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Proposed Legislation Would Outlaw "Cyberbullying" in US
physman_wiu writes "We all remember the recent incident of 13-year-old Megan Meier. Now legislation is set to be passed at least in Missouri (and possibly through Congress) that would make cyberbullying illegal. The new legislation (PDF) reads: 'Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.' Now, this seems like a great piece of legislation — until I get put in jail for some kid on WOW calling the Feds on me." Eugene Volokh is not impressed.
Don't worry. In prison we'll have plenty of time to sit around and think of the children.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Read radical news here
Whatever happened to parents' responsibility for what their kids do (including online activities?)
I have tag icons pushing down the article to below the screen. Keep em coming!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
As long as we can all still act immature on Xbox Live and make fun of each other's mothers while using homophobic terms...
So if I had decided to post this comment anonymously from an internet cafe or local library, and I did something which met the arbitrary criteria of cyberbullying, who would get thrown in jail for two years?
Why do I get the feeling this law is impractical.
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
My biggest problem with these anti-online X laws are why we need to specify "on the internet". If all you're adding is "on the internet", then the law shouldn't need to be written in the first place. If it's illegal, then it's illegal. If it's not already illegal off the internet, I would wonder why doing it on internet would change the legality.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
An HEROES!
You know, if it wasn't for that pesky 1st Amendment, we could fix a lot of the problems that people think they have.
We could limit advertisers.
We could limit hate groups.
We could stop bullies.
We could stop lobbyists.
But, alas, we are stuck with the damn thing. Ooh, have an idea. We can pass laws to limit the 1st Amendment protections in clear violation of the Constitution. And no one will have the balls to take it to the Supreme Court. And if they do, the Supreme Court *may* overturn the law but we'll have stopped literally *tens* of cyber-bullies.
After all, USians have been shitting on the 2nd Amendment for the last hundred years. It's about time the 1st gets some love too.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Only outlaws will rickroll.
Somehow I do not think this will survive a constitutional challenge.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
You cannot legislate common courtesy and respect.
Nor should you have to.
Don't we already have a Megan's Law? We can't have two emotion-based unnecessary laws with silly names.
... legislation requiring mommy to wipe your ass until age 18, at which time it becomes the responsibility of your employer (or the EDD if you are jobless).
Remember when you were little and some kid said they were gonna tell on you because you called them a poo-poo head? Yeah, that's what this is going to be like.
Actually, it was more like some whiny kid who learned how to manipulate their parents to get the retribution they wanted against someone. Did some kid fairly take the last cookie? Go tell on him for stealing your cookie right out of your hands. Heh, as if there's not enough of that going around in Grown-Up Land with the legal system already.
This concept has to die.
Essen mein scheisse!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Fuck this damned bullshit to hell and- er, um, I mean, I think I might think to oppose this, yes I do, if that's OK.
Since all those messages trying to "coerce" me into buying penis pills will be illegal. And if that doesn't fit, then the quantity should certainly qualify as harassment which will also be outlawed. Cool!
'Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.'
Does this mean they'll ban Bill O'Reilly?
-1 Cyberbullying
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
or cause substantial emotional distress to a person
They just broke their own law, by trying to make the law.
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
Does this mean they'll ban Bill O'Reilly? I like you : )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Something need to be done about Cyberbullying, no doubt about it. But I think there is a work to do IRL first. Real life insults and mental abuses are still consired pretty much as "huh, deal with it... it's nothing". It's time that people realize that any lack of respect to a person is wrong and can have severe implications on a person's life.
I think the real deal is for people to start respecting each others again.
1 word -> RESPECT.
you very well know that what this bill ends up prosecuting wont be stuff like what you posted.
Read radical news here
Making special cyber law reenforces the notion that the internet is different and has different rules.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The real issue is that kids who are being preyed upon are either (1) not being mindful of protecting their anonymity, or (2) using a site that deliberately publishes their identity (MySpace). Most of the respectable blogging websites don't force you to go to other people's blogs, and they usually let the user TURN OFF comments. Parents need to teach children how to safe guard their identity on-line, and how to control the forums in which their identity is exposed, rather than making yet more gashes in our coveted freedom of speech.
All the spam causes me lots of stress. Can we extend the War on Terror to some server farm in .ru .cn .hk .br or wherever? Pleeze :)
To sum up a much longer and deleted post...
After getting 10 headshots in a row on the same guy, then proceeding to harass him for it... Should I be in jail for 2 years with drunk drivers, child molesters, and armed robbers?
Something witty.
This seems too open-handed, how do you actually quantify these? What's repeated: two times, fifty, 1000? What's severe: fuck off? I'll kill you? Etc
Personally, I support the idea.
However, instead of 'cyberbullying omg' I think that harassment laws should be revised to cover the Internet-era.
Killing someone on a PvP server is not harassment. You came to the server willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will kill and be killed.
Receiving messages on social networking sites, even lewd ones (assuming you're of legal age) is not harassment. You came there willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will receive messages..and its common sense that some people are perverts and have no shame.
Its difficult to come up with harassment laws because there are so many ways to harass people. Is it harassment for that girl on the personals site to say that she's 120lbs and has no kids when she turns out to be 200lbs, married, and has three kids? What about if that hottie turned out to be your ex-girlfriend, there to get you out into public so she could try and guilt trip/threaten/be an annoying bitch? What if you went to see the hottie and decided to make new screenies to lure her out into public, and to just generally be a creepy bastard towards because she rejected you?
The list goes on and on. I'd like to say that it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis but that opens up the whole interpretation can of worms. Is it harassment because you're the rich snobish girl that had a practical joke pulled on her and some people laughed at for a few minutes? You bet your ass it is, because her daddy and mommy can afford an expensive lawyer to convince the judge that it is, and send some tasteless teenagers to jail for a few years.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Otherwise this law would shut down pro wrestling, or what passes for it. You know, the ones where each wrestler says what they will do to the other guy in gory detail.
And if someone says "I'm going to fucking kill Google" like some CEOs we've heard about, we will ignore that too.
