First Amendment Ruling Protects Internet Trolls

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A recent ruling by the Court of Appeal of the State of California (PDF) in Krinsky v. Doe H030767 overturned a lower court ruling and decided that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech protects internet trolls, too. Specifically, the ruling said that 'this juvenile name-calling cannot reasonably be read as stating actual facts.' And, even though some of the statements were crudely sexual and accused Ms. Krinsky of being among 'boobs, liars and crooks,' the statements were held to 'fall into the category of crude, satirical hyperbole which, while reflecting the immaturity of the speaker, constitute protected opinion under the First Amendment.'"

Comments

How long does it take?

[Phat_Tony]

Oh come on, why are there 18 comments and no one's done this yet? Do I have to do everything myself? Let's get it out of the way:

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That idiotic dumb-ass judge wouldn't know a good judicial decision if it bit him in his lame-ass ass. Where did he go to judge-school anyway, The Universduhity of Dumbasia?

I see it came from California. Everyone knows everybody in California is a stupid liberal anyway with their stupid activist liberal judges who just do whatever their retarded Governator tells them to do. Retards. Someone should shoot them all, wouldn't that be ironic? Here they all go crying "free speech, free speech," and then they get shot? Well, if you don't see the irony, then you're even dumber than that retarted freakin judge.

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OK, now mod it + funny, - troll and we can be done with it.

Re:Greatest Hits

[Anonymous Coward]

The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:

• More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post slashdot.org. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
• Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
• Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
• A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel, they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering. Look at the moderation done in this thread to see what I mean.
• Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll, which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.

Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.

Anonymous cowards are... well, cowards.

Re:Oh dear God...

[greylingrover]

Yeah, just look at my account... I've tried to make a couple admittedly feeble attempts at humor with good intent (there is a funny mod option, is there not?), only to be modded down (soul crushing as it was). So I just don't post, even when I have something useful to offer. I'm guessing I'll get hammered on this one also, and no, that's not bait, I'm just trying to point out this inherent flaw in community policing/rating/censorship?. Oh yeah, and free speech is good - see, that was totally on topic! ;)