FakeCelebrity Twitterers And Bloggers May Face Jail In California
from the that'll-go-over-well dept
We've already noted how California law makes it a crime to "personate" someone by pretending to be them, but with the new year, apparently such laws have been strengthened even more in California, with potential fines and jail time for those who:"knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person"While it may be questionable as to whether or not someone setting up a fake Twitter or blog account actually qualifies as having the intention of "harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person," you can pretty much guarantee that some celebrity thus impersonated will test the law on this, and make arguments as to how such impersonators really harmed, intimidated or defrauded. Hopefully the courts are quick to make sure that, if this law is even considered legal, that it's limited in ways to avoid coming down on people just setting up fun joke accounts.
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Filed Under: california, impersonations, social networks
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That doesn't mean people won't have years of their lives stolen being prosecuted for it.
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I'm Mike Masnick
You're all a bunch of jerkwads.
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and not having read the criminal statute (not gunna bother) doesn't harming or intimidating someone already come under criminal laws? Defrauding definitely does. As for harm... DEFINE HARM!!!!!
So these laws were probably already on the books anyway.. they just want one for "famous" people with lots of money who can Intimidate police into criminal investigations over crimes that are already available.
So what are they going to do to International people who personates some moronic wannabe celebrity? Jurisdiction is going to e a hard one to tackle if not impossible though it will make for enjoyable reading to laugh about.
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Something new learned.
Rich Little was lucky to have been popular when he was. Otherwise, he'd be standing on a street corner pretending to be poor.
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fun and profit
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