And, well, do I need to go on? It seems like if it's done on cyber then its wrong, but if it's done live then its OK because its normal emotional behavior.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
A lot of these laws seem to stem from the fact that more than half of the people drafting them do not even use the internet on a regular basis or at an advanced level beyond that of a 14 year old.
... **Loading please wait** ...You have entered Federal Prison
These people are just out of their league. Old people just do not understand the internet since they did not grow up with it.
Enforcing a kind of law like this would be like trying to stop all of the drugs from getting into America... hehe
This will make me think twice about camping the grave yard in Area 52.
I might just kill an emo kid one too many times and bam
God bless America.
if it was harassment by an ADULT on a person known to them to be a MINOR
as was the case with meier
or
if it was harassment by an ADULT on a person known to them to be emotionally or mentally compromised
as was ALSO the case with meier
with those caveats, all trolling on the internet would not count in the legislation, mostly because it is anonmyous, and between (nominally) mentally fit adults
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From now on, I will give it a second and a third thought before i mod a poor slashdotter troll or flamebait.
I hate trolls as much as the next guy, but I don't think they deserve 2 years in jail for that.
Guys, please mod responsibly... noone deserves the federal pound me in the ass prison for calling Linux unusable.
"Fuck the Children!
What I'm talking about is this constant, mindless yammering in the media. This neurotic fixation that somehow everything, EVERYTHING, has to revolve around children. It's completely out of balance... The sooner you face it the better off you're gonna be.
You can't save 'em all. You gotta let 'em go. You gotta cut 'em loose. You gotta stop overprotecting them, because you're making them too soft. Today's kids are way too soft. For one thing there's too much emphasis on 'safety'... Kids have to wear helmets now for everything but jerking off! Grown ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid... Whatever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own! Simple as that.
If you want to know how you can help your children: LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE!"
Obviously some of the points he makes are exaggerated for comedic effect, but I think the underlying idea is spot on. Trying to protect kids from 'cyberbullying' is just stupid. There are assholes in the real world, that's just a fact of life. Trying to shield your kids (or anyone for that matter) from what basically amounts to name-calling will only ensure that they're not prepared to deal with people they might not like (something most adults have to do on a regular basis).
As the RIAA has learned (or at least should have by now) is that trying to persecute something like this will only help to make it more popular. The way I see it, there are two things that need to be done to reduce online bullying (you can't stop it completely, of course).
1. Keep people from becoming bullies in the first place. This is easier said than done and I can't say that I have any insight into how you'd even do this.
2. Make sure that the targets of online bullies don't play into the role of 'victim.' Most Internet Tough Guys act the way they do for their own amusement, which they mainly get from the reactions of the people they irritate. If no one bothers to even flinch at their efforts you can bet that most of them would change their ways or simply disappear to try their hand elsewhere. Either way it's a victory.
I was once a horse.
The faster this is signed, the better.
Those are the exact kind of messages that the RIAA likes to send out :O
This is good and bad...
I'm a law clerk in the state court system, and have been for a little over two years. When I first started, I never saw much of anything that dealt with online content. Now, I'd say that maybe 5-10% of the protective orders ("Harassment Restraining Orders" in my state) deal with students (mostly high school and college) interacting via My Space or Facebook. So I do believe that "cyber bullying" is happening, at least to some extent. Some of it is BS, like parents not approving of their underage daughter's racy pictures of herself and the much-too-old boyfriend, or an angry match.com breakup, or whatever.
Additionally, I don't believe we need any new laws to deal with this. At least I haven't personally seen a need yet. Generally, the existing harassment laws do just fine. They are already written broadly enough to cover "communications" via a number of methods. If someone communicates with you after you've told them you find their contact harassing, the law covers it, whether it's by phone, mail, in-person, or email. Special laws to cover the internet will only make it more difficult to do my job, and more importantly the job of the judges who ultimately make the decisions. And believe me, they are not well equipped to understand online material. Boiling it all down to "communications" is just easier. Court personal and prosecutors are already overworked in many areas, and complicating matters further will basically just mean that either other cases involving more traditional speech will have to be given a lower priority, or that none of it gets the attention it needs.
The one situation that's hard to handle is postings to other people's blogs that are unconnected to the recipient. Trying to analogize a blog posting is a bit difficult -- it's not like we've ever had much of a problem of people speaking bad of each other via physical billboards. But really, that's protected free speech, until it rises to the level of a treat. So essentially, the one situation a politician could conceivably attempt to control is basically impossible control due to that pesky constitution of ours (I know, politicians hate it).
Bottom line, leave the law alone. Stop grandstanding. And throw enough money at the judicial system to be able to spend enough time of each case, and give prosecutors the money to have enough people to pursue the cases that need the most attention. But I suppose it's a lot easier to "JUST THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!" by coming up with crazy laws, rather than simply funding courts.
Welp, I might as well call the people who thought this one up "Fucking Idiots" while it's still legal to do so.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
This law is a blatant violation of free speech and the first amendment. While I do not agree with "cyberbullying", we are talking about speech here rather than an actual physical act of violence. As well, it is much eisier to ignore verbal abuse on the internet, with block lists, or simply minimising the window, that a law is truly unnecessary. There are a class of crimes called stalking, but on the internet medium these can be fairly easily combated with the ignore lisr etc.
We should not have to live in fear of everything we say perhaps being misconstrued in some wa. That is the kind of society which this will lead to, where people live in fear basically of saying anything.
Can't we just outlaw being a teenager? I mean, if you look at all the major sources of cattiness, abuse, insults, hatefulness, and other means of emotional abuse it's goddamned nearly always teenagers. I think that a much more logical response to this problem would be to execute each and every American child found guilty of being over the age of twelve. Once they're twenty we can pardon them, and then the entire world will be happy, peaceful, and in no way unpleasant.
What the hell is cyberbullying? Unlike real life, where you may need to go to school or where ever and deal with hostile people, you don't have to deal with it on the internet. 'Cyberbullies' don't just walk up to you on the internet because they don't like the look of your avatar, it's not like they leave their popular coolpeople.com site and go to the D&D forums and start messing with people. And even if they did that's what ignore, block, you're-dead-to-me, and other similar commands are for. Here are the solutions to this problem. A: don't trust people online, B:if someone says something you don't like, stop talking to them, C: if someone says things that hurt your feelings, suck it up or get some therapy or something. It's really not that hard...
