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Your tax dollars at work...

Slyfox696

Excellence of Execution
At least if you live in Tennessee...

A new Tennessee law makes it a crime to "transmit or display an image" online that is likely to "frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress" to someone who sees it. Violations can get you almost a year in jail time or up to $2500 in fines.

The ban on distressing images, which was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam last week, is also an update to existing law. Tennessee law already made it a crime to make phone calls, send emails, or otherwise communicate directly with someone in a manner the sender "reasonably should know" would "cause emotional distress" to the recipient. If the communciation lacked a "legitimate purpose," the sender faced jail time.

The new legislation adds images to the list of communications that can trigger criminal liability. But for image postings, the "emotionally distressed" individual need not be the intended recipient. Anyone who sees the image is a potential victim. If a court decides you "should have known" that an image you posted would be upsetting to someone who sees it, you could face months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

If you think that sounds unconstitutional, you're not alone. In a blog post, constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh points out just how broad the legislation is. The law doesn't require that the picture be of the "victim," nor would the government need to prove that you intended the image to be distressing. Volokh points out that a wide variety of images, "pictures of Mohammed, or blasphemous jokes about Jesus Christ, or harsh cartoon insults of some political group," could “cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities,” triggering liability. He calls the bill "pretty clearly unconstitutional."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ting-images-that-cause-emotional-distress.ars

Nothing quite like using taxpayer dollars to pass laws which clearly violate 1st Amendment rights, not to mention are totally unenforceable and ridiculous to boot.


EDIT: Oh, and KB, the governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, is a Republican.
 
Is this serious? :lmao:

How are they going to enforce that? Monitor everybody who goes on the internet in Tennessee?

Would it work if somebody that doesn't live in Tennessee is the "distressed" individual, because that would really be a clusterfuck.
 
At least if you live in Tennessee...


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ting-images-that-cause-emotional-distress.ars

Nothing quite like using taxpayer dollars to pass laws which clearly violate 1st Amendment rights, not to mention are totally unenforceable and ridiculous to boot.


EDIT: Oh, and KB, the governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, is a Republican.

I figured that as soon as I saw that it said Tennessee.

This law sounds like something out of Pleasantville.
 
Kinda confused here, say if I live in Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas or Alabama and send an email that contravenes this - can I be fined and better still can it be enforced as my state doesn't have this law? Basically, can I take it that this is a Tennessee law that only affects Tennesseans posting to Tennesseans?
 
Kinda confused here, say if I live in Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas or Alabama and send an email that contravenes this - can I be fined and better still can it be enforced as my state doesn't have this law? Basically, can I take it that this is a Tennessee law that only affects Tennesseans posting to Tennesseans?

You asking this question has caused me emotional distress. I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT!
 
I wouldn't bother worrying about it too much. It'll get struck down the first time it goes front of any sane judge.

No doubt, more holes in this than a tonne of Swiss cheese, which is kinda why I would have thought the US Gov would have some control over individual States creating unenforceable laws:scratchchin:
 
I look forward to hearing about the endless line of court cases that come from this. It'll be fun to hear lawyers argue about how lolcats are distressing images.
 
trollface-1.png
 
You know why this happened, right? A senator opened one of those Unsolvable Where's Waldo? things where a demon pops up and screams. After falling backwards out of his chair, he pledged that he would somehow make things like that illegal.
 

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