Arizona Looks to Outlaw Internet Trolling

Haha, yes, that is standard practice for many people in anonymous fora.

Regardless, the philosophy behind bills like this is inane. Hate speech is already illegal, and speech which is deemed harmful to others (such as threats online) is considered hate speech. Legislation targeted at further outlawing behaviors which are already under existing laws will erode our civil liberties.

I doubt this will be written into law, but this is still scary.

Also, I think most of the people I know are contradictions to the statement "No one likes a troll".

The thing is, it's pretty damned hard to prove intent in many, if not most, use cases on the internet. And I fear that this law, as written, gives the offended the power to define the "intent" of the alleged offender.

Sure, it's pretty easy to deduce intent if you can find an obvious pattern of repeated attempts to bully or harass someone. But rarely are circumstances so cut-and-dried. And for areas like message boards, comments sections, blog posts, and other open fora, who's to say what someone's intent was? I might write a blog post that's critical of a person or an organization, and that person or organization may get "annoyed" with the post. Does their annoyance, therefore, retroactively define my intent as malicious? Or was I simply exercising my 1st Amendment right to criticize? What a dangerous path we wander when we allow the delicacy of people's sensibilities to define the intent of our words.

I'm no lawyer, but I would imagine that the letter of this law is pretty indefensible on Constitutional grounds.

I've been on this planet for a bit over four decades. Much of that time, I've spent in backwaters in the unusual position of being what one might term as an ultra-minority of one type or another. (In ratios of 1 to 1000 or more.)

One thing my unusual perspective has brought me to is this idea: That not being f(cked with is a fundamental human right. Sex between consensual adults can be a great and wonderful thing. Make that less than consensual, and it's not so wonderful any more. Likewise kidding around can be good, innocent fun. Make it non-consensual, and it becomes something negatively sadistic. In other words, the fundamental factor of cruelty in rape is the coercive and non-consensual nature of it, not the involvement of genitalia.

One might respond to this by saying: well, if you don't like it, don't go on the Internet. Unfortunately, the Internet has become something of a public space, in the same way that the sidewalk or a cafe or restaurant is a public space, private ownership notwithstanding.

So the question you have to ask yourself is this: are you >imposing< yourself on people in a way incompatible with their expectations? Are you misrepresenting yourself to accomplish this? Do you convince yourself that your targets somehow deserve this treatment? (Even more so if you have an ideology to help justify this.) Do you think the genuine hurt feelings of people who did not consent to your treatment is somehow wonderful and fun?

I'm not against anyone's fun. I'm only against non-consensual activity. If you're not smart enough to find a crowd with compatible expectations, then I posit that you're not smart enough to gamble with social norms through trolling in a way which has any value. If successfully misrepresenting yourself and hurting the feelings of others outside of their expectations is required for your brand of "fun" then you've been fooling yourself about what you're doing.

People will focus on the "with intent to.. annoy or offend" part but over look the part about "use any obscene...language, or threaten". One could easily spin this into "AZ is going to outlaw being annoying on the internet" but I don't think that is the intent here. I don't think they are trying to ban "being annoying" but rather "the use of obscene language and threats with intent to be annoying". As I read that, you can be as annoying as you want as long as you keep your language clean and don't threaten anyone.

That being said, I'd agree that the bill is too broad and open for misuse. Any time you base things off of subjective terms like "annoy", "offend" or "obscene" it just makes it bad. People are offended by all sorts of stuff that others find humorous. The court has also had a hard time defining what is "obscene" so that makes it particularly problematic.

Edit: TL/DR - Perhaps I should be more clear... I do think this is a ridiculous bill.

Governments don't operate by the third law of robotics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) so perhaps it's possible for this law to take effect and for it to instantly outlaw themselves. Sweet!

The state truly does have a "prison complex", it has a huge law enforcement culture and they are looking for bodies to put in prison as it makes the state money and this may just be another one of their sick attempts to have another way to put people in jail. Seeing something like this is getting me all worked up, I truly hate that place with a passion

Most of these are standard clauses in many ISP TOS.

> It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass,

That bit seems okay.

> annoy or offend,

That bit is too vague.

> to use ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language*

This, in combination with the 'intent' section above is okay.

> or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.

I'm gently surprised that this last bit isn't already covered by existing law.

I'm not sure how many days the Arizona house is in session but they should take a page from the US House and take a major portion of the year off. If this is what they choose to spend their time on do we really need them to show up for work? Hell, I'd be happy to have my taxes to toward their vacations if it kept them from coming up with these ludicrous bills.