By the way, has anyone proposing this law even BEEN on the internet? Causing some kind of emotion distress (fear, anger, sadness, frustration, whatever) is probably at least 10% of content on the internet. Again, suck it up or fight back. As easy as it is to be on the internet and not talk to ANYONE, this proposal is obviously a knee jerk reaction. How do people not get sick at the thought of the government's amazing ability to blow million's of dollars we give them on a variety of poor ideas like this?
Let me get see if I got this straight; If somebody is being a bully on the Internet it's a crime punishable by up to two years in prison but if somebody is being a bully in, say, our public school system then it's .... just another day in the life of countless public school students.
How does doing it to somebody over the Internet where you have the power to block, ban or otherwise delete any commentary you find offensive constitute itself to be a greater threat to somebody's emotional state than it happening, face-to-face, day after day, in a setting they have no control over and where there is effectively no protections in place?
If this were to pass could the law then be used to try and prosecute the tens of thousands of school bullies across the country? Why not? Once a law is in place it's open to all kinds of rationals and interpretations waiting to be tested in court.
On the one hand, as the victim of bullying many years ago I would say let's see what happens. Let the geeks and nerds stage a legal assault on their oppressors. Perhaps once the useless, disruptive elements are removed from the system public education will improve.
On the other hand, as an adult this is clearly ridiculous and if passed could only lead to very bad things. The wholesale removal of bullies would just lead to an even greater decline in our nation as these kids will go from getting a bad education with a 50% drop out rate to getting none at all.
Not to mention the obvious implications for free speech in our society...
More ill conceived, reactionary legislation... oh wait, it's an election year! What else will they come up with before November?
If you are effected by this pseudo bullying, you have issues anyway. Its not the so called 'harassment' that is the problem here.
If someone is online saying something you don't like, try walking away from the PC.. its not that hard, really. If you cant, then you really need to be seeking in-patient professional help.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This law just proves that our political leaders are complete idiots, at least the people deciding writing the wording on the laws.
Why the hell should we be worried about virtual bullying when we have real bullying to outlaw?
If you are being bullied by someone online, there are trivial things you can do. Growing a spine would be one, but all cynicism aside, if its on IM, it is trivial to block someone. If it's on myspace, make your myspace page private and de-friend the individual. If it's in a chat room that you can't mod, don't go there anymore. Whatever happened to walking away knowing that you are mature enough that you won't be making french fries for a living.
When some parent lets their kid talk to adults on the internet, it's our job to protect that kid.
I agree with you, I support personal responsibility, but lazy parents want to make the internet into a daycare for their kids.
I dunno... seems to me this could all be handled under existing law. I mean, they DID bring charges against the parent. Let's call it what it is. This is not a law to protect us from identity theft, or from hacking (real physical bullying), this is a virtual bullying law.
We are entering into an era where there will be virtual crimes, governed by virtual laws. I think this has to be stopped now else the internet will be rendered completely useless.
If they keep passing laws like this, us hackers and technical types should leave the USA and go to a country that has laws favorable to our lines of work. I mean seriously, virtual bullying now?
Whats next? Virtual taxes? taxing websites ? taxes users for each screen name they use? Taxing gamers?
Making special cyber law reenforces the notion that the internet is different and has different rules.
There is a difference. A virtual law is a law which attempts to create virtual crime. A cyber law might just be a law to prosecute identity thieves.This is a virtual law. Being a bully is not a crime anywhere else. Kids are bullied in school and there is no law against it. Adults are bullied at work and there are barely any laws against it.
Why are we trying to solve the bullying problem in a virtual environment instead of creating laws in the real world? It's simple, this is a way for the government to destroy the internet.
First comes the virtual laws.
Next comes virtual taxes on your screen names and email accounts so the government can tax you for every email you send.
Finally the government will make you use a special ID or license to use the internet at all.
It's coming because we tolerate all these virtual laws that don't really have anything to do with the physical world.
If they can criminalize behavior in the virtual world on websites and chatrooms, they can tax behavior in the virtual world of video games and X-box live.
Prepare yourself for the day where there is a video game tax.
Prepare yourself for the day where you need a license to access the internet at all just so the government can track your behavior so as to enforce the virtual laws.
which encourages cyberbullying of other nations
1) The case of Megan Meier is an anomaly. A pair of PARENTS decided to put this kid through an emotional wringer to screw up her life.
Detestable, contemptible, and atrocious? Yes. A widespread case? I don't think so. A sound basis for a law making it illegal? I doubt it.
2) Knee-jerk reactions, especially in an election year, are to be expected, particularly by a legislature that is sharply divided along partisan lines. Either party will want to use this as a tool to stay in office.
Detestable, contemptible, and atrocious? Yes. A widespread case? Yes - along with anti-flag-burning amendments, laws requiring the rating of video games and bills proposing convicted sex offenders to be put on 24-hour electronic surveillance for life. A sound basis for a law making it illegal? Don't I wish.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Just like you need a license to drive and you can be arrested for driving without a license, this allows cops to charge you for speeding.
They can do the same with the internet. Require a us all to have a license to access the internet and simply arrest everyone who accesses it without a license.
Now they can enforce all their thought crimes and virtual laws.
Isn't cyberbullying basically harassment? Why do we need a seperate law? how would they enforce this, it's easy to fake this stuff due to the nature of the internet. Also, I think a lot of these cases are caused by problems with the 'victim' themselves, the harassment just acts as a catalyst.
Oh, screw this. You're all fucked. I'm just going to build an underwater city and leave all of you to choke to death on your own spit. By the way, I'm going to mock people on the Internet when I'm done. (Muahahahaha!)
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
Of course if you get arrested for committing a virtual crime you go to real jail. It's just a way to increase the prison population and provide more jobs for cops.
Why do you think we have so many laws to govern driving? so they can give you tickets for speeding.
