Slashdot Mirror
Arizona Attempts To Make Trolling Illegal
LordofEntropy writes "Though unlikely to pass any First Amendment test. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer has a bill on her desk that would in essence make 'trolling' illegal. The law states 'It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.'"
This did indeed manage to pass through both houses of legislature and only needs a signature to become law.
Jail this!
[ this comment has been removed by the State of Arizona ]
BREAKING--Trolls Left Homeless After Website Ruled Illegal
Tech site Slashdot was ruled illegal today, leaving hundreds of trolls without a home. Slashdot, founded in the late 90s by master troll Rob Malda, has provided shelter for countless trolls over the years.
"It leaves me feeling naked. And petrified," said Slashdot user PortmanHotGrits. "Slashdot was once a thriving troll community due to its rigid ideology, biased editors, and broken moderation system."
"Where am I going to hate Apple now?" asked one anonymous user. "I hate Reddit, and my real life friends bought Macs years ago. Slashdot was the last place my puppet accounts could go to vent their frustration at iSheep Crapple fans. Android4Lyfe! Hang on, my custom ROM just crashed."
Reaction in other internet communities was mixed.
"Slashdot is still around?" asked several Twitter users. Said one IT administrator: "Whoa, Slashdot? I used to post there when I ran Linux on my desktop back in 2001. I used to write 'Micro$oft' non-ironically. I was an embarrassing idiot. Farewell, Slashdot."
Rob Malda, who ran screaming from Slashdot earlier in the year with half his body engulfed in flames, could not be reached for comment.
I'm glad I moved to Texas.
The only actual story here is that the government and voters of Arizona are profoundly stupid.
You have the right to not be offended. Right?
It's not just trolling "annoy or offend" could literally be applied to every word ever written.
They also outlawed teaching Mexican American studies in public schools, so no I don't find this surprising.
It's bad enough taking existing patents and adding "ON THE INTERNET", without doing it to existing laws as well.
Great work on crapping all over free speech Arizona.
Arizona proposes another batshit law.
The rest of the country is unsurprised.
That is on the front page of your website. Everyone should be fired, immediately, and replaced with people who know how to write English.
You're advocating exporting Slashdot's jobs outside of the U.S.?
How's that going to work for Fox News?
So...if you make inflammatory comments against fraudsters, does that mean you're...(wait for it)
Trolling for phishers? Would that now be considered poaching?
In what bizarre interpretation of the US Constitution would this be allowed? Oh wait, I get it, that only protects written works that were published by a device identified as a "press". Since the internet is NOT a press, what you write on the internet is not considered protected. Civil liberties are no longer a right of being human, they are now a technicality that must be navigated around.
'It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.
So, technically, couldn't it be viewed that this law is breaking itself?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
In a related story, Today the Arizona state legislature made Gays, Democrats, Liberals, Mexicans, Muslims, gay mixed drinks with fruit and umbrellas, small dogs, men's skin care products, evolution, gun control advocates, subcompact foreign cars, lite beer, pansies, petunias and 6 other flowers that begin with the letter 'P' illegal. When asked, leaders of the legislature said "Yeah, we know its unconstitutional, but tomorrow we're making the Constitution illegal."
I am strongly in favor of limiting free speech, and opposed to "rampant profanity", but I have my limits. Clearly, the law is intended to stop online bullying and harassment, but the broad ruling leaves a ridiculous amount of power in the hands of any public individual. It reminds me of those "it's not what you intended, but how they felt" lines from every sexual harassment seminar.
Without further ado, I must speak what's really on my mind, as intended for this law's authors and supporters.. Fuck this shitty law, and everything about it. Does it offend your short-sighted sensibilities that someone's fucking language could be used for some fucking emphasis? If you want to curb offensive abuses of free speech, then use your brain and figure out a legal wording that doesn't also cover anything poorly-worded. You've reached a point where, in your cowardly mind, you cannot empathize with someone else's point of view, that might lead them to say the things they say? Must you censor them, not by attacking their methods, but by attacking their very words?
If this obsession with political correctness continues, we, as a society, are fucked. In my ideal world, intent to cause harm would be illegal, but accidental harm is repaired and forgiven. Why the fuck can't we work toward that?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I don't understand why this should be surprising. I only had to scroll back two days for these two stories. What makes anyone think the First Amendment is any more important than the Fourth? Face it, folks, the Constitution has taken a back seat to Child Porn, then Terrorism and now............"Cyber-Bullying".
This space intentionally left blank.
I assume this bill is on the AZ legislature's website which is an electronic medium.
I find this type of assault on the first amendment blatantly obscene. And I am very offended.
Voting to pass this makes it the voice of everyone that voted Yes on it. Let the first round of class 1 misdemeanors begin.
This is probably going to go against popular opinion, but having read the bill, it looks ok with one exception: "annoy or offend". Remove those two (ok, three counting "or") words and what you have is a bill that says "It's illegal to threaten someone via the telephone so it should be illegal to do so online as well." Remember, freedom of speech isn't freedom to threaten someone with bodily harm or to stalk someone.
With "annoy/offend" intact, though, the law could be read in much too broad of a manner and could easily infringe on someone's free speech rights.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How do they deduce intent?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I invented a perpetual motion machine!
