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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.
Whatever happened to parents' responsibility for what their kids do (including online activities?)
As long as we can all still act immature on Xbox Live and make fun of each other's mothers while using homophobic terms...
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.
What?!?!
Why the fuck does which is which matter?
I swear to god you stupid motherfucker, if you your bullshit drivel even one more motherfucking time I am going to climb through this tube and smack the shit out of you. I'll kick your dog while I'm there, and piss on your flowers.
No one wants to read what you write. It is lame. You are lame by extension. Your whole family is very likely equally lame. Lick my sack.
In short, fuck you and the packets you rode in one.
You are a waste of carbon and water.
Yuo == fuckface
'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?
Kill yourself.
Right. Because "The People" in the 2nd amendment are obviously not the same "The People" from the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th amendments. Those are clearly some other people. Or maybe the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th amendments are also some kind of nebulous collective right that can be defined out of existence on a whim?
If one were intellectually honest, they might even question themselves on why the 2nd amendment would be about state militias when the congress has the power to federalize them... if it were about balance between the federal government and the states, why would the federal government have the power to take those militias away for federal service?
By the way, neither states nor the federal government have rights--they have powers.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
I swear, kids these days just don't have any backbone. One "bad word" and they go running and crying to mommy, grow up and get over it already.