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Underground > Switchboard >

Prosecuting Trolls

Keith, like a scientist

20:40 / 09.01.06

Maybe this is more relevant in Policy, but our friend Bush has made it possible to take legal action against all the Barbe-trolls.

21:43 / 09.01.06

From the linked article:
Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

That's pretty sweeping. I mean, what percentage of the internet just got made illegal?

21:47 / 09.01.06

Tell that to my Itunes Music Library.

01:09 / 10.01.06

*waits expectantly for US posters to 'unsuit' themselves*

04:19 / 10.01.06

The jig is up, guys. My name is Laura Bush and I have a drinking problem.

22:03 / 10.01.06

a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages.

Well. Goodbye AICN TalkBackers

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:16 / 11.01.06

Define "annoyance." Then when you've done that, go and look up "First Amendment."

Fucking hell.

11:52 / 11.01.06

Laura! I love you! I've always loved you! I...

Maybe this isn't the right place.

Keith, like a scientist

12:26 / 11.01.06

Define "annoyance." Then when you've done that, go and look up "First Amendment."

From a Barbelith poster, who has probably witnessed or heard about some of the more extreme trolls to plague the board, this comes as a shock to me. A troll on the internet isn't much different than a stalker IRL. Someone who is maliciously out to make your life, cyber or not, more difficult and stressful, someone whom you feel is potentially dangerous. People aren't protected from restraining orders by the First Amendment.

That said, this does seem a bit extreme. I think there is a place for more regulation of conduct, but prosecution is a bit overboard.

Tryphena Absent

12:58 / 11.01.06

This is more about legal terms Keith. For instance I find the fact that you haven't worked out that the term annoyance is a bad definition of experience with trolls or online. Thus I find you annoying. Thus I could potentially prosecute you in the States.

Keith, like a scientist

13:19 / 11.01.06

Maybe we should look at what the law actually says:

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

I agree that "annoy" is a vague word to use here, but "abuse, threaten, or harass any person" is quite clear, yes?

The idea here of protecting citizens from harassment is good, but the language does mistakenly include an incredibly vague word like "annoy." I am quick to be skeptical of anything the current administration does (I can't even watch Bush broadcasts because I can't feeling the guy is lying with every word), but this doesn't seem like an oppressive and evil action by the government. I certainly don't feel like my First Amendment rights are threatened in any way.

13:32 / 11.01.06

I agree that "annoy" is a vague word to use here, but "abuse, threaten, or harass any person" is quite clear, yes?

"Intent" isn't, the perennial problem with non-telepathically defining trolling behaviour.

13:49 / 11.01.06

Also from the linked article -

There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."

Why on Earth did they change it include "annoying" people? One problem with Internet-related legislation, it seems to me, is that the people who write these things up clearly don't use the Internet.

And of course -

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

Could this not be made illegal somehow?

13:52 / 11.01.06

"Intent" is a big part of our legal system, though. Juries do a lot of work trying to determine "intent".

It looks like they tried to base this on existing stalking and harassment laws, and it might work in concert with those - so if someone is being stalked, this would allow for any threatening or harassing online messages to be used as evidence, perhaps?

But legislating the Internet really isn't going to work very well, I'm afraid. How do you even determine jurisdiction? Are only U.S. citizens subject to this? Can people outside the U.S. be prosecuted under this law if they're using a U.S.-hosted site or e-mail address, or harassing U.S. citizens? What if the site or e-mail address is hosted out of the country?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:48 / 11.01.06

From a Barbelith poster, who has probably witnessed or heard about some of the more extreme trolls to plague the board, this comes as a shock to me.

Witnessed, heard about, got sick to the back teeth of. I'm not trying to minimise the kind of harm that a determined/psychotic individual can do via the net.

However, I dispute the motives behind this piece of legislation. At best it is singularly poorly worded; at worst, the appallingly vague term "annoy" could be used as a loophole to prosecute pretty much anyone. I'm sure that a lot of political and corporate figures would be rubbing their hands with glee at the chance to prosecute anonymous individuals for annoying them.

18:33 / 13.01.06

Actually all this does is clarify in the code a situation that has already been clarified and upheld in the courts since 1996. It just updates the technology definitions so people who break the existing law don't use, for example, VOIP services as a loophole to get around it. The rest of it was already in the existing law (including the word "annoy," which is part of the intent clause not annoyance on the part of the recipient, and the identity provision, which is one of three provisions.)

Still, I do think Congress should be required to actually READ everything they vote on, and take a test to prove they read the whole thing! While I don't agree that in this case the amendment was unrelated or slipped in, it does happen a lot. Attaching the RAVE Act to the Amber Alert bill (and therefore passing it) is one example of a case where the attachment had no relation to the bill being voted on and had it stood alone it would not have passed.

03:05 / 14.01.06

They want me bad. Are you annoyed yet?