U.S. Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers

wired.com

19 pointsmiked9 comments

The news story linked to in the article is worth a read, if you're not familiar with it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/prosecutors-seek-th...

Even though the jury did not find her guilty of the charges filed against her, they claim there's a legal precedent to sentence her anyway. The argument is that the jury's decision only means that there is "doubt" as to their guilt. But the constitution expressly says that someone has to be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" in order to be convicted (Ammendments V and XIV).

Both the prosecutors in that case and the proponents of this bill are on some very thin legal ice. As good as their explanation of why this bill is necessary to prevent cyber-bullying is, I fail to see the difference between the bill itself and Nazi Germany burning books. Blogging has become one of the most crucial forms of communication in our society.

I'm tired of these overwrwought comparisons. The legislation certainly needs work (which is the point of committee and congressional votes), but there is a qualitative difference between writing '(public figure) is a doofus!' and '(private individual) is an evil person who strangles kittens' and conducting a campaign of character assassination.

At present, one can leverage the internet for unfounded personal attacks to a far greater extent than the law provides remedies to defend against them. Our libel and slander laws are written for a simpler age where publication carried an implication of editorial control. You're probably not going to find civil remedies adequate if someone has already falsely identified you as a child molestor for the lulz, say.

You're right, but the solution is to fix the laws so that they are applicable to the Internet age. If the OP is right, this law would have the effect of removing the "beyond a reasonable doubt" clause, at least for these types of alleged crimes. You seriously don't want things to go that far because this would be far easier to misuse.

In the end, you have to decide whether not letting someone get away with libel is worth potentially putting innocent people in prison.

Aside from the substitution of editorial viewpoint for any actual reportage (eg, quoting some lawyers who specialize in first Amendment cases on what the implications might be), this article and others seems to depend on ignoring the first paragraph of the proposed legislation:

"(a) 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."

There are legal thresholds for intent and severity which would have to be met before any criminal case would stick. Everyone keeps focusing on the 'electronic means' as if the act of closing a circuit is the focus of the legislation, rather than a sustained campaign of personal attack which a jury would find intolerable.

Those bleating that Sanchez doesn't understand the internet seem to have an extremely poor grasp of the legislative process and the scope and history of the first amendment, which is not invalidated by any given piece of legislation.

>>which a jury would find intolerable.

My point in the other comment was that in the case this legislation is named after, the jury DID find it introlerable, and found the defendant not guilty. However, she was still convicted by a judge, due to arguments that directly contradict the Bill of Rights.

I agree that there's a big difference between true harassment / slander and your average blog, but they're taking way too much power with this legislation. If you think that problems like this don't backfire, I'd refer you to the legal history behind the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. The Commerce Clause of the constitution was used to argue that Congress couldn't make it illegal to take a gun into a public school. Yes, practically everybody agrees kids shouldn't take guns to school. So doesn't it scare you that lawyers and judges took such a broad interpretation to contradict the obvious, and it worked?

... because all the school shooting in recent years were done by upstanding adults carrying concealed weapons permits.

Banning guns in schools works, now we just need to tell the young psychopaths that they must take their violence elsewhere.

I enjoyed the point made at the bottom of the article about how the legislation itself is emotionally distressing to journalists and that the authors of the bill should be the first one's prosecuted under the new law, should it be adopted.

Sometimes I think you don't have to be very bright to be one of the most powerful people in the world.

>> with the intent to ... cause substantial emotional distress...

That's almost every satire ever written.

We already have laws that prevent libel. What changes just because it's published on a website rather than a newspaper or in, say, the collected works of Moliere?

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