
N.Y. Set to Criminalize Much “Verbal” “Abuse” of Under-18-Year-Olds Online - ayanai
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/09/ny-set-to-criminalize-much-verbal-abuse
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kartan
> "knowingly engage[] in a repeated course of cyberbullying of a minor."

How does it work for normal bullying? Why do we need a special law for "when
things happen online"?

It seems that the online world needs separate laws from the non-digital one.
This is nonsense.

Cyberbullying is just bullying on the internet. Do we have laws for phone-
bullying, letter-bullying...?

Discriminations, bullying and other forms of abuse are a social problem. We
need to solve the problem, not just try to hide it out of the public view that
is the Internet.

~~~
DanBC
> Do we have laws for phone-bullying, letter-bullying

Yes, the phone system and the postal system have their own set of laws.

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zaroth
I’ve seen exactly what this leads to in the UK, so I can only hope to hell our
1st amendment would prevent similar oppressive laws from standing in the
States.

Too bad for whoever has to foot the bill for challenging this dumpster fire
though.

~~~
pjc50
Such as?

~~~
zaroth
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571595)

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rhema
I don't think it's the State's job to shun individuals for poor social
behavior. If school administrators do not have the authority to kick bullies
out of school based on poor patterns of behavior, do they really need to
escalate to criminal offenses that put them in prison? Maybe we should keep
shunning criteria off the books when possible and let society establish its
norms like actual human beings.

~~~
jessedhillon
Citation needed for the idea that there was a golden age wherein healthy norms
were formed and communicated, without at least the implication of backing by
an authoritative enforcer. In what I know about such golden age references,
one or more was true:

\- deviants operated unacknowledged in shadows, \- society operated under the
idea that there was an acceptable class of victims, \- an in group either
openly or tacitly wielded the authority of the state

So I don't find the "why not let people solve their own problems at a societal
scale" as being a particularly well-informed critique.

~~~
rhema
>Citation needed for the idea that there was a golden age

I didn't mean to imply this. There never was and will never be a golden age of
people interacting, whether state or socially mandated.

I do think that person-to-person and community-to-community scales better than
state-sized laws in terms of choosing who gets rewarded and punished. The
problem is that laws are hard to write that capture emerging social norms. The
"no child left behind" act may have kept too many people in school (bullies
that these new laws are targeting). Giving teachers authority to throw out
trouble-makers seems like a better solution (for all parties) than outright
criminalizing deviant behavior.

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gravy
I wonder why it explicitly calls out "by threats, intimidation or abuse,
including cyberbullying" as the methods for causing physical or emotional
harm. In the cheating boyfriend example, why wouldn't the boyfriend be
considered a criminal for clearly creating emotional harm to the girl?

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jrs95
It seems like a stretch to think the N.Y. Senate is really stupid enough to
think this is good legislation. Which makes me wonder if some of the
unfortunate side effects are actually seen as a feature rather than a bug.

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s_kilk
Why is "abuse" in scare quotes?

~~~
colejohnson66
Probably because

> A 16-year-old girl is cheated on by her 17-year-old boyfriend. She's angry,
> so she sends several e-mails to her girlfriends disclosing this and calling
> him names. One of them forwards it to someone who then forwards it to the
> ex-boyfriend. The boyfriend feels humiliated. That's a crime on the girls'
> part: She engaged in "repeated" "verbal" "abuse" using "any form of
> electronic communication," and this "would reasonably be expected to cause
> ... emotional harm" to the ex-boyfriend, and makes him feel like school is a
> "hostile environment" (since everyone now knows his misconduct). The girl is
> a criminal.

Why is the girl the criminal and not the forwarders?

~~~
Bud
We don't actually know that the girl would be found to be a criminal. This is
a very carefully constructed test case by the author, designed to attack the
law.

~~~
finnthehuman
>This is a very carefully constructed test case by the author, designed to
attack the law.

As it should be in the context of discussing laws. If legislation can't stand
up to the light level of scrutiny that comes from spit-balling hypotheticals
to test for unintended consequences, then the law is poorly drafted.

