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People are commenting here without reading or understanding the ruling [edit: I should say that headlines like the one techdirt gave their article are also misl

People are commenting here without reading or understanding the ruling [edit: I should say that headlines like the one techdirt gave their article are also misleading; they are playing up the "banned from the internet" angle]. What happened is that North Carolina passed a law making it a crime for someone previously convicted of a sex crime to access social media sites (unless the site completely prohibits access except by adults, which most sites do not do). The court ruled that this law is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. The court did not rule that "no one may be banned from the internet" an so on. A specific person can still have conditions attached by the courts to his release; for example, it's common for judges to impose conditions like "no use of computers" on convicted malicious hackers as part of their probation. This hasn't been made illegal. Restricting internet access of current prisoners certainly hasn't been held illegal. What's been held unconstitutional is criminalizing a priori certain modes of speech by a broad class of people. EDIT2: Since this is apparently attracting a little bit of controversy, I want to add that I did not express any opinion about whether it's good to ban people from using computers or whatever; I just wanted to describe what the ruling says. I am actually not a fan of the general concept of not restoring people's rights after they serve their punishment, although I think it's justified in specific cases.

erroneousfunk 9y ago
The problem is that so many sites have social networking aspects to them, like the Supreme Court ruling pointed out. The North Carolina law is this: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=14-202.5 http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?sta... This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed. Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWRFWYV4CN7I52OI53A https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR... Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not) There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law: 1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges." The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law. 2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have. 3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist. 4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services. 5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.
- ivraatiems 9y ago
  > (Although Hacker News does not) I think it does - we have profiles with info like our personal website URL, twitter handle, a brief description on them. Here's mine, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ivraatiems https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ivraatiems
  - erroneousfunk 9y ago
    But we don't have photos in the profiles
    - scott00 9y ago
      I take a different reading of clause 3. The main criteria is "Allows users to create Web pages or personal profiles that contain information". The restrictions following that are prefaced by "such as"... which is a very weird word choice for legal stuff. Usually you see stuff like "including but not limited to the following" or "including all of the following". So a bit of a wild card, but the common usage of such as is to preface representative but not exhaustive examples. So I don't think a site has to fit all of the such as criteria to be included, or even any of it. It just has to have pages with information of a type similar to the given examples, which I think Hacker News profiles clearly has.
      - erroneousfunk 9y ago
        Ah, yeah, that makes sense. This makes the law even worse.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  With regard to the profile page elements, you seem to be reading “information, such as...” (which is usually read in legal, and plain, English as introducing a lost of examples) as meaning “information which includes, at a minimum, all of...”. The more normal reading of “such ad” makes the scope of the law even broader than you describe (and would seem likely to include HN, which you view as excluded because it doesn't include every enumerated kind of information, specifically missing pictures, in it's profile pages.)
btilly 9y ago
OMG, another terrible "think of the children" law. Did you know that 1/4 of all sex offenders offended as juveniles and are not particularly likely to reoffend as adults? Did you know that well under 5% of "convicted" people actually were convicted? The rest plea bargained out of a combination of not being able to afford trial, and facing much worse potential penalties if they tried to fight it. Before heaping more punishments on people who have been through our (in)justice system, we need to fix the system so that its results are more believable.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  the criminal justice systems is always going to have flaws. sure we should try to address them. but it would also help a lot if we remembered that criminals are people. members of society who screwed up, felt they didn't have a choice, or have psychological problems. punish them, treat them, restrict them, but they aren't unhuman.
  - ergothus 9y ago
    Agreed. (Related wall of text follows) I've always thought a major issue with the criminal justice system is serving competing masters: You want to punish people so OTHERS decide it would be a bad idea and don't try it You want to punish people so THEY decide it was a bad idea, not worth doing again. You want to redeem criminals, put them on a better path You want to ensure the criminals do not post a further threat to society But these goals contradict each other to a degree: Punishing to send a message is something I suspect this only work for fringe crimes - most criminals aren't know for their expert cost/benefit analysis - and regardless, "send a message" punishment hurts efforts to redeem ("we're punishing you as a threat to others" isn't something that makes people think you're fair and worth listening too) Punishing someone to ensure they think it's a bad idea probably works in terms of teaching cost/benefit, but there's the risk that you're teaching the opposite - Life in prison has got to suck, but if you get through it and discover there is no place in the outside world for you, you're socially ostracized, hard to employ, probably in a crappy financial situation...well, crime CAN pay, and you know you can survive the consequences if you do get caught (heck, at this point, crappy as it is, you're probably used to it - not enough to like it, but it would have some degree of comfort compared to the unfamilar-and-crappy situation you are in now. I could continue to armchair psychoanalyze the effects of living in a smaller community, but I think I've made enough unjustified statements. Redemption directly pushes against the Punishment rules. Not because redeemed criminals can't accept the concept of "paying a debt to society" (I've always hated that phrase), but because (reportedly) rare is the prisoner that ARRIVES at prison redeemed, and starting with punishment and separating them from the situations that were the problems before generally does not help with dealing with those situations. (And this is assuming this is a "dumb" criminal that committed a stupid crime for stupid reasons. My mother told me as a young child to not commit a crime I couldn't retire on. I recommend this to parents of young children...it has an inherent logic that is harder for a child to dispute than "Just Don't". I credit it with keeping me out of trouble until I was old enough to appreciate the value of laws, respect, and morality. Anyway, there are doubtless OTHER criminals who truly had no better option - redeeming them by telling them how that is their fault and we'll punish them doesn't sound like it would succeed. Sheltering society from the increased threat that a proven criminal represents largely doesn't care about Punishment or Redemption...but it doesn't help them at all. Redemption is easier of the criminals aren't removed from life. Punishment sounds like it is helped by this, but that goes back to the "what lesson are they learning", so if we're training career criminals, that makes the Sheltering concept currently a short term win for a long term loss. All of this is based on my opinions that are largely formed from random articles and headlines (rarely in-depth) and likely too much influence from TV and movies (insert Law & Order DUM-DUM here) so no one should actually trust this. If, however, anyone has interesting insight or even actual knowledge to share, that'd be great - I have literally thought this general structure for the last 20+ years, so it obviously has some staying power in my brain even if I'm not motivated enough to do much research.