Get arrested for posting a nude picture of yourself. Then that law approved by the Supreme Court that demands a strip search for any arrest kicks in!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This law is getting a lot of attention because it's not a new law, it's an update to the existing law. Currently the law is in reference to telephones but is being updated to any electronic device. It's getting a lot of heat from local conservative talk radio. It's not actually on Jan Brewer's desk yet and she had no part in updating it. My guess is that from all the attention it has gotten that it will not pass. Take away the annoy and offend and it might pass. These are essentially anti-stalker laws. Since there is no legal definition for annoy and offend then it is loosely interpreted.
I don't know when these two states decided to battle for the dumbest state government, but it is sure entertaining to watch.
How is this going to get overturned, if it was passed by duly elected legislature? By unelected judges? I thought a recently as 3 days ago, that was an outrageous activist overreach?
Wow.
"This did indeed management to pass."
That is on the front page of your website. Everyone should be fired, immediately, and replaced with people who know how to write English.
We apologise again for the fault in the titles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You just bolded parts of it. Let's bold some other parts?
It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.
All those other clauses about threats and physical harm are joined by OR - the conjunction where both sides don't have to be true. The law is just as violated if some suggests you fuck yourself and the request annoys or offends you.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
As long as you can think of a complaint that you believe is worth more than twenty dollars, you, too, can sue anyone about anything. Please tell me what the Democrats have to do with that.
And of course, right-leaning god-fearing folk have never been known to engage in divisive identity politics.
If you parse the ridiculously long sentence in the summary, what Arizona is trying to outlaw is using obscene language, suggest lewd acts, or threaten violence. The "intent to annoy" thing is a necessary condition for the post to be in violation of this law. So if I say "the Arizona legislature can go fuck themselves. I want to beat them all with a golf club," the state still has to prove I did it with intent to 'terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend" and if they can't then my obscene, suggestive, violent language was OK.
I'm not defending the law. I hate it. I'm only saying that sounding off on a misinterpretation of its text, based on the word "annoy," fails to grasp the intent of the law.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
This would completely stop DMCA takedown notices in their tracks, as their intent is to clearly harass, threaten and intimidate. It would require the MPAA to write notices longhand, or on a electro-mechanical typewriter and snail-mail them to the supposed copyright violators.
If I could interrupt what passes for discussion in Slashdot,
I heard this on the radio on the way into work this morning: That due to public outcry, the bill's authors realize they screwed the pooch on this one (deliberately being offensive...) and have quietly asked the governor not to sign it.
There may be another bill later, but it may be slightly less insane.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled panic.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The fact that people can. The other thing that's great about it is you actually get to see what some people are really thinking. Sometimes the AC posts on here are amusing, even if they are completely obscene. It's like seeing what a person really does all alone on that business trip or alone in private thoughts. Banning trolling isn't just immoral, it's stupid and probably removes the one tiny peek hole into people's real thoughts. The guy who got on and said nigger faggot in the second post.... Well, as a faggot, I don't really like it, if I were also a black person, I'm sure it's not exactly nice. But isn't it helpful to know that the work educating people isn't over? What if everyone is totally fascist (like at the office) and has to pretend all day and we get into a false sense of security about where people are in their heads? The only real barometer is allowing people anonymous thoughts. Lets you know that there are still racists, and homophobes, (so don't get too comfy at the office...you might just get tired yet). Sorry I'm rambling/being offensive, but we don't have many 'freedoms' left as it is. From now on, I plan to appreciate that troll.
There are always exceptions.
A person who has to say lewd or offensive language that threatens or suggest lewd or offensive acts as part of their job are probably exempt. A policeman using an interphone to say, "if you don't open the door we will break it down." is offensive towards someones property, but they are likely to be exempt.
A Radio DJ saying, "we are smashing down houses here on 98.1 FM" into a microphone might just get prosecuted!
And for the rest of us, if we tell blond jokes online, we'll get prosecuted.
Score: -1, Unconstitutional
Sincerely yours, SCOTUS.
Considering this is the same SCOTUS that declared corporations = humans, cops have no duty to protect citizens, and that strip searching you for jaywalking is totally justified, methinks thou art jumping to an unlikely conclusion.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Yes, this means it is currently against the law in Arizona to use profanity during a phone call with the intent to threaten, annoy, offend, etc. Since I am in Arizona, and since it says later on that either endpoint of the telephone call can be the violating location, it will apply whether I'm calling you or you're calling me, regardless of where you are from. It also makes it illegal to repeatedly place anonymous phone calls that disturb the peace or privacy. This by itself doesn't seem too bas, as it only applies to a direct, end-to-end communication medium, and does have some merit considering stalking and sexual harassment.
If this is signed by our most esteemed idiot of a governor (no profanity or threats against life or property, I should be safe), this will apply to electronic communications in any form, instead of just phone calls. So, if I read a forum posting you wrote that has profanity and I think it was intended to annoy me, you could be breaking the law. For example, writing "people who play WOW are losers" would be okay, but writing "people who play WOW are fucking losers" would be illegal.
Actually, it doesn't even have to annoy or offend you. They just have to have intended to annoy or offend you. Which is good, because I'm hard to offend, but I can still take advantage of this law and sue everyone who posts even a mildly snarky response to one of my posts.
Of course, I may have to moderate my own tendencies towards online snark, but surely that's a small price to pay for the ability to sue such a large number of random commenters. Suing people is fun and rewarding.
(Uh oh, I think my last para may have revealed a bit of snark towards the creators of this bill, who live in AZ. If they see through my mild tone to my plain intent to annoy and offend, I could be in big trouble!) :)