A state appeals court ruled this week that online threats, specifically in comments posted on the web, do not constitute protected free speech. The 2nd District Court of Appeals downtown ruled that a 15-year-old's case against a schoolmate who posted on the plaintiff's site that he would "rip out your ... heart and feed it to you" and "pound your head in with an ice pick" can go forward.We certainly hope that meaningless threats against public figures won't get us in any trouble. If not, we might tear off some judgmental bastard's face & pound on it or something.
One 16-year-old defendant taken to court by the plaintiff claimed that the suit infringed upon his freedom of speech. But the state court, with one judge dissenting, disagreed. A lawyer for the 16-year-old argued that no one would interpret the postings as serious threats.It wouldn't be at all fair to judge us by the standards applied to 16-yr.-olds.
After the unidentified Los Angeles-area high school teen set up a site to promote a prospective pop music career, peers weighed in with anti-gay sentiments (though the teen says he's not gay), according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
No comments:
Post a Comment