The Supreme Court is about to tackle online threats for the first time

[Ryou-kun]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/26/7292755/supreme-court-tackle-online-threats-elonis

Interesting.

What do you guys think?

In my opinion, I think it is a good idea because we can finally stop reading threats or death threats in general over the Internet.

[LAwLz]

This won't change anything, at all.

 

I am very worried about this because people are very easily butthurt on the Internet and takes things far too seriously.

 

a threat counts as a threat if a "reasonable person" would think the statement is a threat.

 

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to interpret things like sarcasm in text. On top of that you can easily take something out of context to make it appear worse than it actually is.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could spin Linus' harmless "#KilledMyWife" (or whatever it was) to look like a serious threat using that definition.

[Ren]

For those interested without wanting to click:

 

 

The government is arguing that it’s enough to use an objective standard, with an exception for "idle or careless talk, exaggeration, something said in a joking manner or an outburst of transitory anger." However, when it comes to the Internet, where context or tone may be more difficult to perceive, this objective standard has obvious drawbacks: is the "reasonable person" going to be a teenager who plays League of Legends or a grandfather posting on a fly fishing forum?

 

So it looks like the article understands where this could lead, as in what areas of the internet they should look at. I'm unsure if the Supreme Court does as well.. If you're going to do it, you should be targeting as many people as possible if you plan to eliminate false threats and help reduce the clutter of real ones, the aftermath of threats and hate speech, etc..

 

It says League of Legends, which I'm sure is a great example, but that and the other obvious places on the web are not where everything falls. Everywhere you go on the internet seems to have a few assholes occupying comment space or chat. There is a shitload of monitoring they'd have to do if they want to take this seriously enough for it to be effective. Otherwise, they're probably just going to hammer on social media and hope maybe they catch someone and I highly doubt that'll be more effective. And there are far more worries than that, even. I am not prepared for S. Korea or China-style monitoring of the internet by the United States. That will definitely make me leave.

 

 

 

This article has a bit of bullshit in it but I found it interesting enough to spark real discussions. I know for a fact that similar things happen every day. I've seen some fucked up things posted on the internet before and it doesn't surprise me that they'd wanna take something as seriously as they can when a League player states they'd shoot up a kindergarten or whatever the quote is..

Edit: DotA 2 master race.

[StingBull]

This can't end good. I fear the bullshit precedent it will set. Like this one:

" a threat counts as a threat if a "reasonable person" would think the statement is a threat "

You would think all those lawmen could come up with something better than this third grader logic.

[Ryou-kun]

For those interested without wanting to click:   So it looks like the article understands where this could lead, as in what areas of the internet they should look at. I'm unsure if the Supreme Court does as well.. If you're going to do it, you should be targeting as many people as possible if you plan to eliminate false threats and help reduce the clutter of real ones, the aftermath of threats and hate speech, etc.. It says League of Legends, which I'm sure is a great example, but that's not where everything falls. Everywhere you go on the internet seems to have a few assholes occupying comment space or chat. There is a shitload of monitoring they'd have to do if they want to take this seriously enough for it to be effective. Otherwise, they're probably just going to hammer on social media and hope maybe they catch someone and I highly doubt that'll be more effective. And there are far more worries than that, even. I am not prepared for S. Korea or China-style monitoring of the internet by the United States. That will definitely make me leave.   This article has a bit of bullshit in it but I found it interesting enough to spark real discussions. I know for a fact that similar things happen every day. I've seen some fucked up things posted on the internet before and it doesn't surprise me that they'd wanna take something as seriously as they can when a League player states they'd shoot up a kindergarten or whatever the quote is..

Hmm, they could "force" the admin or whoever to monitor the chat/message/post/whatever.

Because I feel like they aren't putting much work to it, I know it is Internet, and they can say whatever they want without getting the government involve.

However, there are always a limit on far they can say, I mean you can choose your own action, but you cannot choose your own consequence.

Either way, like you said, it could spark a discussion about it. It is important.

[Ryou-kun]

This won't change anything, at all.

