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

+1 Troll

[clarkkent09]

Give me a break, this judge is an idiot. Freedom of speech is fine when you have something important to say, but in this case this guy's intent was clearly just to insult that poor woman. Why should posting that garbage be constitutionally protected!!! If people were locked up for such antisocial behavior early on, we would have a much more polite society and less crime as well.

Re:Darwinian M&M duels

[mapkinase]

It would be better if you submitted a link to a story instead of just copy-pasting it.

This is story have been copy-pasted at least 260 times:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Whenever+I+get+a+package+of+plain+M%26Ms%2C+I+make+it+my+duty+to+continue+the+strength+and+robustness+of+the+candy+as+a+species%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a