"More 'hate Crimes' Hostile bloggers facing fines, jail?"

[megimoo]

Hostile bloggers facing fines, jail?

two years in prison for those whose electronic speech is meant to 'coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress.'" "Instead of prison, perhaps we should say gulag".

1ST AMENDMENT ON TRIAL Proposal 'comes close to making it federal offense to log onto Internet'

A new proposal in Congress is threatening fines and jail time for what it calls "cyberbullying" – communications that include e-mails and text messages that "cause substantial emotional distress."

The vague generalities are included in H.R. 1966 by California Democrat Linda Sanchez and about a dozen co-sponsors. But it already is being condemned as unconstitutional, unrealistic and probably ineffectual.

At Wired.com, in a report labeled "Threat Level," writer David Kravets criticized the plan to demand "up to

Such limits never would pass First Amendment muster, "unless the U.S. Constitution was altered without us knowing," he wrote. "So Sanchez, and the 14 other lawmakers who signed on to the proposal are grandstanding to show the public they care about children and are opposed to cyberbullying."

The plan is labeled the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, after the 13-year-old Meier, whose suicide last year reportedly was prompted by a woman who utilized the MySpace social networking site to send the teen critical messages.

The defendant in the case, Lori Drew, was accused under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

"Sanchez's bill goes way beyond cyberbullying and comes close to making it a federal offense to log onto the Internet or use the telephone," Kravets wrote. "The methods of communication where hostile speech is banned include e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones and text messages."

"We can't say what we think of Sanchez's proposal," he said. "Doing so would clearly get us two years in solitary confinement."

Wrote a contributor to the Wired forum page, "If passed, this legislation could be easily abused with the effect of criminalizing all criticism. You probably [couldn't] even criticize the legislation itself because it would cause Sen. Sanchez emotional distress or possibly be considered a form of intimidation."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=97257

[Odysseus]

Hmmm.... Now who would this administration consider instigators of hostile speech?

[djones520]

Hmmm.... Now who would this administration consider instigators of hostile speech?

Certainly not the people who throw little parties everytime a Republican dies?

[jinxmchue]

A new proposal in Congress is threatening fines and jail time for what it calls "cyberbullying" – communications that include e-mails and text messages that "cause substantial emotional distress."

How much you want to bet that it will never or rarely be applied to liberals?

[Odysseus]

Certainly not the people who throw little parties everytime a Republican dies?

Nope. DU will get a free pass, as will KOS, Huffpo and a host of other moonbat breeding sites, but I'd recommend that we all start spoofing our IP addresses.

How much you want to bet that it will never or rarely be applied to liberals?

I'd bet never, rather than rarely. I have as yet to see a statement by a liberal that is heinous enough to offend other liberals, unless it's in support of a conservative.

[djones520]

Nope. DU will get a free pass, as will KOS, Huffpo and a host of other moonbat breeding sites, but I'd recommend that we all start spoofing our IP addresses.

I'd bet never, rather than rarely. I have as yet to see a statement by a liberal that is heinous enough to offend other liberals, unless it's in support of a conservative.

I have noticed some people at DU protesting some of the more ghastly posts over there. There are a few people there who have some grounding in reality.

[megimoo]

I have noticed some people at DU protesting some of the more ghastly posts over there. There are a few people there who have some grounding in reality.

It's just a passing thing .Any who would post on that board for any length of time by definition must be whacked out in some way .To each and every far outraged poster there is a certifiable mental illness .most are neuroses but some are psychosis and dangerous in close proximity !They rant and rage and make their little plans to get even with the man who is holding them back .They like Huff And Puff but aren't smart enough to post there so they stay in their little hidey hole at the dump !

[noonwitch]

The Megan Meier case is very sad, but I don't know if what Lori Drew did should be criminal, unless she violated specific clauses in her internet provider agreement and that company is prosecuting her for such. They don't need hate crimes legislation to do that, they have the evidence that she broke the agreement by doing what she did.


Lori Drew should be shunned by decent society, though. I remember a couple of kids in school whose mothers had no boundaries in their relationships with their children and their children's social lives. One lady would sit around and join in the gossip with her daughter and her daughter's friends-even at 16, I thought this was very disturbing behavior for a parent, who is supposed to be discouraging her child from gossiping to begin with.