 

I am very worried about this because people are very easily butthurt on the Internet and takes things far too seriously.

 

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to interpret things like sarcasm in text. On top of that you can easily take something out of context to make it appear worse than it actually is.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could spin Linus' harmless "#KilledMyWife" (or whatever it was) to look like a serious threat using that definition.

That is true. I forgot about it. This is the internet, so it is difficult to distinguish between a sarcasm and an actual threat, however, it might send a message to people not to use threats where anyone can interpret different what they said.

[Ren]

They don't know what actually happens on the internet, in my opinion. They might hear about it but they haven't experienced it. This means they can make snap judgements and poor calls based on what they see at a glance. One could argue that there's a degree of tempering involved with it where you get used to the behavior, and I'm sure people would say that means a person is more accepting of it (wrong). But there's another side to it. You end up seeing how common it is and how empty many threats are. You stop caring (as much) about them after a certain point.

It kind of lumps a lot of the honest, dangerous ones along with it. Yet the way I'm looking at this is either it'll be as effective as current measures or they'll have to go so far out of their way to do something that it'll be extremely bad for most people. It's not the right solution, no solution is when you're going to treat 99.9999% of the safe shit the same way you would that 0.0001%.

[Techhog]

This won't change anything, at all.

 

I am very worried about this because people are very easily butthurt on the Internet and takes things far too seriously.

 

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to interpret things like sarcasm in text. On top of that you can easily take something out of context to make it appear worse than it actually is.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could spin Linus' harmless "#KilledMyWife" (or whatever it was) to look like a serious threat using that definition.

This is the exact same language used to define sexual harassment. This simply cannot end well.

[Misanthrope]

It’s a timely case, coinciding with increased attention around the online harassment of women—from Caroline Criado-Perez to Zoë Quinn and the other women targeted by Gamergate.

[That Norwegian Guy]

I thought this would be about the DDoSing basement ameoba and self-proclaimed vigilante scumstains.

[Toddwjp]

i think it would be better if we could define what a reasonable threat is.

[JAKEBAB]

K clearly they have never heard australians play xbox lol

[Ryou-kun]

i think it would be better if we could define what a reasonable threat is.

Hmm, for me, I think is using death threats.

 

K clearly they have never heard australians play xbox lol 

 

 

Hmm, I think it implied to post like FB/Twitter/YouTube comments/etc rather chats/talking craps over the mic.

[mr moose]

I don't really see how it would be any harder to determine level of guilt from txt than from a victims word.  In both case we don't have visual or auditory cues to interpret. 

 

Also when the Law refers to a "reasonable person" it usually means how something is interpreted by a person without  a bias or specific intelligence/knowledge level. 

[Toddwjp]

Hmm, for me, I think is using death threats.

 

 

by reasonable i mean likely to be carried out or attempted. because if some kid tell you he's going to kill you and sleep with your mother over voice coms you are inclined to treat it like they said nothing. meanwhile if your neighbour buys a new rifle and post pictures to there face book using a photo of you as target practice and says your next at the bottom. your probably going to take it seriously.

[The_Strict_Nein]

The Man on the Clapham Omnibus has no idea of the intricacies of some communities and certain phrases amongst them. For instance, saying "I'm gonna kill you" in a shooter is 99.99999999% of the time going to mean kill them in the game. But if said aggressively enough, would a normal person know?

[AlwaysFSX]

This should be given up on as the government is slow as fuck in paperwork and this would create piles if they took it seriously.

[LePawel]

Let's try fighting something that changes faster than getting a single legislation through.Great idea, bright minds in government with butthurt kids that got their mammas fucked in the ass in Call of Duty was probably the source of this crap.

No thank you, try doing something important. If you are to consider every death threat on the internet, you'll get more cases than citizens in a country within months.

[Bmanj]

I think this would force people to think before posting stupid things on the internet but our courts will be flooded with messages that weren't meant to be taken seriously while more important cases are forced to take a back seat. There needs to be some reasonable danger before you can press charges.