Internet Harassment Law - When Bad Facts Create Bad Law
In response to a 13-year-old girl killing herself after being harassed online, a Missouri city has passed a law that makes it a crime to engage in online harassment. For the law to apply, one of the people communicating must be within city limits.
You can sympathize with what happened to the poor girl yet still oppose this law because it is the wrong solution to cyber-harassment.
Why?
Constitutional free speech will be suppressed if you have to worry about what every small city, town, or village passes that could affect what you write simply because the recipient happens to be within the jurisdiction of municipality that passed the law. Neither the U.S. Constitution nor state constitutions contain a right not to be offended. And what if you happen to ‘victimize’ a customer by e-mailing an unfriendly reminder that payment is overdue? Have you violated a local ordinance by doing so? There are interstate commerce implications in addition to the free speech issues.
Well, what about the girl?
If her parents have a remedy under civil law, they should pursue it.
If it is in the interest of the state or the federal government to enact legislation that includes constitutional protections, that’s an option too.
But having municipalities do so makes as little sense as regulating silly walks.
In this case, the city’s new law isn’t “for the children.” It is raw political opportunism capitalizing on the death of a minor. Now THAT should be a crime.
About the Author
With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of "Internet Marketing
Legal Secrets Revealed," "How to Create Your Own Internet Business Without a Lawyer for Under $175," and the creator of Website
Legal Forms GeneratorTM. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.
mike | Oct 24, 2008 | Reply
I do not know about you, but i feel differnt about this. If a person were to keep going to places you go and make comments about you or always be there to put you down or threating you. in a public place like a mall or something that would be considered harrassment right. With it internet it can be the same. Someone comes into a chat room just to always make fun of and insult you. Posting pics on websites writing derogatory or other wise inflamatory comments that are ment to hurt and cause pain emtoinaly or phyicly is what the law is trying to stop. Words can hurt just as much as a knife or punch. the laws are not ment to stop bill collecters or hinder them. they are ment to stop a perveruson on the first amendment. if someone is beat on all the time by someone even if just words. if it is not stoped it can and in many case have gone to much worse things such as suicide or even homicide. Even a mouse will attack if it has no way out, and to many that may seem like an option. so to prevent further crimes it should be passed.