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Uncategorized Sunday, January 2nd 2011 at 12:55 pm

Impersonating Someone On the Internet Is Now A Misdemeanor in California

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California Senate Bill 1411 went into effect yesterday, adding criminal and civil penalties to the act of impersonating a person online.  Specifically,

to knowingly and without consent credibly impersonate another person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means with the intent to harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud another person.

Sounds great for identity theft.  But, as TechCrunch points out, the bill does not address satiric or parodic impersonations a la Fake Steve Jobs.

To summarize, the bill classifies electronic impersonation as a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1k, and jail time of up to a year; in addition to the right of the impersonatee to sue the impersonator.  It offers no provisions for anyone who is pretending to be someone on the internet for comedic effect.

Presumably the senate is expecting the free speech implications to come out in the wash courts, but we wouldn’t want to be that first person who has to make the case.

So, a word to the wise: if you don’t want to go to jail over your parody twitter account, either make sure your target doesn’t have an excuse to sue you in California courts, make sure your impersonation makes them look good, or make sure they have a good sense of humor.  Of course, if you want to get somebody mad in order to set a legal precedent, then you have our respect and the thanks of dozens of future DRUNK-fill-in-a-celebrity-name-here accounts.

/salute

(via Techcrunch.)

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  • Anonymous

    Good for California. Wish more states did this

    How people can do this and get away with it is beyond me

  • http://twitter.com/kaitzi Kaitlin Guzzi

    I agree with VanBlue – and really Polo, the concerns raised here are completely unfounded:

    You say the point from Techcrunch was:

    “…the bill does not address satiric or parodic impersonations a la Fake Steve Jobs.”

    It also doesn’t address whether I can park streetside on Sundays because that’s *not the POINT of the law*.

    The law makes it illegal to:
    “to knowingly and…CREDIBLY impersonate another person…. with the intent to HARM, ….THREATEN, or DEFRAUD another person.” (emphasis mine…in capslock because I can’t be arsed to bold right after waking up)

    I doubt anyone would think FAKE Steve Jobs is real Steve Jobs. Unless they were, you know. An idiot. Or just really bad at telling real from fake. This rules out credible impersonation. Bam, done. Anyone with half a brain would see this law wouldn’t really affect FSJ (anymore than laws against slander and libel already do).

    In terms of parody, parody has always had to walk the line between humor and slander/libel – this law is unlikely to change that. If you want to parody someone, that is fine. You will just make sure that it is “all in good fun” and not in a way that is looking to….again INTENTIONALLY DEFRAUD them. Lindsey Lohan’s always getting drunk – a twitter about her being drunk won’t harm her reputation. A twitter about the Dali Lama always being drunk would, and that could possibly be illegal under this law. It’s in the wording. It’s quite simple really. Don’t make such a fuss – the majority of internet shenanigans, however poor in taste, are quite safe.

  • Jeff Max

    No! idiots, don’t you see why they are doing this? They could care less about identity theft, they just don’t want poloticians being tricked like what happened to the Senator from wisconsin. people have been tricking politicians into spilling the bean on their evil planes. Thats why they are passing this law. They don’t want you to catch them in their corrupt lies.

  • MJ 12

    We need more people in this world like Jeff Max! Thank God he is here at least he and a few good americans can see the lies of the Government!