Virtual laws will allow them to give you tickets for ANY behavior or THOUGHT you have while using the internet. And the license to access the internet is coming soon and we will all need one to access this site.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
We could limit advertisers.
We could limit hate groups.
We could stop bullies.
We could stop lobbyists.
But, alas, we are stuck with the damn thing. Ooh, have an idea. We can pass laws to limit the 1st Amendment protections in clear violation of the Constitution. And no one will have the balls to take it to the Supreme Court. And if they do, the Supreme Court *may* overturn the law but we'll have stopped literally *tens* of cyber-bullies.
After all, USians have been shitting on the 2nd Amendment for the last hundred years. It's about time the 1st gets some love too. First we said we should give up our first amendment rights to fight child pornographers. So we created laws to remove freedom of speech if it's pornographic images of children.
But this wasn't enough, we had to outlaw virtual child porn as well, creating the first thought crime.
But that still wasn't enough, we have to now regulate ALL behavior on the internet, with the end result being a completely government controlled internet.
What this means is:
If you go to the wrong website you could lose your license to access the net.
If you insult somebody you could be charged with bullying and go to prison, and or lose your license to access the net.
These virtual bullying laws have to be enforced, so now there will be hundreds of thousands of cops patrolling the chatrooms just like they patrol the highways waiting to see who speeds.
If you bully someone in front of an cybercop, and the victim presses charges, the real cops could show up at your door and arrest you and you could be stripped of your internet license.
Also by forcing you to have an internet license you can be taxed according to your thoughts and online behavior.
If you go to certain websites you could be taxes, say if it's gambling, or porn sites.
If you play games online you could be taxed.
If you own too many screen names you could be taxed.
If you swear online you could be taxed.
Do you see where this is going? And the state and local governments can institute any laws they want to govern internet uses and use their internet cops and license scheme to regulate your thoughts and behavior online.
To wrap it up, this is about thought control, and it has absolutely nothing to do with bullying. If it were about bullying we'd be focused on outlawing bullying, the internet would have nothing to do with it.
And I'd support outlawing bullying if it includes outlawing school bullying. I'm just tired of virtual laws to govern our minds. The virtual sphere is not physically real, it's just in our minds, this website is just infomation and to govern that is to govern our thoughts and speech.
It would be easier to focus on making a more moral society to bring people up in. Making laws against things doesn't keep people from doing them. Raising them in an environment that teaches what's productive vs. counter productive to society does.
That goes right to the source and allows an educated person to use their own judgment when it comes to questionable issues like this. If a person is "cyber-bullying" then they've got issues of their own that haven't been worked out. I wish the people who throw fits and make laws about things like this, school shootings, road rage and all the other crap we have to deal with today would realize covering up issues with intangible limitations (i.e. laws) doesn't do shit.
Now excuse me while I go pound some faces in anger.
...so long as they also outlaw bullying by telephone, postal mail, passing notes in school, and yelling at someone face to face. After all, it's not the medium that causes people to kill themselves, it's the message. Right?
That -1 troll could mean jail time from now on! Don't be a troll, stay in school.
It's the goddamn internet. If someone is annoying you can delete them or even unplug your machine.
It's not the same as getting punched in the face or jumped by real bullies. Haven't you been bullied in school? You should know the difference.
Kill your parents. Then, kill yourself.
In fact, the best cops are usually the people who have been bullied.
Take it up a notch and you have the perennial bills that do pass with the full knowledge that the first Federal Court that sees it will overturn it, since it's just a paraphrase of one that has been shot down six times already by the Supreme Court. School prayer bills fall in this category.
Not sayin' which one this fits, but it's as good a bet as you'll get where the Supreme Court is concerned that this one falls into one or the other.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Thanks to a Supreme Court decision back in the nineteenth century (I think), a company is a "person" and has the same rights. So what would prevent this legislation being used against sites such as "AOLsucks" or "Don't buy at Walmart" ?
][=-mPu-=][Mod Parent Up][-=mPu=-][
OR ELSE I KEEL ZYOU!!
The government and corporations have constitutional rights. We do not.
Why didn't you become a cop? Anyone who got bullied should.
Nevermind all that Constitution stuff...
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Does this change the current law stating public figures and politicians are fair game or will I go to jail for saying they all have bad hair?
This stuff is already illegal! I know others have said it but I will repeat: passing a "special" law that makes it particularly illegal on the internet is unjust double-dipping. They are blaming the medium rather than the message.
If they outlaw cyberbullying, will DMCA take-down notices be illegal?
If they outlaw cyberbullying, will it be illegal for the MAFIAA to sue college kids?
Andy Out!
It's stories like this that negate my need for movies like The Pianist, and it's the comments that follow that negate my need for The Onion.
You guys keep up the good work. You're improving at least one man's life.
... to deal with first
Bullying Institute
I find spam to be abusive, harassing, annoying and severe. How can I use this potential new legislation to nail spammers to the wall?
I was just thinking, but couldn't something like this be stretched out to include games and virtual worlds... and not just verbal/text communication and static imagery. I'm talking about smug, elite gamers who go to great lengths to own/pwn everyone else playing by any underhanded manner possible. (Such as sniping a respawn point in a first person shooter.)
Considering we already know many people often develop a deep-seated attachment to their status within a game to the point that some will even go so far as to kill another person (such as the guy who killed his neighbor over a game console after suspecting him of stealing it) to preserve it, could we be facing a situation where simply being *too* good at a game can be considered a form of cyber-bullying?
It kind of makes you wonder just what would happen if the government started cracking down, demanding things like online leader board or XBox Live style gamer scores be removed in the name of public safety.
Hopefully it won't come to that, and someone with a few braincells suggests internet users start growing a backbone as a condition for connecting to it.
8==8 Bones 8==8
It's going to put an end to my activities on Slashdot. I've made many a conservative cry like a baby, and now those little girls might sue me.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
This is something I've put a lot of mental effort towards understanding, as I used to feel the exact same as you. The issue, though, is much more complex online than it is in real life. For example, online someone has the capabilities of impersonating you and making, say, libelous claims about your person, which is not a luxury that your regular run-of-the-mill bully could accomplish. Think fake online Facebook profiles, MySpace ads, etc. that offer real pictures of you, information about your life, and more.
