With a law set to go into effect in California staring Today (Jan 1, 2011) making it a misdemeanor to impersonate someone on the internet the question is does this help or effect personal safety on the internet?
And it's raising some heated arguments that show just how hard it is to find ways to both protect people on the internet and still allow for people to seek anonymity on line.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out and how California addresses the fact that most users of the internet, much less FaceBook, don't live in California. And like many laws that sound good it's going to be hard for that and other reasons to even enforce this law much less make it have any real effect in stopping internet impersonators.
So any thoughts on this and how it might change things. Does it even do more than cloud up the issue?
Pretending to be someone else on Facebook, or anywhere else online, becomes a crime in California as of this Saturday.
The law specifically prohibits impersonating anyone online with the objective of harming, intimidating, threatening or defrauding. Such acts become misdemeanors punishable by a fine up up to $1000 and a year in jail.
The author of the law, California Democratic state Senator Joe Simitian, represents the part of the state where Facebook has its headquarters. An article in the San Jose Mercury News quoted him saying:
As a Silicon Valley legislator, I’m nothing but enthusiastic about technology. But the question is, is the technology used wisely and appropriately? This is one area where some constraint appeared necessary… The goal here really is to try to change behavior…
This new law draws on the same framework used in California’s ban on forging documents.
An early draft of the legislation had upset free speech advocates who worried that that the measure would stifle free speech. So the law effective Saturday qualifies that the person who is impersonated has to be real and credible.
That makes it still legal to have profiles that are obvious parodies or fictional characters.
We’re wondering whether a California law would enable Facebook to prosecute impersonators based outside of the state, or the country for the matter. Presumably the location of the social network’s headquarters is what matters here.
How will this law help social media and Facebook in particular?
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