Joanna Schroeder hates trolls as much as the next online magazine editor, but thinks the new bill before Arizona’s governor goes too far.
As much as I love the idea of slapping a lawsuit upon some of the a-holes trolling around the web, this is a little scary.
Arizona House Bill 2549 passed both legislative houses last Thursday and is now awaiting approval from Arizona’s governor Brewer. The statute states that:
“It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a 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.”[emphasis added]
Emphasis added. If the electronic devices and means are employed to stalk a victim, the penalty bumps up to a Class 3 felony.
For those not intimately familiar with Arizona penal law, a Class 1 misdemeanor is punishable by a $250,000 fine and up to six months in jail (it’s the most aggressive misdemeanor charge the state can bring). A Class 3 felony, meanwhile, carries a minimum sentence of 2.5 years for non-dangerous offenders with no prior record. And a max of 25 years in jail.
Just yesterday I was fascinated by an article on Kotaku.com by Tim Rogers, who is the founder and director of Action Button Entertainment, which creates video games. He writes about the unbelievably stupid, hurtful, and pointless hate mail (nine out of ten comments are hate-filled) he gets every day on his YouTube videos:
I delete hateful comments from my YouTube videos. If I don’t, people who like me will start to defend me. Then people who don’t like me will start to accuse the people who like me of actuallybeing me posting from an alternate account. Like I have time for that.
Here are the things people complain about in their hate comments:
- My Glasses: “I bet you don’t even need those glasses” is the most common—and most bewildering—form of the comment.
- My American Apparel clothing: “Fuck off back to American Apparel” was one I deleted just two hours ago.
- My hair: it is often simply described as “horrible” and “ugly”. It is just as often described as “stupid”.
- My voice: it is often described as “dumb”, “stupid”, or “gay”.
- My mustache: it was described as a “hipster mustache”, a “Dirty Sanchez” (what an idiotic euphemism), a “pube stache”, a “molestache”, or simply “gay”.
- My pink sweater.
We’ve been really lucky here at GMP that while we have our very opinionated, less-than-nuanced, somewhat graceless, sometimes completely just wrong commenters from time-to-time, we don’t get a whole ton of this type of trolling. And man, are we grateful or that.
But even if I did start to see more trolling here, I cannot imagine that a $250,000 fine or up to 25 years in jail is even remotely appropriate for someone repeatedly telling me I have “lesbian hair” (heard that, makes no sense, but thanks anyway?) or that I’m a man-hater (I’m obviously not, so that hurt a little). However, in the case of bullying and hate-speech online in cases like Tyler Clementi, who killed himself after his roommate secretly filmed and distributed footage of Clementi during a romantic encounter with another man, you can start to see where extremely legislation is coming from… But the impact upon free speech is just too big of a price to pay.
What do you guys think? Should trolling be illegal? Should online bullying hold a much harsher penalty?
Do you think the governor of Arizona will sign said bill?
Image courtesy of Benimoto
This is NOT a free speech issue. Threats of violence are not covered by free speech while imbecilic speech is. “Annoy and offend” is too broad and benign but the rest of the bill has merit.
Personally, I think the anonymity of the web has brought out the worst in too many people which has resulted in the comment section of nearly every major website to become a running joke. Why bother including them when they are so overrun with whining trolls with nothing to offer?
“As much as I love the idea of slapping a lawsuit upon some of the a-holes trolling around the web” I think you Americans are too much in love with lawsuits… 😕 You seem too prone to sue everyone and everything (not referring to you, Joanna, but to USA on average), just because it gets on your nerves – or it gets you some money. I mean, are we going to make the world a big tribunal? C’mon!!! You can’t get rid of stupidity by law. Also because everybody can be stupid sometimes. 🙄 The idea of policing everything is… Read more »
I really don’t think uncomplimentary comments about the guy’s glasses or hair is that big a problem. Even if some anonymous idiot rages out a death threat… are we really going to be taking trolls that seriously now? As the holder of a youtube channel he has the option to remove commenting from his videos or just delete the ones he doesn’t like. Most blogging services offer similar options. I make these arguments on the basis that a death threat delivered as a letter to someone’s house is completely different from shouting “I’ll kill you” at someone. And shouting “I’ll… Read more »
*sorry 25 years.
My childhood best friend’s murderer got 10 years. Yup. 10 frickin’ years.
“while we have our very opinionated, less-than-nuanced, somewhat graceless, sometimes completely just wrong commenters from time-to-time,”
– ahwww, that’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about…(now ya’ll gonna make me blush)
Any how, What does this tell you about the Arizona Legislature other then confirming that they are just a bunch of megalomaniacal authoritarian D-Bags .
It doesn’t even matter anymore if you are an illegal immigrant a minority, a pregnant women or an Internet troll. They will find a law that’ll put their boot on your neck.
I’d leave the big fine for cyber-bullying that results in major problems for the victim. The odd bit of trolling should cop something like community service, put them to good use and have them help out those in need to try grow some damn compassion in them.
I like trolls. I have found that a large percentage of the time trolls are just people that have a viewpoint that diverges sharply from the majority of commenters. There seems to be some notion of efficiency in these discussions. I think people think “if we could only get rid of these pesky trolls we could move the discussion forward”.
I feel like the most heinous parts of this law wouldn’t stand up to a first amendment challenge.
The parts that would stand up are probably already illegal…
I’m just not sure it would have a real impact as a result.
Wowsers. Does eveything I say get moderated?
I should stay out of sunlight as I seem be rather like a Tolkienish Troll.
What happened? I’m not seeing anything in mod?
Hey, it’s Lisa publisher. It’s nothing personal, Wet One. We’ve had a surge in traffic, a corresponding surge in comments, and a corresponding percentage of those are potentially inflammmatory comments we want to keep an eye on. So we’ve upped the moderation trigger words. But know that I, personally, love your comments!
Meh. Given that drive by racism and formenting hatred and oppression of a person or group of persons because of any characteristic is completely legal in the U.S., I don’t see how exactly this law will be found constitutional. The best way to defeat trolls is to ignore them. Threats of criminal acts are presumeably already covered under the law (but your laws are kinda whacked out down there, so who knows?) and should cover such threats. As for true trolling (which are distinct from death threats or threatening to burn down someone’s house, though putting up burning crosses on… Read more »
Burning a cross on someone’s lawn is legal? Are you kidding? It’s a hate crime and against the law.
This bill is ridiculous and indefensible. There is far too much that can be interpreted any which way.
For example, anyone could send a text message, email, or post a comment that could potentially “offend” someone. If someone uses a curse word for emphasis, would they have to pay $250,000 having violated the “profane language” clause? If a husband sends his wife a steamy text or email, is he in violation of the lewd, obscene, or lacivious language?
Were this to pass as-is, a very large percentage of people would quickly be fined and jailed for six months.
Having read the text of the bill, I think it’s mostly good as it targets people who threaten or stalk online. This is basically taking something that was illegal to do by phone and saying “you can’t do this online either.” However, that being said, if they removed “annoy or offend” from the bill’s text, it would probably clarify it and make it more acceptable.
I agree with the intent of the bill (not sure of spill over and unintended consequences though) as comment sections have become a joke and threats are commonplace. Because I have an distinctive name, I won’t comment publicly on sites where real names have to be used for fear of what happened to my workmate. If you think it’s all web related, guess again. A few years ago, when Obama was running for President, a local workmate had a letter to the editor published in our city’s paper about Obama, which supported his campaign. My friend has a very common… Read more »