EFF Takes On Online Harassment

Gamoid writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has identified online harassment as a major challenge facing free speech on the Internet, and lays out its plan to fix it. They say, "Online harassment is a digital rights issue. At its worst, it causes real and lasting harms to its targets, a fact that must be central to any discussion of harassment. Unfortunately, it's not easy to craft laws or policies that will address those harms without inviting government or corporate censorship and invasions of privacy—including the privacy and free speech of targets of harassment. ... Just because the law sometimes allows a person to be a jerk (or worse) doesn’t mean that others in the community are required to be silent or to just stand by and let people be harassed. We can and should stand up against harassment. Doing so is not censorship—it’s being part of the fight for an inclusive and speech-supporting Internet."

Comments

Re:Define "harassment"

[hey!]

I took a course on computer privacy law a few years ago, and one of the big questions is "what is privacy"? After looking at all the various philosophical and legal definitions, I came away with this definition: privacy is autotomy -- the right to conduct your affairs without unreasonable and uninvited interference.

So I would define online harassment as deliberate and uninvited interference. Unpleasantness is simply one *means* by which the interference is accomplished, but it is not in and of itself harassment.

Example 1: you make the mistake of delving into Youtube comments. That's like crossing a Norwegian footbridge with a sack of goats. You have chosen to dive into a pool of nastiness, and unpleasant feelings are an unfortunate but non-actionable consequence of that decision.

Example 2: you decide to block some of the more obnoxious trolls. One of them figures this out and creates a new account so he can continue harassing you. Now that's harassment, because you have explicitly un-invited that interaction. He is interfering with your right to ignore him.

Example 3: one of the trolls doxes you and follows you to another website. That's harassment too because his *intent* is to interfere with your enjoyment of that website.

Example 4: You are on a website and someone violates the site's "harassment" policy. This is a matter for the site admins, not the police or courts, unless the person is cyber-stalking you. A reasonable person doesn't expect site policies to be strictly and swiftly enforced -- it almost never happens. By choosing to use any website you choose to expose yourself to obnoxious people.