erroneousfunk 9y ago

The problem is that so many sites have social networking aspects to them, like the Supreme Court ruling pointed out. The North Carolina law is this: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=14-202.5 http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?sta... This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed. Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWRFWYV4CN7I52OI53A https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR... Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not) There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law: 1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges." The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law. 2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have. 3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist. 4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services. 5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.

ivraatiems 9y ago
> (Although Hacker News does not) I think it does - we have profiles with info like our personal website URL, twitter handle, a brief description on them. Here's mine, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ivraatiems https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ivraatiems
- erroneousfunk 9y ago
  But we don't have photos in the profiles
  - scott00 9y ago
    I take a different reading of clause 3. The main criteria is "Allows users to create Web pages or personal profiles that contain information". The restrictions following that are prefaced by "such as"... which is a very weird word choice for legal stuff. Usually you see stuff like "including but not limited to the following" or "including all of the following". So a bit of a wild card, but the common usage of such as is to preface representative but not exhaustive examples. So I don't think a site has to fit all of the such as criteria to be included, or even any of it. It just has to have pages with information of a type similar to the given examples, which I think Hacker News profiles clearly has.
    - erroneousfunk 9y ago
      Ah, yeah, that makes sense. This makes the law even worse.
dragonwriter 9y ago
With regard to the profile page elements, you seem to be reading “information, such as...” (which is usually read in legal, and plain, English as introducing a lost of examples) as meaning “information which includes, at a minimum, all of...”. The more normal reading of “such ad” makes the scope of the law even broader than you describe (and would seem likely to include HN, which you view as excluded because it doesn't include every enumerated kind of information, specifically missing pictures, in it's profile pages.)

btilly 9y ago

OMG, another terrible "think of the children" law. Did you know that 1/4 of all sex offenders offended as juveniles and are not particularly likely to reoffend as adults? Did you know that well under 5% of "convicted" people actually were convicted? The rest plea bargained out of a combination of not being able to afford trial, and facing much worse potential penalties if they tried to fight it. Before heaping more punishments on people who have been through our (in)justice system, we need to fix the system so that its results are more believable.

convolvatron 9y ago
the criminal justice systems is always going to have flaws. sure we should try to address them. but it would also help a lot if we remembered that criminals are people. members of society who screwed up, felt they didn't have a choice, or have psychological problems. punish them, treat them, restrict them, but they aren't unhuman.
- ergothus 9y ago
  Agreed. (Related wall of text follows) I've always thought a major issue with the criminal justice system is serving competing masters: You want to punish people so OTHERS decide it would be a bad idea and don't try it You want to punish people so THEY decide it was a bad idea, not worth doing again. You want to redeem criminals, put them on a better path You want to ensure the criminals do not post a further threat to society But these goals contradict each other to a degree: Punishing to send a message is something I suspect this only work for fringe crimes - most criminals aren't know for their expert cost/benefit analysis - and regardless, "send a message" punishment hurts efforts to redeem ("we're punishing you as a threat to others" isn't something that makes people think you're fair and worth listening too) Punishing someone to ensure they think it's a bad idea probably works in terms of teaching cost/benefit, but there's the risk that you're teaching the opposite - Life in prison has got to suck, but if you get through it and discover there is no place in the outside world for you, you're socially ostracized, hard to employ, probably in a crappy financial situation...well, crime CAN pay, and you know you can survive the consequences if you do get caught (heck, at this point, crappy as it is, you're probably used to it - not enough to like it, but it would have some degree of comfort compared to the unfamilar-and-crappy situation you are in now. I could continue to armchair psychoanalyze the effects of living in a smaller community, but I think I've made enough unjustified statements. Redemption directly pushes against the Punishment rules. Not because redeemed criminals can't accept the concept of "paying a debt to society" (I've always hated that phrase), but because (reportedly) rare is the prisoner that ARRIVES at prison redeemed, and starting with punishment and separating them from the situations that were the problems before generally does not help with dealing with those situations. (And this is assuming this is a "dumb" criminal that committed a stupid crime for stupid reasons. My mother told me as a young child to not commit a crime I couldn't retire on. I recommend this to parents of young children...it has an inherent logic that is harder for a child to dispute than "Just Don't". I credit it with keeping me out of trouble until I was old enough to appreciate the value of laws, respect, and morality. Anyway, there are doubtless OTHER criminals who truly had no better option - redeeming them by telling them how that is their fault and we'll punish them doesn't sound like it would succeed. Sheltering society from the increased threat that a proven criminal represents largely doesn't care about Punishment or Redemption...but it doesn't help them at all. Redemption is easier of the criminals aren't removed from life. Punishment sounds like it is helped by this, but that goes back to the "what lesson are they learning", so if we're training career criminals, that makes the Sheltering concept currently a short term win for a long term loss. All of this is based on my opinions that are largely formed from random articles and headlines (rarely in-depth) and likely too much influence from TV and movies (insert Law & Order DUM-DUM here) so no one should actually trust this. If, however, anyone has interesting insight or even actual knowledge to share, that'd be great - I have literally thought this general structure for the last 20+ years, so it obviously has some staying power in my brain even if I'm not motivated enough to do much research.