If you’re in West Virginia, you may want to watch what you say in the comments thread to this article. A bill introduced last week would expand the definition of harassment under the state’s Computer Crime and Abuse Act, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine or up to six months in jail to post false statements about another person in an online forum.
The legislation was originally sponsored by state senator Mike Green (D-Raleigh) last Monday, though without the “false statements” provision, which was added when the bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on Friday. As currently written, the bill would make it a crime to create a “webpage or posting on a newsgroup” containing “untrue statements about another person which are false and designed to entice or encourage other people to ridicule or perpetuate the untruth about that person.”
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