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Texas Teen Arrested Under New Online Harassment Law
SpaceGhost sends in a story from San Antonio, TX: "Police have arrested a 16-year-old girl on charges of harassment under a new Texas law that took effect September 1, 2009. H.B. 2003 says a person commits a third degree felony if the person posts one or more messages on a social networking site with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten another person. Police say the harassment went on for a few months and involved a dispute over a boy. ... Some people expect legal challenges to the constitutionality of the new Internet law.' The law is evidently a response to the Lori Drew case.
"I respectfully submit that the defendant is a Meanie-Head in the first degree!"
"My client wishes the court to know that the witness, in fact, 'started it'."
Such stuff needs to be a felony.
In which case, the state of Texas is going to be busy with all of the anonymous vs. anonymous cases.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Can of worms, I dub thee COLOSUS!
If I post online that Cmdr Taco is a goat fucker, have I really "harmed" him or his reputation in any way? It's not slander unless a reasonable person would believe it to be true, and no rational person believes Taco actually dates outside his own species (unlike Captain Kirk).
Yet another reason that Captain Picard is the superior Captain compared to Captain Kirk, Goat Fucker.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Yes, I know. Which makes it even more amusing when it's used by Texans in a different way.
See, humor and sarcasm have many layers....
Most of which you seem unable to penetrate.
It might hurt my feelings and then you goto jail.
Hurt feeling is a stupid basis for anything my wifes feelings get hurt if I tell her to wake up in the morning. And if I text her back that I'm not going to the bar to get her wings at midnight then her feelings are hurt. Well she is 250 LB because since we got married she does nothing but eat and sit on her ass. And any effort to get her to do anything hurts her feelings so she has to eat more just to show me she can get even fatter.
Hurt feelings are stupid people need to grow up and stop being such wuussies.
The force is not with you and you are not a jedi.
Meh! Kirk has a goat in every port. Who does Picard have to come home to?
An acting career?
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Pick a social networking site, and make a public announcement on your "wall" (or whatever they call it) as follows:
"Anyone who reads this need not necessarily feel neither unoffended nor unharassed notwithstanding their lack of failure to misconstrue its import."
It's plain English, plainly stated, and clear enough to about 1% of the population. Obviously, it would intimidate the 99% of Americans who cannot parse or comprehend it, and many of them would feel both offended and harassed as well as insulted. They might feel that it must have been posted with the intention of offending or intimidating them.
So would this sort of thing be against the law in Texas?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire