

Arizona Looks to Outlaw Internet Trolling - hornokplease
http://techland.time.com/2012/04/03/arizona-looks-to-outlaw-internet-trolling/

======
nextstep
_...standard Internet practice of acting like a jerk in the comments section
of a blog post_

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.

~~~
Dylan16807
Hate speech is not illegal.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States>

As long as it's impersonal, you can say whatever horrible things you want
about classes of people.

~~~
nextstep
Oh, I did not realize that. I guess it's only illegal when directed toward
someone as a threat.

------
acuity12
Do our politicians really have so little to do that they feel the need to
restrict our first amendment instead of dealing with more pertinent issues?

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

------
consultutah
Finally, a state taking on the serious problem of internet trolling! Hopefully
now we can move on to less important issues, like the economy, immigration,
and healthcare.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's okay, Arizona has already illegalized illegals.

If they'd only thought to illegalize illegal behavior, they'd have solved all
problems forever.

------
jonnathanson
The use of vague words like "offend" or "annoy" isn't the only thing that's
disconcerting here. The focus on "intent" should also give us pause.

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.

~~~
sp332
_Intent_ is a well-established legal idea. E.g. "mens rea"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea> And it strongly favors the defendant,
because in US criminal court, the burden of proof is always on the
prosecution. There must be evidence presented in court to convince a jury
"beyond reasonable doubt" that intent existed.

~~~
jonnathanson
I understand that much, but my point is that in so many internet cases, intent
seems pretty much impossible even to _establish_ , let alone sufficiently
prove.

So maybe that places an insurmountable burden on would-be prosecutors, then,
and we're actually left with a law that's almost impossible to practice in
many cases? I'm not sure. Like I said, not a lawyer.

------
stcredzero
(tldr; not being f(cked with is a fundamental human right)

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.

------
jack-r-abbit
It says: _It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate,
threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and
use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious
act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any
person._

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.

~~~
Dylan16807
Sure, you can be as annoying as you want as long as you don't use the word
'fuck'. What kind of ridiculous standard is that? This law is extremely poorly
written.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I think we agree here. I just believe their intent is not as ominous as others
are making it out to be. But it is still a ridiculous bit of writing.

Edit: also I find your use of the "F" word to be offensive and annoying and it
makes me feel threatened. I DO hope you don't live in AZ. LOL

------
briandoll
This might be awesome. Arizona's discrimination laws are offensive and
annoying. Their own government are essentially trolls to society.

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!

------
devs1010
Also, just want to point out, in Arizona, for most misdemeanors, you have no
right to a jury trial, I didn't read up enough on this to know whether it
would be a felony / misdemeanor, etc (or if it could be either), but its
something to also be aware of, I have lived in Arizona and seen their legal
system firsthand and its a pathetic joke, it has to be one of the worst in the
U.S., certainly for a state that has a major metro area.. if you get charged
with a misdemeanor, your options are 1) bench trial in front of some corrupt
judge (about 80% chance of conviction) 2) plea deal. Someone needs to stop the
nutjobs out there, I am all for the federal government stepping in, in cases
like this, where they are essentially trying to massively violate people's
civil rights.

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

------
DanBC
> _It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate,
> threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE
> and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or
> lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or
> property of any person._

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.

------
hhastings
Last time I was in Arizona, I was pulled over for being a "potentially
undocumented alien". I have red hair and pale skin. Next time I'm visiting my
parents, I'll be pulled over and arrested because I made a bad joke online.
Arizona, you're pathetic.

~~~
paulmooring
I live in Arizona and I've been pulled over on immigration check before. I
would guess you were stopped because of your pale skin and red hair, the more
non-hispanic people they stop the easier it is to claim racial profiling is
not part of the sweeps.

------
dustinupdyke
Legislating should be like coding in that being able to delete lines of code
is huge win.

------
joejohnson
Arizona and Florida are out of touch with effective legislation for modern
issues. Laws like these (with broadly worded clauses) are either
unenforceable, or only enforced through (illegal) targeting of potential
suspects.

~~~
devs1010
I am extremely glad to have gotten out of Arizona, I made the mistake of
moving there for two years and literally put everything I had into being able
to move out of there. The only way I can really describe the state is
"assbackwards", I'm sorry to anyone who still lives there but there is just
something off about the place as far as the way the police, other government
officials and elected people there act, they are trying to make their own
little fiefdom out in the desert and "to hell" with the rest of the U.S. and
its laws, rights, etc

------
excerionsforte
Good luck with that. Up to 25 years in jail for that? Absurd.

------
billpatrianakos
Let's just legislate _everything_! When you have a group of people whose job
it is to legislate and they work a good portion of the year, eventually those
people will create a law to govern everything including which finger you're
allowed to pick your nose with.

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.

~~~
mindslight
This phenomenon applied to the Internet is especially egregious. The Internet
has happily existed for decades with very little fiat law. Facebook hires a
good PR firm to spin Eternal September as a good thing, the self-entitled
masses show up with no concern for how this world might be different, and
every sad-sack politician is suddenly looking to solve non-problems to appear
hip and relevant.

Number One rule of the Internet: If what's being said affects you in a
negative way, _stop listening_ (this applies from OSI L2 on up). If you cannot
handle this responsibility, please leave.

~~~
DanBC
> _Number One rule of the Internet: If you don't like what's being said, stop
> listening_

That's fine. I agree.

What happens if AA says to BB "I know where you live, and I'm going to fucking
kill you"?

And if AA puts BB in a filter, and stops listening, and so BB morphs to BC and
keeps writing. And then socks to BD, BE, BF and BG, and finds all relevant
social media that AA is on, and posts anti-$MINORITY screeds, with credible
threats of violence?

~~~
mindslight
I'd say there are many ways to take action and solve this while still using
social media (after figuring out where on the vendetta...robot scale they
fall) - filters, moderation, ban public comments, inform authorities in case
anything actually happens, etc.

Fundamental point being, if you can't solve unwanted communication to your
satisfaction using the available tools for social media, including the various
web sites' policies and processes that have been developed to deal with such
phenomena, _stop using those particular sites_. If a technology fails to
provide all the capabilities you'd like, that doesn't give you a right to
demand changing the underlying philosophy.

(Sorry, I changed my quote a bit because one can (and should) read things they
"don't like", it's when one is looking to forcibly silence others' speech that
they become the problem.)

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silentscope
I thought april fools was over...

------
sheraz
Well, it is about time that someone took a stand against those who would turn
the internet into a cesspool of humanity. With the help of Mr. Lamar Smith
from Texas and his SOPA legislation we can finally clean up the internet.

~~~
sheraz
And here come the down votes. Neither sarcasm nor dissenting opinions nor
thinly veiled attempts at humor (trolling) are welcome on HN.