Cyberbullying, I believe, is a real issue. I've never been subjected to it, thankfully, but I can imagine that, to a teenager, it can be especially damaging, and even more so than real life bullying given how important the internet has grown to be for teenage social interaction.
stupid stupid stupid.
People get bullied (and commit suicide and/or kill the people that bullied them). It's really unfortunate.
But 2 years? Any fine over $50 bucks?
These are just signs of the prison industry run rampant. For god's sake this "free country" imprisons people left and right compared to the rest of the world because it is profitable and because we can afford it and because it provides states a pseudo slave labor for public works projects.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bullying is wrong, but a crime? This is the same as 'hate crimes'. Actions are what they are. Extra penalties for political incorrectness is dictating thoughts and ideas. You cannot incarcerate someone for having 'disfavourable' views. That's not freedom. Hating blacks or jews or homosexuals or woman is an ignorant & fear based perspective but people go through that. Lynching is criminal and must be stopped/dealt with. The difference is huge.
I'm not fond of laws - they never work out as intended, thanks to these pedantic illiterate asshats we call prosecutors - but if anything can help tip the scales toward the little guy, I'm all for it.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Read my comment here to see the links that you ignored.
Girl told she cannot read bible at school
Houston we have a problem, students want to read bibles at recess
How about that crow you just ate? Was it tasty?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
A federal law won't do anything to protect most victims with a legitimate fear for their safety. Abusive spouses and violent classmates will only be subject to state law. The only outcome of this law will be increased surveillance and further limits on speech.
As soon as the stars stopped I got up and walked around school to my bike and unlocked it. With that U-shaped lock I walked straight up the kid and began smashing it on the back of his head. Some of his scalp came out in chunks and he was knocked out. The coach for the football team wrestled me to the ground and broke one of my fingers and sprained my wrist, but no one ever fucked with me again in school. I am pretty sure other guys have similar stories.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
that I can have Comcast, the RIAA, and MPAA arrested?
I think this is too funny, the whole argument on the constitution and what it should mean, when it clearly it's all an illusion to make us believe we have a say in anything that happens in this country. Even the statement, "...all men are created equal." is one of the biggest bunch of hypocritical statements in there. Think of the time this was written. All men are created equal, except niggers women and mud races O.o
Yes! Missouri, the same state to give us the amazing The Assemblies of God Pentecostal Evangelical Church. They are the best to judge morality. Yes. Yep. Right.
/ignore "stupidignoranthatemonger" ahhh, silence. There, that was so much easier wasn't it? Inform, educate, enlighten. Stop trying to make more work for the "system" because your too damn bitter. Encourage your kids to be proactive, not vindictive. Hello!
I don't understand. What's the difference between RL bullying and cyberbullying? Just the medium. It's still the same old shit. Why do we need to introduce more laws where old one suffice, just need to be enforced.
'Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.'
Why only when using electronic means? I should think it's not the tool you use that is important, but what you do.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yeah it's vague, yeah it could be used against almost anyone, but any criminal complaint against you has to get past cops, prosecutors, a judge, and a jury before you go to jail. If any one of those people says "that kid should HTFU" you're not going to go to jail. In all reality unless you're a sick demented fuck like the woman the law was created because of you're not even going to see a visit from the cops.
Some laws can be abused, this is unlikely to be one of them.
Bullying can cause lifelong damage to a person. I know this from personal experience; I'll skip the touchy-feely stuff, but being the target of persistent bullying breaks your self-confidence on so many levels, and you end up being socially isolated simply to survive mentally. Even now, 40 years later, I still find it very difficult to trust other people - it can be a struggle not feeling bitter, and my immediate reaction when I see teenagers is anger, something I have to consciously lift myself out of. You can laugh it off, of course, but a person my age should not feel like this towards the younger generation, I should be teaching young people some of the things I have picked up during my life.
But bad as bullying is, cyberbullying is several degrees worse. At least when you are being bullied by a group of people in school or at work, you have a physical enemy that you can in principle confront; and what they can do to you is limited by many factors. The cyberbully on the other hand, has access to much greater resources and does not have to witness your pain first-hand - so there is less to hold them back. And there is less to confront - as an inexperienced teenager you don't really know enough to handle this situation, and you can't even turn to your parents, because more likely than not, they don't know as much about computers as you do.
Of course passing a law doesn't solve the problem, but it is a necessary first step. The bullies are not going to stop on their own, and they will probably not understand an appeal their better self; so punishment is required. But we can't punish if there isn't a law that makes it a crime.
...they're banning the internet?
To controlling and censoring everything on the internet, if this comes to pass, soon, you can be jailed for 20 years for "unamerican speech" locking the internet down in the US and creating the great US corporate Intranet.
What's sick about the law, and I think Megan Meier's parents are blinded by the fact they lost their daughter, so blinded that they fail to remember exactly what killed her. Not a child, but a fully grown adult. Her neighbor in fact, the mother of a former best friend of the girl.
They're those typical butthurt parents who want justice regardless of how many toes they step on, no matter how many people are hurt by it, they're selfish and blind, and politicians love people like this as it helps get unconstitutional laws like this passed.
If it gets passed, They better build a shitload of new prisons, hell, find a relatively empty state, give all the residents money for the land, and build a massive prison complex that takes up a majority of the state, or the entire state, because you're not going to have enough room to imprison all those people.
Actually, let's forget prisons, as they cost too much and start killing people, kill anyone who says anything someone else doesnt like, yeah, that way, all they have to do is dig mass graves. Now, that isnt economical, better idea, give everyone guns and let them sort it out, Morticians would benefit greatly from this. There, got your economy part fixed.
Now, on to the issue of banning guns...oh wait.
Seriously this is all a bandaid fix to a bigger more destructive problem in society, the fact kids are not to be punished for their actions, or else the state takes them away, and are encouraged not to fight or defend themselves against bullies who always get around the rules no matter what they do, so now you have the emotionally weak who wont even defend themselves because they were raised to rely on someone else to do their fighting for them, vs. the outright insidious, unpunished assholes of life who disregard the rules and the laws and dont get punished by the people who are supposed to stop them, because even they fear them.
