Wouldn't it make it impossible under California law to have an agent that impersonate me? Have them tweet from my account, reply to emails in my name etc.
1. Hi, my name is John, I am contacting you on behalf of wojt_eu to confirm that he has been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.
2. Hi, it's me wojt_eu, I just wanted you to confirm that I've been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.
You can legally authorize someone to act on your behalf, in basically any Western Nation - although rules as to how this work will vary, but authorizing someone to impersonate you I don't believe would be made legal anywhere because impersonation is not just something one does on your behalf but also something one does to someone else. Both the person that acts on the impersonation as being real and the person being impersonated can be harmed by an impersonation, and therefore it is not adequate that the person being impersonated gives the impersonator the right to do so.
http://semanticcompositions.typepad.com/index/2004/03/flexib...
I was also not describing linguistic usage in telephone conversation, I was describing linguistic usage in email correspondence. I don't think a correspondence would exist with a structure similar to the conversation the blog post discusses.
It can certainly be that when a conversation or correspondence moves into the realm of impersonation should be determined by the court. I think in the case under discussion here it would determined to be impersonation, the question then becomes what the harm was.
Looking through the statute referenced http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr... I don't think I can see a harm defined that matches what was done very well. I think the most relevant section is 530 and it does seem a stretch.
I think you're confused. Celebrities hire third parties to tweet for them all the time. That's essentially impersonation.
Then it's more like acting/broadcasting.
If you had an account on twitter and said you were The Real Steve Jobs and everyone believed you were the real steve jobs and not a joke then I would say yes that would be considered impersonation - at which point the context I left out of my answer, considering it a given because I thought it was quite apparent from the top of the thread was that laws against impersonation also have to identify in some way the harm the parties affected by the impersonation suffer.
In the original post a statute was linked to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr... ,this describes a number of ways harm can be incurred in the act of impersonation.
The problem here is that it was done without permission.
The OP is claiming that the impersonation without permission is a crime, and that it is impossible to waive the crime-ness of it through a contract.
> If an offence is criminal it can't be magically made OK
> by a contract.
Voting by proxy is not impersonation, you give someone the right to act (vote in this case) in your name. Thus, no criminal offense.
The other cases: Assisted suicide is a criminal offense in many countries. For example (similar, but not the same), there has been some legal struggle over "Sterbehilfe" here in Germany which garnered quite some media attention.
Boxing – I might be mistaken, but perhaps "beating someone" is not a criminal offense as long as it is not against the other persons will?
All these things hinge on very subtle differences in wording. For example the terms might say: "AngelList reserves the right to send mails on your behalf" which grants them the right to send mails to third parties in your name, but I'd be surprised if law would allow them to state "AngelList reserves the right to claim your identity".
I can give my voting proxy or power of attorney to someone else, but it's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that's what's going on. If the email said "This is AngelList on behalf of J. Random Employee" that would be different than sending an email that had every appearance of being from the employee.
Even if this is allowed in their TOS, it's pretty underhanded if they buried something like that in boilerplate that they know nobody reads.
> you give someone the right to act (vote in this case) in
> your name. Thus, no criminal offense.
Assisted suicide is, yes. But my point is that we have separate legislation for it, implying that is required.
Boxing, again, that's my point.
Regarding identity specifically, what I imagine we're talking about here is an automated message much like LinkedIn's:
> Hi, I'd like to add you to my network! *
* Or whatever it is. Point being, it says "I"; not "Mr Ford".
The Gmail warning that "this message may not be from who it claims to be" never worked well, but I wish they'd make it work for cases like this.
It's too bad e-mail is so unverified and insecure. A smartphone app can be prevented from making calls or sending text messages from your number: all you have to do is deny it that permission. But there's no way to prevent a website that has your name and e-mail address from sending e-mails as you.
IANAL, but it's like having sex: it's perfectly okay if all participants are consenting adults, but without this important condition it's a felony.
From what I understand, the important part here is consent, and only lack of one makes it a criminal offense. I.e. the act of impersonating isn't a crime (on its own) - the act of doing so without consent is. Well, to be certain, I guess one should take penal code of the jurisdiction in question, find the article and check the exact wording used.
You will find that in each of your examples that there is a particular statute legalizing that activity in a particular state.
I repeat that I am not a lawyer so if this is important to you then hire a lawyer in your local jurisdiction to advise you, don't listen to random people on the internet.
In principle it sounds similar. The details do matter though. Did they provide reasonable explanation of what they were doing? Did they attempt to do this in secret? Did they misrepresent anything? Are they any laws saying a person cannot sign away liability for things like this?
Most tax preparers are liable for their own mistakes, but not for omitting anything you didn't tell them.