If you talked to someone in person, encouraged them to kill, and then they did it, you could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. I think everyone on 4chan who pushed the shooter into commiting this crime should be charged. Convincing someone to commit a crime, or helping them, has never been free speech. If I taught someone how to hack credit cards, and they did, I would probably be thrown into Leavenworth for a few years.
Based on what I’ve read, there’s no confirmation that the guy on 4chan actually was the shooter.
But even if he were, this opens up a huge legal can of worms. If people can be prosecuted for anonymous internet posts egging on other anonymous users, where does it end? If I urge another user to go smoke some weed and then he does, have I broken the law? Heck, there are plenty of SDMB posts that would invite prosecution.
I don’t see why speech via digitized electrons should be treated any differently from speech by vibrating larynx. Case law for the latter should inform case law for the former.
Would it not be Orwellian in its application?
@LHoD
Because unlike in meatspace, the ratio of ‘actual agreements to commit an act’ to ‘bullshit trolling’ is fairly high, particularly when there is the veil of anonymity. There are grey areas and not-so-grey areas (e.g. darknet anonymous illegal purchases), but in terms of 4chan and innumerable other chat, board, and similar venues, you would have a difficult time establishing that an ‘agreement’ was established. The bar to proving a conspiracy existed isn’t the highest, but it is not negligible—else you end up in the state that IRT started describing.
Any attempt to enforce such a law on the internet would simply create a never-ending tsunami of vicious trolling. If you think 4Chan is bad now, just wait until the government starts telling them what they can and cannot say. They’ll be going out of their way to incite shooters just as a giant ‘Fuck You’ to the government.
Then we just make sure they don’t have internet access in prison.
They do so now because there’s no consequence for doing so. You seem to be advocating that online threats and online criminal behavior not be taken seriously. I’m advocating exactly the opposite. If someone engages in criminal speech online (e.g., conspiracy, incitement to commit crime, etc.), it should be taken exactly as seriously as if they do it offline.
Sure, it may be harder to investigate. But to the extent that it’s criminal and investigable, it should be.
I’m not arguing that 4chan members should be held liable for conspiracy. I don’t know the specifics of their behavior, or the specifics of conspiracy law. I am simply arguing that the specific way someone manipulates matter and energy to engage in communication should not affect whether the communication violates laws. I think the substance of the communication, not its medium, should be the deciding factor.
I see where you’re coming from, and I kind of agree in principle. However, in practise I just don’t think it’s going to work. The trouble is that legislating somewhere like 4Chan will just make the problem worse. The driving philosophy behind 4Chan, specifically the anonymous /b/ board where all this stuff tends to happen, is “Everything goes, no exceptions”, and the users tend to be almost insanely hostile toward anyone who even dares to think about trying to challenge that.
4Chan’s philosophy is basically this (NSFW!). For people like that, speech legislation would be like waving a red flag at a bull. Instead of the occasional incitement to violence, I predict we would see thousands and thousands of people going out of their way to incite violence against anyone and anything, just out of spite. It’s all lulz to them, and there’s safety in numbers so even if a few do get arrested, that won’t provide much of a deterrent to the rest. Even if the government shut the site down, they’d just stick it on a foreign server somewhere and double down even harder. Everything about their past behaviour indicates to me that they would do this, simply because that’s just the kind of people they are.
Personally, I think the best thing to do is just ignore it.
They did charge this girl for encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide through texting.
I say this whole thing is a tricky minefield since internet postings last forever. Let’s say an angsty guy posts “I’m going to blow up my high school tomorrow! I hate those mofos!” And a bunch of other angsty anons post their support and goad him on. He doesn’t carry out his plan because he’s a pussy.
Five years later, another angsty guy stumbles across this forum. He also wants to blow up his school, and he sees how much encouragement that other fellow got. But unlike him, he actually has balls and he carries out his plan. The police looks at his internet history and they decide this is another case of electronic thuggery. Chief Wiggims says, “Let’s get 'em, boys.”