The point is, this law is not going to work as advertised, it's going to open a whole new set of problems, and these bullies, instead of harassing their victims, will turn around and use this very same law against them by claiming they're being harassed and will make up chat transactions and myspace pages against themselves to get anyone they want to ruin put in jail.
*golf claps*
Because the lack of "...on the internet" is in some cases considered a loophole in existing laws.
Just like "Doing X on the internet." is a completely different patent from "Doing X." It's all getting clear now.
Why don't these "victims" just block/filter the bullies?
No sig today...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I don't get the difference between conventional "bullying" in form of slander, libel, harassment, etc VERSUS the cyber form of it.
That really shouldn't require a seperate law, but should be covered under the previous one.
At last, something to protect me against those bastards that keep ganking me!
This is just going to end up causing a lot of headaches and cause more harm than good, if it does any good at all. I think the government should provide useful and helpful services, but the job of the government does not go this far.
Why people do not think about the children :(
It might be worth the aggravation, until the legislation is annulled due to " ... unforeseen misapplication" of the law.
I can say you're a twat. As long as it is clearly an opinion, that's not slander or libel.
I can ssy you fellate dingos as long as I have some proof that you really do fellate dingos.
Neither is particularly nice.
I can't believe Congress are still using this tragic story as a tool to push for anti-free speech and Internet censorship legistlation... LET IT GO! She's going to jail, theres no need to over react here...
:)
Plus, according to the wording of the bill, anyone who says anything negitive to someone else or is rude online can get fined/in jail. Now most of the time I'm nice online, but sometimes (especially on Counter-Strike and Call of Duty, I trash talk or aruge when theres an idiot on... so your going to tell me I can now go to jail for calling someone a "n00b"???? And what about Xbox Live (which I hate)?
This can not stand! They are trying to destroy the First Amandment on the Internet!
P.S. Sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes, I'm on a public computer with a broken keyboard
World of Warcraft Bosses have harrassed me to no end and I am not going to take it anymore.
I don't see how such a law could be passed without violating free speech. I mean, if some kid on World of Warcraft calls my wife (yes, she plays) a bitch, I should be able to tell him to go jump into a fire and die a horrible death. As for bullying, my grandfather used to tell me this story about when he was growing up during the days of the Great Depression. This older kid used to take his money from him every day. Like, every day for a few weeks. Except one day, my grandfather took a brick to school with him instead. When the kid asked for the money, my gramps pulled the brick out and waylaid him upside the head with it. He hit him so hard, he thought he'd killed the kid. Kid never bothered him again. Of course, nowadays, my gramps would have been arrested for that.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
Off the inter-tubes, we do already have laws that forbid abusive behavior in relation to criminal activity. Harassing someone in real life can get you slapped with a restraining order. Harassing someone for money or property, can get you slapped with extortion, etc.
IMO, this legislation is going in the right direction, but must be refined. In its current state, it really isn't acceptable.
as it happens with any law. and it will get exploited by many.
Read radical news here
So what my government is telling me once again is that it is more socially acceptable to walk up and punch someone in the face than it is to call them names and hurt their feelings. I just love how vague this legislation is, like the OP said I could get jail time for trash talking in a video game. This sucks, if it weren't for trash talk I wouldn't say anything at all!
Well, that's the end of the 1st Amendment, now we are free to go after the rest of the Bill of Rights. Seriously, the day it becomes a crime to call someone a douchebag online is the day everyone old enough to type becomes a criminal.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
Just pass this law....Don't be a dick!
Seriously, if people would stop being dicks then most of these issues would go away. But no, we have to pass specific laws to protect a few people.
All this is going to do is cause more people to be thrown into jail and have additional law suits filed. The lawyers are the only ones that will benefit.
In all seriousness folks, this is a ridiculous ruse. It's become clear that the powers that be are pretty content with the idea of eliminating free speech in all of it's forms.
As a personal aside, I would like to say that while I was growing up, I was never "cyberbullied" (the internet was but a mere toddler at the time) instead, I was abused physically and emotionally by my classmates--in person--and it was allowed to happen by an ineffective administration that would rather try to get me into a different school than actually punish the students responsible. I was once told that for insinuating that another student was stupid, I was just as guilty as him. I had insulted him after he attacked me in the hallway, leaving a half a dozen bruises on my chest. Clearly, this was far less damaging than somebody making fun of me on the internet. Surely, that would have been far more devastating to me, and I'd have never become the self-reliant successful person that I am today.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
This is an awful idea and anybody who supports it has not thought it through.
What happened with Mega Meier is extremely sad and disturbing, but as disgustingly sickening as the woman who did this was, she is not responsible for Meier's suicide.
Regardless of how awful someone is to someone else on a verbal level, the cannot force them to hurt themselves.
This girl was depressed and made the choice to take her own life. It's ver sad, but it happens every day. Had it not been this situation it likely would have been something else, and the next time she really got hurt the results would have been the same.
The charges filed against this woman in LA are ridiculous - they act as though violating Myspace's TOS is breaking the law.
You cannot legislate something like this because where do you draw the line? What is free speech and what is harrassment? What is a joke and what isn't a joke? Even if this sort of legislation passed can you image trying to enforce it and the people who would abuse such a law?
To break it down:
As sad as this case is, you cannot legislate something like this away. You cannot legislate cyberbullying away any more than you can legislate schoolyard bullying away. Bullies are a fact of life - and the only thing that can be done to to teach children how to handle this sort of thing - how to handle bullies and to really look out for your kids when they are at this sensitive age - and if they cannot deal with these sort of things do what you need to to get them help.
I feel sorry for the old lawyers who are used to dealing with "real" crimes.
Furthermore, sorrow for those who walk into a lawyers office and try to explain their case to said lawyers. Since the lawyer will most certainly be billing you for at least 10 hours just to figure out what the hell you are talking about.
It's gonna get even more complicated when cops start pretending to be teens and start arresting "cyber bulliers". Then pinned as heroes for saving the children.
