3 ms·

Context and scale matter. Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is. It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or t

Context and scale matter. Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is. It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone.

Dracophoenix 3y ago
> Context and scale matter. Who determines context in this case? On what basis? I disagree that scale matters. A right doesn't disappear simply because multiple people exercise it in a way others find unpleasant. Either a liberty exists on its own merits to it doesn't. > Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is Forgery requires a mens rea; in particular there must be an intent to deceive or profit from deceit. > It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone. In a number of cases, stalking statues have and do implicate rights. There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-court-urged-to-extend-free-speech-rights-to-online-stalkers https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-co...
- hwillis 3y ago
  > Who determines context in this case? On what basis? In general, you'll be sorely disappointed if you expect law to justify itself rigorously. That's not the point. The reason we use phrases like "beyond a reasonable doubt" is because that phrase should be interpreted personally by each juror. It is intentionally divorced from an objective standard. The technical standard in US law in this case would be (afaik) rational basis review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review > There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such. That's really not relevant to what I'm saying. Whether it's legal or not isn't really even relevant since I'm just trying to show you something that you think should obviously be illegal. There are many other examples where scale changes the nature of the action. Sending a GET request is fine. DDOS is not. Sharing someone's address is fine. Putting their personal information everywhere is not. Doing something once may have much less or much more than 1% of the harm of doing it 100 times.

Dracophoenix 3y ago

> Context and scale matter. Who determines context in this case? On what basis? I disagree that scale matters. A right doesn't disappear simply because multiple people exercise it in a way others find unpleasant. Either a liberty exists on its own merits to it doesn't. > Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is Forgery requires a mens rea; in particular there must be an intent to deceive or profit from deceit. > It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone. In a number of cases, stalking statues have and do implicate rights. There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-court-urged-to-extend-free-speech-rights-to-online-stalkers https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-co...

hwillis 3y ago
> Who determines context in this case? On what basis? In general, you'll be sorely disappointed if you expect law to justify itself rigorously. That's not the point. The reason we use phrases like "beyond a reasonable doubt" is because that phrase should be interpreted personally by each juror. It is intentionally divorced from an objective standard. The technical standard in US law in this case would be (afaik) rational basis review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review > There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such. That's really not relevant to what I'm saying. Whether it's legal or not isn't really even relevant since I'm just trying to show you something that you think should obviously be illegal. There are many other examples where scale changes the nature of the action. Sending a GET request is fine. DDOS is not. Sharing someone's address is fine. Putting their personal information everywhere is not. Doing something once may have much less or much more than 1% of the harm of doing it 100 times.