Careful With That Fake Social Networking Profile; If You 'Personate' Someone, You Can Go To Jail
from the careful-who-you-mock dept
We've seen numerous lawsuits involving schools punishing students for setting up fake social networking profiles of principals or teachers. However, could setting up a fake profile actually be a criminal offense that gets you sent to jail? Evan Brown has the news of how a California appeals court has ruled that a guy who set up a fake MySpace profile of his former pastor can stand trial for the crime of "personation." Apparently, in California, it's illegal to (a) assume the persona of someone else and then (b) do something while pretending to be that person that could get that person into legal trouble. So, it's not just setting up the profile that gets you in trouble, but then doing something with the profile (in this case, the guy suggested the pastor used drugs and was gay).Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: fake profiles, personate, pretending
Companies: myspace
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Hello
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Huh!
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Actually, you were correct in the first point; the Legislative branch of the government makes laws. At best Bush might introduced a bill that would have specified this "Personation" stricture. It would have been up to Congress to make it an actual law, which he then would have had to sign.
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So funny
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Fake Steve Jobs - Go to Jail
(on second thoughts maybe this is a good thing - nevermind).
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Fuc|( this draconian sh*t
Use TOR (Google it)
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Identity Theft
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Is that law approved by Hollywood?
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Re:
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Doublethink activated
Thanks America for showing your hypocrisy!
Oh, I could go on. You have marketers that now use Twitter. Why can't they get hit with a lawsuit? And if your name just so happens to have been spelled wrongly and coincidently libels someone else? The list could go on and on...
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Missing the Point
Basically, framing them.
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