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How Cyberbullying Prevention Act Could Land You In Prison

3 points by pideon 17y ago

CalmQuiet 17y ago
IANAL, but intent is explicitly required: "...with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person..." To a lay person, it seems no small thing to prove such an intent in writing critical material on web (or elsewhere).
jrockway 17y ago
I doubt this law will pass constitutional muster. But, if you don't want to be the first test case, I suggest using Tor for posting anything online. You might want to use an anonymous username, but every time cops have been sent to my house over a forum posting, the username gets lost and they only care about the IP that they got obtained from the site operator. (But also keep in mind that an IP address and a username don't prove that you did anything illegal, so laws like this are extremely hard to enforce.) IANAL, of course, but I do have firsthand experience on this matter. (Also, Slashdot says they delete the IP address of comments, but they don't. :) Anyway, let them harass the Tor endpoint in Egypt, or something, not you.
petercooper 17y ago
“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” Good! People who set out to intentionally ("with the intent") intimidate, harass, or distress another individual ("a person") deserves punishment. The word "substantial" demonstrates it's for incidents far beyond just saying something like "You're a dick" or "You're wrong because X, Y and Z." As is usual, though, the problem here isn't with the law as-written but the way it can be misinterpreted and abused by unethical lawyers and judges. How do you prove intent to cause distress? If I were to make a flippant comment about "Christians" believing in "fictional characters", let's say, it should be obvious I'm not intending to offend or cause emotional distress to "a person", but could the law be twisted to force me to prove my innocence in such a minor instance?

3 points by pideon 17y ago

IANAL, but intent is explicitly required: "...with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person..." To a lay person, it seems no small thing to prove such an intent in writing critical material on web (or elsewhere).

jrockway 17y ago

I doubt this law will pass constitutional muster. But, if you don't want to be the first test case, I suggest using Tor for posting anything online. You might want to use an anonymous username, but every time cops have been sent to my house over a forum posting, the username gets lost and they only care about the IP that they got obtained from the site operator. (But also keep in mind that an IP address and a username don't prove that you did anything illegal, so laws like this are extremely hard to enforce.) IANAL, of course, but I do have firsthand experience on this matter. (Also, Slashdot says they delete the IP address of comments, but they don't. :) Anyway, let them harass the Tor endpoint in Egypt, or something, not you.

petercooper 17y ago

“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” Good! People who set out to intentionally ("with the intent") intimidate, harass, or distress another individual ("a person") deserves punishment. The word "substantial" demonstrates it's for incidents far beyond just saying something like "You're a dick" or "You're wrong because X, Y and Z." As is usual, though, the problem here isn't with the law as-written but the way it can be misinterpreted and abused by unethical lawyers and judges. How do you prove intent to cause distress? If I were to make a flippant comment about "Christians" believing in "fictional characters", let's say, it should be obvious I'm not intending to offend or cause emotional distress to "a person", but could the law be twisted to force me to prove my innocence in such a minor instance?