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Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon

Posted by kdawson on from the can't-say-that-it's-too-severe dept.

Mike writes "Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a US House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other Web media 'to cause substantial emotional distress through "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech.' Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to make it easier to prosecute any objectionable speech through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The bill is called The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, and if passed into law (and if it survives constitutional challenge) it looks almost certain to be misused."

3 of 780 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Covered By Twenty Percent of the Bill of Rights by stewbacca · · Score: 5, Informative

    You should have read more than the headline because frankly, the headline sucks. This bill strives to make "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech used in cyberbullying a criminal offense. Since MY blog doesn't have any of that stuff, this bill would not be able to declare my blog a weapon. By no means am I supporting this bill, but also by no means do I consider this alarmist headline to have any validity.

  2. Re:Covered By Twenty Percent of the Bill of Rights by vlm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft isn't the government

    You must not be from around these parts... We've merged our government and multinational corporations together. There is no separation. Otherwise known as Fascism or Corporatism.

    Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  3. Re:Covered By Twenty Percent of the Bill of Rights by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Um you might be wrong, unfortunately. Obama has four justices that will rubber stamp anything he signs...

    Uh, this is a bizarrely weird thing to say. You're talking about a supreme court of which all but two justices were appointed by Ford, Reagan, or Bush; and many of whom have been on the court since Obama was a high school student. There's no reason to particularly think why they would "rubber stamp anything he signs." Anything? Huh what?

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com