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FBI Arrests Alleged Attacker Who Tweeted Seizure-Inducing Strobe at a Writer (theverge.com)
From a report on The Verge: An arrest has been made three months after someone tweeted a seizure-inducing strobe at writer and Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald. The Dallas FBI confirmed the arrest to The Verge today, and noted that a press release with more details is coming. Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, tweeted details of the arrest and said that more than 40 other people also sent him strobes after he publicized the first attack. Their information is now with the FBI, he says. It isn't clear whether these "different charges" relate to similar online harassment incidents or something else entirely.
He wasn't arrested for the flashy GIF. He was arrested for the accompanying tweet text:
" ....
Hey dude, jack up the brightness and contrast.
Done yet?
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! You're so convulsing on the floor!!! I gotcha good!!!
"
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Attempting to injure someone is illegal, yes.
The law doesn't try to carefully enumerate every method by which you might injure someone so that a clever criminal can say "haha! I invented a new weapon, so now it is legal for me to injure people with it because it isn't on the list of weapons that existed decades ago when the law was written!"
The law says attempting to hurt someone with a weapon that might be lethal is "assault with a deadly weapon", so if the prosecutor can show that you intended to hurt someone, and you used something that might cause death, you can be convicted. The law does not attempt to enumerate every weapon that could possibly be used to hurt or kill someone; the prosecutor can present evidence that you knew the thing you used was dangerous and could cause death.
If you send a strobe gif to your programming partner with a note saying "hey, look what I created with my leet javascript skills!", you probably couldn't be convicted because the prosecutor couldn't show intent. But if you are bragging in writing about how you are going to cause someone to have a seizure by sending them a strobe gif, then it probably isn't hard to convince a jury that you intended to cause inujury, and it shouldn't be hard to find an expert witness to testify that it is quite possble to die from an epileptic seizure.
As for how it can be prosecuted, well, same way as anything else. Lawyers show up in court and show evidence, and attempt to convince a jury that you violated a law. The specifics vary by law, but generally "did you do X" combined with "did you have intent to violate the law when you did X".
Intent being the key difference.
Posting a strobe flashy gif animation on a website? Not a big deal. Kinda douchey, but not a crime (even if someone does get a seizure from it but only because causing a seizure was not the intended result).
Sending a strobe flashy to gif to someone you know who has a seizure disorder and accompanying it with a message that says something to the effect of "I hope you get a seizure from this"? Definitely illegal because the stated intent is to induce a seizure (even if one is *not* induced).
It's kind of the online equivalent of mailing peanut dust to someone with a peanut allergy. Even if they don't get a bad reaction from it (say, because his mom opened it first and cleaned up before it hit him) then you will still be prosecuted for attempted assault because of the intent behind it.