First Amendment Ruling Protects Internet Trolls 305
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A recent ruling by the Court of Appeal of the State of California (PDF) in Krinsky v. Doe H030767 overturned a lower court ruling and decided that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech protects internet trolls, too. Specifically, the ruling said that 'this juvenile name-calling cannot reasonably be read as stating actual facts.' And, even though some of the statements were crudely sexual and accused Ms. Krinsky of being among 'boobs, liars and crooks,' the statements were held to 'fall into the category of crude, satirical hyperbole which, while reflecting the immaturity of the speaker, constitute protected opinion under the First Amendment.'"
Re:Feck Yeah (Score:1, Informative)
But that doesn't necessarily have the collary that your IP address is private - it's only private if the server admins of the forum you post on *choose* not to say who has visited their site.
And of course, you never know when Slashdot might start selling troll's IP addresses as a service
AC.
*IANAL
Hurrah for the courts (Score:4, Informative)
"I may mod down what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."
-- Voltaire
This has not always been the land of the free. Remember Eugene V. Debs:
"June 16, 1918 -- Debs made his famous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. For this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law
(from here [eugenevdebs.com])
I hate to self-promote myself but.... (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=446180&cid=22344224 [slashdot.org]
So nyer! You're wrong again! Poopie head! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh dear God... (Score:5, Informative)
Not nearly to the extent that "overrated" is used though. Overrated is used to shout down people with unpopular stances by moderators who don't want negative meta-mods(since over/under rated is not meta-modded)
Re:Words=Noise, Writing=Squiggles (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Greatest Hits (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&cid=2850660 [slashdot.org]
Re:Words=Noise, Writing=Squiggles (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh dear God... (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes I'll find that the post has an insightful, interesting, or informative component, and will use that mod (which at least allows it to be metamodded, and follow the system,) but sometimes funny is the only appropriate mod... so I go underrated.
Re:Oh dear God... (Score:2, Informative)
I think when he referred to boobs he meant fools [wikipedia.org], not actual boobs. Saying someone was among breasts makes no sense, unless I have got the wrong end of the stick.
Re:To what extent? (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't just directed at you; a lot of people misunderstand the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are an enumeration and restriction on the powers of government. If you come on my lawn screaming advertisements at my window, I am fully within my rights to have the police issue you a trespass notice and escort you off. (Of course they could really only move the person to the sidewalk unless they tried to make it a disorderly conduct/disturbing the peace/noise violation, but still.)
Likewise, if you run a blog/website/forum, you're free to make whatever rules you want. If you want to restrict your website to only whites, it's impractacle as hell but you're free to try. If you want to ban anybody who says the word "dog," you're perfectly free to do so. I'm not sure that there is any legal action for you to take in any of these situations; even if they don't have the right to free speech on a private forum, that doesn't necessarily entitle you to legal recourse if they say something. You might try to push for some sort of unauthorized access charges or something if you ban them and they circumvent it, but that's pushing it. Restrictions yes, bans sure, legal action... questionable.
The exception is if you're a government agency or a pseudo-government agency (such as institutions that take federal money), like public schools--though in a way schools are a bad example because an entirely DIFFERENT and much more restrictive set of rules can be applied to public school students according to Supreme Court decisions. I seem to recall a court case where students wore black armbands to protest something, and administrators tried to punish them for it. The Court basically ruled that they weren't disrupting classes and it wasn't obscene, so it was a free speech issue. Aaanyway. Slightly more, these issues are beginning to apply to employers as well, but there's no really clear legal precedents that apply in all jurisdictions that I can think of. To use your examples, you're free to restrict speech on your private message boards or throw anybody you want out of your party as a private citizen.
This case isn't really an issue of restricting free speech, though. I didn't read the article, but it looks like it was a civil lawsuit claiming some combination of libel and maybe defamation of character. Libel is, of course, inherently NOT protected speech; I can't write an article about how Opportunist is a child molester and launch into a long story about how I saw you groping children on the sidewalk if it's not true. What the judges said is that the nature of what he said was a childish rant, which is immature but not libelous. For example, the child groping story would probably be libel; if I said "you're a stupid bastard, you bitch!" you can't sue me on the grounds that you weren't conceived out of wedlock, have a high IQ and aren't a female dog. In other words, that would make me an ass but not a liable for libel (I HAD to say that at least once); the ruling in this case, similarly, is that the speech did not rise to that level and thus could not be punished.
Re:Oh dear God... (Score:3, Informative)
When was the last time you volunteered to meta-moderate? If enough people meta-moderate unfair Troll moderations then the people who hand those out for opposing viewpoints become less likely to get points.