We've already decided, fuck this shit, the wife and I are moving out of the US as soon as we can, or at least out of Missouri.
So is copyright infringement.
"imprisoned not more than two years"
Wasn't there a ruckus recently about prison overcrowding and how the government needs to learn to deal with socially disruptive individuals rather than imprison them?
My reality check bounced.
What really needs to happen is that online harassment and bullying need to be considered the same sort of crime as their real-life counterparts. To make it a "special" crime all its own is unnecessary.
But something does need to be done about this. It's not just thinking of the children; these things are crimes in real life for a reason, and online should be no different.
It should be clear that the Internet is just another venue. Why not pass laws against bus-stop, parking lot, and mall food court bullying? Current laws need to be enforced rationally.
It takes 10 minutes to register a new aol screen name. I may take an hour to change all your screen names.
It's easier to change your online screen name than to change your real name.
Cyberbullying legislation is a few steps too far, but cyber-bullies effectively have superpowers that real bullies don't.
I am going to take you into a story, now try and imagine this in a serious manner. Imagine you are in high school and there is a real-life bully that could shapeshift into you and start jacking off to pics of the male principal in the middle of the cafeteria, for example. When someone tries to stop him, he teleports away, and he does not need to show up for class, and nobody knows where he lives. He can also set up a giant billboard just outside the school (with, say, an ad for you as lead male in Goats Gone Wild) and draw everyone's attention to it, and you couldn't do jack shit about it. It's nearly impossible to prove who is who. Could you imagine the horror?
Most of us on Slashdot would try to keep our online personas and real selves as separate as possible, but to high school teens nowadays they are one and the same. They go by their real names online and post real information about themselves - there's no online persona dissociated from the real person that they could just "drop" in a worse-case scenario, or alternatively, not give a shit about. A cyber-bully could get pics of you, your contact information, everything needed to impersonate you. Cyber-bullying can be as bad as real bullying, short of physical injury, although it's partly the teens' fault for not keeping their online persona and real selves separate.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What the hell kind of hypocrisy is that?
At last, a legal weapon that adults can use against bill collectors, laywers and other legal bullies! Those people are just begging for it with all of their repeated, threatening, intimidating and cooercive letters and phone calls.
Her mental defects are probably as much due to bad parenting as bad genetics, but we really are better off with her not having the opportunity to reproduce.
If online bullying is the only way we have left to cull the runts, why are we trying to suppress it?
if i wrote the law:
someone could say they were a minor on the internet, you can still harass them. because anyone can claim to be anything on the internet. maybe i'm a 66 year old pensioner in bangalore. how do you know who i really am?
so to be a crime, in my book, the person has to know for sure they are dealing with a child
in the meier case, this adult women KNEW, 100%, that she was dealing with
1. a girl
2. an emotionally unstable girl
that's what makes the case especially evil, and especially different from random anonymous trolling
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This will be unconstitutional because even though it says "commerce" it is unrelated to interstate commerce.
People usually don't own guns, until something bad happens to them or their family and friends.
For example, a criminal killing someone's parents just so the criminal can get money to get stoned, would cause that child to grow up and own a gun so he won't be murdered for drug money when he is grown up.
Most of the school shooters are children or teenagers that have been bullied, harassed, raped, tortured, beaten up, or called names by others. 9 times out of ten the people who did that to him or her are Modern Liberals. Yet most children who were bullied that way, do not go on shooting rampages. Many grow up with mental illnesses or are unable to function and try to hold jobs, but get discriminated against and 9 times out of 10 they are discriminated against by Modern Liberals.
I myself do not use violence to solve problems. I used to be a Modern Liberal, but I was the one that didn't bully or harass others. I was often the victim of such things. I worked as a federal contractor for the Clinton administration, and I worked for a law firm that supports and helps the Democratic party of America. Until I learned the truth about what they had planned in 1999 for the 21st century. I learned about a new holocaust and a lot of the scams they are trying to pull off using hoaxes and taking control of the media and news groups and Internet blogs and forums. I had proof but I was poisoned and got too sick to work, and fired for being disabled, and my files were kept and I wasn't given access to them when I was escorted out of the building. I had documents that would have proved such things. But they were stolen. My life and my friends and family's life were threatened as well if I told.
It is easy to fight with a gun, but I fight with words. I fight peacefully, and even if what I say is unpopular and the majority don't agree with it, at one time in US history the majority believed in slavery and it was popular as well, and those who spoke out against slavery were unpopular and in the minority. These are the same sort of times.
I fight for freedom, I fight for liberty, I fight to prevent the next holocaust in the name of global warming. There is no need for guns if we can innovate new technology to use renewable energy like hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, etc.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Why don't you just tap all their phone calls they make as well? After all as you're their parent they have no reason to expect any privacy. :rolleyes:
If you really want to make sure your kids are happy, build some trust, not a totalitarian environment.
From the sentence quoted in the summary, it seems that the more aggressive actions of collection agencies would become illegal.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
in the US, you have the right to free speech.. you also have the right to be offended. to remove anyone's ability to offend is a very slippery slop. i am sure the founder's had offended king george numerous times before they signed the declaration... which itself would be considered offensive to king george. the medium by which the message is transferred means nothing. there is no need for new laws regarding interpersonal communications
Is John McCane a sponsor of this legislation? I'm sure he and other politicians are eager to have it in place to silence their critics.
If they outlaw arrogance Slashdot commenters are in real trouble.
Oh good, now maybe portalofevil.com encyclopediadramatica.com and 4chan.org 's members can all be thrown in the same prison.
(The first site is a private harassment site, the second is a public harassment site, and the third promotes the harassment)
I think I would apply the definition of a bully in this "law" to spammers, telemarketers, and of course the IRS.
Are you saying that the cyberbullies have the power to block my huge eraser, my block button, my infinite amount of potential names and identities, email addresses and accounts?
Actually, the real bullies always knew I'd be at school and knew where to find me after school. Some of they knew my name and could find out where I live.
Are you telling me that the cyberbullies who are just screen names, 1s and 0s, are more powerful than the physical bullies? Only if you are a complete moron are the cyberbullies more powerful.
