Redstate

Key phrase: "AND serves no purpose of legitimate communication."

That covers a lot of ground. If you post something like death-threats, you should be jailed. I believe that calling this man a "Bugger-eater" could get you canned for LIBEL anyhow(unless you can prove that he does, in fact, eat buggers. good luck.)

Good writers should always tread carefully.

"Any love letter is incomplete without a Ronald Reagan quote"
--my sophomore year roommate

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Perhaps you would like to deal with folks who have their email inbox filled up with invective, from someone who serializes yahoo or hotmail accounts. Or perhaps someone who tracks down your Myspace page and posts the link on all sorts of sites you wouldn't be caught dead on. I can stop your ex-girlfriend from sending you text messages with probation and a no contact order, but email, at this point, is up to interpretation. Myspace or other popular personal blogs, even more so.

If you don't like KRS 525.080, fine. But when it comes to direct communication to someone, whether it be by telephone, mail, or internet, I think it both logical and jurisprudentially sound to treat it in the same fashion. Just because it says internet doesn't mean the Commonwealth does not need to prove intent. And the end component of the statute, "no purpose of legitimate communication," is important there, sparky.

To say this could be extended to ordinary blogging, particular your rather inelegant booger comment, smacks of paranoia. Or opportunism, perhaps.

But when it comes to direct communication to someone ..

That's not what the linked-to bill says. It never mentions direct communication at all. As written, anyone who takes offense at what anyone else says, whether it's a blog, a Usenet post, an IRC chat session, or what have you, could file charges under this new bill.

And what kind of 'no contact' order would disallow everything *but* direct email? Your strawman is falling down.

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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

is solely by email, I may not have a case to begin with, and no ability to prosecute Thus, if your ex-girlfriend is just bombarding you with emails, I have to rely on "any other form of written communication" contained in the statute as it exists. This has already been called into question by my specific jurisdiction, and is undoubtedly a problem elsewhere in Kentucky.

This isn't an academic exercise for me, Finrod. I actually have a few cases that fit the description.

The end of the LRC commentary states "KRS 525.080 may be difficult to enforce but is necessary in order to ensure the active cooperation of communications companies in preventing the misuse of these facilities." I agree wholeheartedly with the concept that it's hard to enforce. But again, if the objection is to the law as a whole, that's one thing. Arguing that it shouldn't be extended to the internet (with of course, a targeted legislator to villainize) is inconsistent, not to mention unfair.

The problem I have with the law as proposed is that it throws not only the baby out with the bathwater, but the house, neighborhood, and most of the town as well. Few people would want to allow someone to harass someone else over the Internet, but the staggering breadth of this law criminalizes a heckuva lot more conduct than just that. It's not good enough to justify a new law to say that it outlaws something that needs outlawing; it also needs to not have the potentially colossal and drastic side-effects that this law would have.

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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

Because I see I need to have "communication with a person," not about a person, and that it serves "no purpose of legitimate communication." How much narrowing necessary from there, if an affirmative defense is to simply show any legitimate purpose?

What would happen if a blog was actually prosecuted under this statute? Nothing. I do not see the potential for abuse you envision, unless political satire and commentary have no legitimate purpose. Give me an example where you predict this will be abused.

Is it a problem with the law as it stands or only for the addition of the internet the device which conveys the communication?

The phrase 'no purpose of legitimate communication' to me means that if some prosecutor doesn't like what I'm saying, and finds someone to take offense at it, then they can file charges against me. The phrase 'communication with a person' doesn't as far as I can see restrict someone reading a blogpost, being offended by it, and trying to shut it down; there's nothing in there that I can see that even says that the person being communicated with has to even be the same person that's being annoyed. And since most blogs aren't restricted as to their readership, even if my previous sentence doesn't hold up, I can easily see a prosecutor making the argument that since everyone could read the blog, the person offended was being communicated with, so the law still applies.

As an example, take the BDSM community; I can easily see some rural judge deciding that discussion of how to wield a singletail serves 'no purpose of legitimate communication' and bringing down the boom on a blog discussing same.

And for 'What would happen if a blog was actually prosecuted under this statute?'-- all it takes is for charges to be filed with malicious intent, and some poor blogger somewhere could be bankrupted by legal fees by some DA that doesn't like them, without the case ever going to court.

Presumption of free speech is a very important principle here in the US; any proposed restriction of it needs to be as limited and specific as possible. This law does not meet that standard.

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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

What's that quote the dems are always tossing about regarding measures for capturing terrorists?

Oh yes, "Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither"

Who knew that only mattered with regard to small matters like national security? Sacrificing liberty for your inbox security, well that's a different story eh? Let's not surveil potential murderers but, hey, if a few bloggers have to go down to protect you from email "invective" well, c'est la vie.

absentee

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Because 1) I dig Redstate and 2) I'm a prosecutor in a purplish-red state.

Bottom line is that it's an intent based crime and I would find it hard to imagine a successful prosecution based blog activities. Would seem pretty easy to show other legitimate purpose. But reasonable people differ - which is why we have legislatures....and blogs to argue about whether they are acting correctly, of course.

absentee

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....using "Reply to This," you'll become the first diarist banned in the same blog that was promoted to the front page.

Seriously: Use. Reply. To. This.

Thank you sir! May I have another?

So how would you tailor it? And would you reverse engineer your tailoring to apply to other forms of communication?

Truly, this law is not used that often. The reason why HB 281 caught my eye was because I just finished with 525.080 case off a citizen complaint. One of maybe three times in the past year and a half.

...and focus on the intent to do harm.

I think working on a bill to protect children who are being abused by an adult or tormented by other children is worthwhile.

To say "communicates with a person by any form of communication which causes annoyance or alarm and serves no purpose of legitimate communication and is intended by the sender to cause said annoyance or alarm." I'm fine with that but I'm not sure that avoids your slippery slope problem.

The whole thing needs to be reworked. If we are talking about preventing teenage girls from torturing each other, let's do a bill that specifically addresses that. All this "annoyance and alarm serves no purpose" garbage is not only a waste of time, but I think that the internet is especially poorly suited for being dealt with in the framework of the existing law. I would scrap the whole thing and start over.