim hail from, Avsim as a legal entity must abide by the laws as described above.For instance. Let's say that Tom A. decides to turn Avsim into Gamblingsim and it just so happens that local laws prohibit gambling even though state laws allow it (i.e. New Jersey). It won't make a difference if the people who access the site or the staff come from a locality that allows gambling because the gambling is effect taking place on Tom's servers which are located in Virginia, USA, and that would be illegal and the law enforcible by the local authorities to shut Gamblingsim down.So to paraphrase Clay "This is still America, the home of the free and ruled by the constitution." would be for the most part correct...EXCEPT that the constitution is suspended here at Avsim because as a private site, freedom of speech is NOT guranteed and neither can a lack of it be enforced.Even though the Internet is a global community, each node that comprises the Internet is governed by its respective national, regional and local laws applicable to where that node is located, irrespective of who accesses those resources. HTH,Mike T.

[Guest]

i knew there was a reason my gut said not to respond!!!!i was actually trying to be a little funny, but here we go again with the internet tone-of-voice thing....when I said not in america, i'm thinking more about the kinda stuff that happens in forums *other* than this when someone may be insulted for their english, as if the forum "exists" to everyone in an english speaking country, as opposed to on the web where people of a multitude of nationalities reside, and how odd it is that people sometimes assume a web-based forum is "in" their own country, when such a thought doesn't even occur to others.of course, it may literally be in the U.S., but.....ah, never mind. that damn *other* thread has got us all on eggshells now!;)anyone want to talk about flight simming??

[Guest Heather 636]

Well, I'm just going to play it smart and not respond to ANY of these controversial threads that does not directly involve flight-simming. Oh, darn, I just responded didn't I. (-:From one former U.S. Marine, U.S.A born citizen of German ancestry who refuses to be politically correct, although I do not have a problem with being polite unless you step on my spit-shined shoes.And since I do not respond to such posts, strike from your memory that you ever read this. It did not happen. If you believe that I responded, it is a figment of your imagination.And that's all I have to say about that. Heather

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Richard,I feel I'm from almost everywhere.... I've lived and worked in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and during a long period, sometimes I didn't know what side of the pond I was waking up on.As some others have said, don't read too much into it. We have forum members from everywhere, and Avsim staff and contributors from everywhere. I've seen nationalistic remarks posted from Europeans, Asians, and Australians over the years that make me sometimes wonder whether the kind and wordly people I worked with and know were/are a figment of my imagination. But common sense tells me that I can't judge the makeup of the forum based on a few remarks. Most people tend to write with blinders on, including myself. But most of us love the makeup of this forum, and recognize how wonderful a representation of the world it is.-John

[Guest]

Would this have satisfied everyone?"This is either America, the home of the free and ruled by the constitution, or a different country with no guarantee of freedom and ruled by the government."