Unbefrickenlievable:
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1241122059.shtml
That’s what a House of Representatives bill, proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others, would do. Here’s the relevant text:
Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both….
[“Communication”] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; …
[“Electronic means”] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.
Someone who uses a blog, website, email, newsgroups, disccussion forum, whatever, to attempt to coerce (such as tryign to convince a politician to vote a certain way) would be committing a felony punishable by up to two years in prison.
The supposed intent of the bill is to clamp down on cyberbullying. But it’s written sufficiently vaguely that fascist online speech codes would be the result.
2 Responses to “Proposed bill to make free speech a felony”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I bet XKCD is more correct than I’d like to imagine (especially the Alt text):
http://xkcd.com/239/
The Internet is like the wild west days of old. It’s only a matter of time before it is “tamed”.
This is a dream of the political left, always has been. Control of information. Forget about “hate crimes” and “cyberbullying”, this is about managing what people can find out, learn, access, whatever label you choose. It comes down to control of information and its transfer between people.
Its time for hackers to turn towards this and thwart the left in their happy little Goatfuck for Humanity. And yes indeedy! Their is a large group on the right who would go along with this legislation, bet your bippy.
Control freaks and elitists are natural to the human race. We just need to put them in their place.