Guess what? Not all of us are complete morons.
Of course, if I had the kinds of tools I have online to deal with bullies, I'd be able to simply erase them from my life with an eraser, or of course just carry a gun and shoot them.
Why can't I do that? It's illegal to erase the bullies offline but perfectly legal to erase them online. In school I couldn't even get a restraining order so we couldn't even block the bullies.
The point is, if a cyber bully gets pictures of you it's because your dumb ass gave them the material to blackmail you with. If a cyber bully gets your address its because your dumb ass gave it to them. If they impersonate you, it's identity theft, and it can only happen if you are stupid enough to give all your information including your picture and signature.
And there are already laws against identity theft so if thats what this is about, you are in the wrong debate.
All you have to do is change your email address. This is a dumb law to protect stupid people from smart bullies.
I'd propose we pass a law to protect smart people from stupid bullies in the real world.
The cause of suicide is a brain disorder, a mental illness. It's not something which can be caused by others.
If suicide could be caused by words, then there should be some magic words which we could all use to make each of our enemies kill themselves.
And if these words exist a business could be started to sell these words and create a cyber bullying industry.
Honestly though, I think this law is complete BS. There is no combination of words which could cause me to commit suicide, I'd simply never do it. And anyone who is that suicidal, should probably stay off the internet.
Any such law wouldn't last more than a few months. The first thing that thousands of people will do when such a law is passed is start accusing each other of cyberbullying on forums such as Fark, Digg, even Slashdot. Basically, if somebody pisses you off, and you can figure out who they are, you can accuse them and drag them into court.
The system will be so bogged down in these bullshit lawsuits/criminal trials that, hopefully, the stupidity of the law will become plain on its face.
Or maybe they should stay off the internet altogether.
I mean come on, if you commit suicide and can blame the internet, why not create laws to end bullying in school?
Many more kids have committed suicide after being bullied in school.
you aren't protected from everything
you honestly believe, with or without any new laws on the web, that you could say whatever the hell you want and not offend someone, somewhere, possibly resulting in repercussions?
the concept of free speech does not include freedom from the consequences of what you say
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
picking on Twitter!
Willyhill
You can't take the sky from me...
Lots of us have experienced mean cruel people.
This isn't about whether bullying is right or wrong, this is about whether or not virtual bullying should be a crime.
I don't think we should have virtual crimes. I don't agree with thought control laws.
She was thirteen, a time when many are having trouble with new feelings and emotions. That's why she shouldn't have been on the internet unsupervised in the first place.
Suicide over breakups are always going to happen. Someone could commit suicide when you break up with them, should you get sued for it? Hell no.
If someone wants to commit suicide they are going to do it and it has nothing to do with who they date or what words are said to them. Now sure, if it were something more than words, then I'd say they have a right to sue, but if it's just words, to sue someone for mere words is a form of thought control.
Next we will be able to sue white racists for hosting hate sites which cause non-white readers to commit suicide after reading the site.
Do you see where this could lead? It's going to be applied to EVERY situation because it's an irrational law.
Of course you can "kick the shit" out of an online bully. Just not physically. Wit and communication skills hold the upper hand in this medium.
"Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce..."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But you can punish it. what is free speech and what is harrassment? What is a joke and what isn't a joke? What is manslaughter and what is first degree murder? Even if that sort of legislation passed can you image trying to enforce it. You cannot legislate cyberbullying away any more than you can legislate schoolyard bullying away. Bullies are a fact of life You simply can't stop people from killing other people. Killing is a fact of life. So we should just remove all those laws against killing, because all they do is take away our precious freedoms.
in jail and fine him xxx virtual sheckles.
So, the RIAA can be jailed for harassing people with cease and desists? Nice.
for that well placed clue brick
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Isnt flaming people you have never met and calling them smacktards the reason we invented the internet in the first place?
I don't get why bullying is wrong.
I don't think we need a law like this. The Megan Meyer case is an isolated one with a child who had KNOWN mental instability. She had emotional problems before the online incident and she was obviously not getting the attention and help she needed from her parents if she was allowed to start to an online relationship at the age of 13.
Besides which, this law is completely impossible to enforce. Even less enforceable than the DCMA.
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
anonymity doesn't protect you from being an evil prick. if you are evil enough, your anonymity SHOULD be stripped. the question of course, is how evil do you have to be? what this woman did to this child is pretty far in to the territory of deserves to have her anonymity stripped, and to be punished
but there are a thousand other examples you or i could generate that are clearly NOT ripe for anonymity stripping, even if someone is offended. then there are plenty of situations that sit on the borderline
so, like i said: the real world. its not set in stone. and idealistic, fundamentalist, absolutist positions such as:
1. there should be no anonymity anywhere
2. anonymity should be preserved under any condition
are both wrong and unworkable
the best solution is somewhere in between, the grey area
there are grey areas in life. it is difficult to say in some cases what the right thing to do is. so, in other words: welcome to the real world. you have no absolute protections
and if you are big enough of a dick online, someone somewhere may strip you of your anonymity. don't like it? sorry, that's reality, deal with it. you are not protected from the consequences of what you say
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The one thing the neocons and the neoliberals don't control and that has proved to be a true thorn in their side is the Internet.
I note the legislation says "person" and "emotional distress" - which would seem to encompass my saying that I believe that Cheney and Bush are the biggest crooks and liars we've ever had. Repeatedly. All over the web.
Could they not argue that both my opinion and the facts that anybody and everybody has reported have repeatedly caused them emotional distress and demonstrate a pattern of behavior?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I want to know where was this girl parents. This is the reason parents should install spy ware when your child is on Myspace or other social network sits. We do not need the government watching over us. What will happen when people get in heated debates and use strong language and someone dose not agree. They feel they got offend call the government. This law is wrong we need parents not government.
And I don't think lying should be made into a crime either.
Hurting someones feelings is not a crime and absolutely should not be made into a crime.
If it were made into a crime do you realize I could sue you just because I don't like what you wrote on Slashdot?
This is actually seriously believable. Frighteningly believable.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!