Iain Dale links to this piece drawing attention to a draft law in the USA which (it is said) poses a major threat to blogs and the social web.

The draft law says:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both…

This law is aimed at cyber-bullies. It looks to my ailing legal eye that to be convicted a person would have to be proved to be guilty under four headings simultaneously:

(a) to have the intent

(b) to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to someone, using

(c) electronic means to support

(d) severe, repeated and hostile behaviour

Quite a stiff burden of proof on the prosecution?

If someone in the UK deliberately and repeatedly behaved unpleasantly towards another person in meat-space (aka real life), an offence almost certainly would be committed eg under the UK Public Order Act (1986) which outlaws threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour done with the intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress.

If you were the victim of deliberate, sustained hostile e-harassment intended to cause you substantial distress, would you not be dismayed to hear that there was nothing to be done about it to punish or deter the perpetrator?

Look at what happened to British Gas whose unceasing computer-generated but wrong demands for a bill to be paid drove a fellow citizen to distraction. Oppressive law stopping British Gas’s free speech? Or fair enough?

And see anti-stalking provisions in Canada and the UK.

MInd you, various senior members of the current British government might welcome some respite from the e-onslaught they are receiving from parts of the blogosphere.

And so use precedents established by a law like this to get that respite by Crushing Dissent if nothing else will do?