I think you're nit picking and not focusing on the point. Regardless of the length (the lady either knew or didn't know how long the thing was) she didn't have it nor did she provide it to the gentleman to read. The office was still asking him to lie by requiring him to state he received and read something he obviously didn't receive nor read.

I'm inclined to believe this is a outlier to what normally happens and we're getting outraged over a mistake.

Every time I've visited my hospital for something, the privacy policy was printed on a small brochure and handed to me along with the signature form.

Same. I've been to multiple doctors, and each time, the "privacy policy" (either a HIPAA form or something similar) was included on the paper I was signing.

That's not to say Stallman's experience did not happen, but it is certainly not the norm.

That small brochure was only a subset of their privacy policy. The actual policy could not possible fit onto a brochure and as the OP said the form he was signing had a summary of the policy which is similar to your brochure.

Whats truth is that he was asked to sign on a document that said he agreed to clauses, he never read. And could be denied treatment for not lying.

Whether those clauses are 3000 pages long or 3 pages long isn't much of a concern here.

Stallmsn didn't say it was 3000 pages long.

No, he said that he was told that it was 3000 pages long, but never saw it, which was the point.

I wish the downmod brigade would actually read what I wrote. I'm not calling Stallman a liar. I'm saying he may have made a mistake in telling the story. It happens. I also said that it was more likely that the receptionist made up the number to scare him off.

If you read an article, the author is responsible for putting the words in it, whatever the original source is. The author can make mistakes, because authors are human. I'm just saying that it's a possibility he misquoted the number in his article, a possibility I stated to be less likely than other other source I suggested.

I understand the point of the article. I was responding to a couple of comments that were acting like this 3000-word thing was real, when it clearly isn't, and drawing conclusions about how crazy beaurocracy has become that documents get so long.

Yes but you specifically suggested Stallmsn was mistaken for saying something he didn't say. If you want to be pedantic, be correct.

Can you please quote me the line where I specifically say that? I said he might have made a mistake in the retelling of 'the story', not that he was the actor that said it was 3000 pages long.

"The privacy policy wasn't 3000 pages. Either Stallman didn't remember the story correctly…"

So if he was incorrect, about what was he incorrect? Nowhere does he say the document was 3000 pages long, he says he was told it was 3000 pages long (he may have been be embellishing, the person he was quoting may have been exaggerating, but he was not incorrectly stating the document to have been 3000 pages.

Yay, I finally didn't mistype his name.

After multiple clarifications, you are still misreading me. I specified that I did not say Stallman was the actor in the story that stated -foo-, but that he is retelling a story in which he recounts the words of others, who did state -foo-.

I don't know how to make it clearer to you - even the snippet you quote is my words talking about him possibly not recalling the story quite right. I'm not saying he stated it was 3k words, but that it's possible that his recounting of another person's words might not be remembered correctly.

I have no axe to grind against Stallman, and if you look through my posting history, you'll see that there's been a few times that I've defended him against people who attack him as a figurehead rather than on the merits of what he actually said. This is partly why it's so frustrating for me to be taken out of context here and condemned for it.

I've also been misspelling bureaucracy... I thought it looked odd that way.

I suspect the "downmod brigade" read what you wrote, and is trying to silence the needless nitpicking on the alleged page count of the policy document that no one has seen. What if he had said "5", would that have changed the issue at all? Are you going to nit on the color of the wallpaper too?

I see you've never dealt with the government. I wouldnt be surprised if it grew a couple % each year.

What was the actual page count of the privacy policy?