But those angsty teenagers are now Wall Street stock brokers and suburban housewives.
So it’s tricky.
I’m not at all convinced this is true. If they’re engaged in criminal incitement (for example), and if police start charging them and sending them to prison, it might no longer be all lulz to them.
Just as child pornography is prosecuted online and offline I think other forms of speech that are criminal should be prosecuted online and offline. The ability of the criminals to hide their behavior on anonymous servers only changes the methods of investigation; it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be investigated.
I’m not seeing that it’s so tricky. Has the statute of limitations run out? Does the crime of incitement depend on the audience actually going on to commit the crime? If the answer to both questions is “no,” charges should be filed.
The five-year-later guy does not appear relevant, unless incitement works very differently from how I think it works.
Who gives a fuck what the posters at 4Chan think? In the US, there’s a group that thinks they can avoid US law by inciting magic words like “joinder” and based on whether or not there is fringe on the flag. Guess what? You don’t get to make up your own rules.
You don’t get to engage in criminal conspiracy and get away with it because “that’s how we roll”. You don’t get to coerce non-prosecution by threatening to have a fit if you don’t get your way.
I could see it being politically tricky. I can’t imagine Wall Street stock brokers and surburban housewives–pillars of the community–being hauled off to prison for internet postings they did when they were dumb kids.
I think there are a lot of internet trolls in the general population. So there’d be a lot of people who’d freak out knowing their little drive-postings could land them in prison.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t freak out. I’m just saying I can’t see the DA’s office prosecuting a lot of these cases.
(It occurred to me you can also encourage someone to commit a crime by confronting them. If someone responds to a declaration of violence with something like “You’re such a punkass bitch! You ain’t gonna do shit!” then this person has just thrown fuel on the fire, right? If the soon-to-be shooter responds with, “I’ll show you who is a punkass bitch. Just you watch”, why wouldn’t that be used as evidence that he was responding to a dare to commit a crime?)
Although I don’t have a problem with people being charged for partaking in these kind of antics, I do worry about new laws these cases could inspire. Could one day people be charged with failure to report an online threat?
Again, I think the relevant feature here should be the statute of limitations. If we need to, let’s adjust that statute for incitement crimes. What’s the current statute of limitations?
Me, I think that’s an entirely salutary effect. If people are currently committing crimes online and feeling comfy doing so, that’s not a good situation. The more people think that their criminal behavior will have consequences, the fewer people will engage in that criminal behavior.
Can people today be charged with failure to report an offline threat?
I don’t think we need new laws, necessarily (I could be persuaded otherwise if someone shows a specific reason). I think the existing laws for offline speech should be applied to online speech.
And just how do you propose proving beyond a reasonable doubt just who is actually doing the posting? And a conspiracy to commit a crime requires affirmitive action to actually commit the crime.
According to this site, no. Unless someone is in a “special relationship” with the person making the threat.
I don’t see a single good reason why Internet activity should be held to a different set of criminal law. The idea that 4chan idiots are going to make more death threats doesn’t persuade me in the slightest. Lock 'em all up if they want to make widespread terroristic threats. The idea that if we punish one that we will have more problems on our hands is a poor response to any problem - organized crime, corporate malfeasance, whatever. What kind of country would we live in if various social groups get to bully the government into not enforcing laws?
If it can’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, it shouldn’t be prosecuted. C’mon now.
And if posters don’t meet the requirements for conspiracy, they shouldn’t be prosecuted for it. C’mon, again, now.
This isn’t rocket science. Treat online posts the same as you’d treat offline communication; recognize that both are real-world behaviors; and the apparent thorniness is at least on this aspect resolved.
Saying that I want to kill person A that is near me is very different than saying I want to kill an anonymous person whom I have never met. That isn’t a crime. We need to define specifically what crimes are being committed and how they should be prosecuted.