Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon

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."

Comments

Re:Not too worried

[ultrabot]

This is just a clarification of "harassment" as it already exists. It's not an attempt to shut down blogs. If someone is obviously and intentionally harassing someone else, I have no problem with them having legal recourse.

Yeah, it seem a part of the internet subculture feels it their constitutional right to be a total asshole on the internet, and god fordib if someone complains about it.

Not designed to help the little people

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not looking to protect little Timmy here from people picking on them. Were looking to stop you dissidents from criticizing the goverment! The wording of something like this can be so vauge that it would be extremely broad, and you will no longer be able to criticize your goverment.

If something like this passes, I wonder how long before people give this whole Obama experiment an Epic Fail!

Re:The US is quickly devolving into a socialistic.

[RingDev]

So where were your outcries over the last 8 years as we were being driven into a fascist police state?

Do you even understand the concepts that you are touting? Or are you just spewing Savage drivel?

-Rick

Re:Not too worried

[johnsonav]

If I call you a mealy-mouthed anti-intellectual pompous turd-brained gutter rat with a Terry Schiavo-like IQ and all the sense one would expect from a decayed chunk of dog vomit, you think I should be fined or go to jail?

No, I don't... And neither does this bill. It is criminalizing communications, sent "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 [...]". So, no your statement does not apply.

If you're going to debate the issue, try debating, you know, the issue; not some random stuff you make up.

Re:Not too worried

[ultrabot]

It kind of is your constitutional right to be an asshole pretty much anywhere, for nonviolent, non-frauding, non-libel/slander, non-likely-to-cause-imminent-violence values of asshole.

How about 4chan kind of assholes? Or all the blatantly racist AC trolls that are currently spamming slashdot?

A lot of the time scumbags are not productive at all, really. Requirement of civil behaviour should be universal, whether electronic or not.

Re:Covered By Twenty Percent of the Bill of Rights

[Locke2005]

As much as I hated the KKK, I reluctantly agreed that they should get their free speech rights.

Yes and no. They have the right to promote their unenlightened views, e.g. the right to state their opinion that certain races are "inferior" to others, despite the science that tells us we are ALL of African descent and the "racial" differences are merely differences in external appearance. What they do not have the right to is threatening speech or speech which incites violence against others -- and they have lost court battles on exactly that principle. Personally, given the well-known history of the SS or the KKK, I feel that marching down any street in a SS or KKK uniform constitutes an implicit threat, and therefore should not be allowed. Likewise, Orangemen parades though Catholic neighborhoods could also easily be construed at threatening, and therefore should be illegal. Merely saying "The Irish are pigs!" should not be illegal, but if there is any justice, it should get your ass kicked by a group of drunken Irishmen.