WordCast: WordPress, Blogging, Social Media Guides and News

According to Gawker, your online impersonation is now illegal in California as Governor Schwarzenegger signs it into law.

A reminder to people writing fake blogs and fake social networking profiles: Online impersonation became punishable by up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines in California this year — and it’s not clear satire is exempted.

Under Senate Bill 1411, it is now illegal to “knowingly and without consent credibly impersonate another actual person through or on an Internet Web site… for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person.” What does it mean to “harm” someone via online impersonation? How obvious does a satire have to be in order to avoid becoming a “credible” impersonation?

The law states that you cannot impersonate another real person, especially with evil intentions, but does permit anonymous or disguised personas. It also does not impact parodies or satire for entertainment purposes, punishing impersonation for harmful purposes, though some believe the line between is too thin. The key point is “knowingly” and “without consent” which crosses the line.

The bill defines “impersonation” as:

…an impersonation is credible if another person would reasonably believe, or did reasonably believe, that the defendant was or is the person who was impersonated.

The analysis of SB 1411 Senate Bill states that current law penalizes false personation as an “alternate felony-misdemeanor” and makes it subject to liability for criminal prosecution, lawsuit or penalty. It also supported identity theft, fraud, and cyberfraud through the California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act and provided protections on unsolicited, misleading and fraud emails through other existing laws including the The CAN-SPAM Act and Anti-Phishing Act of 2005. This bill adds to the current law escalation of penalties to a full misdemeanor, clarifies the “electronic means” to include social networking online sites, and adds “credible belief,” not just the proof, that the impersonation violated the law.

According to BBC’s report, the new Senate bill updates the 1872 laws which permitted impersonation as an art form and “freedom of speech.” With harassment, cyber bullying, and identity theft on the rise, California’s move is no surprise to many.

Arstechnica’s Law and Disorder reported earlier this fall:

The purpose of such a law is to discourage people such as the “MySpace mom,” accused of impersonating a teenage boy online whose bullying eventually led to another teen’s suicide, as well as a woman who posted a fake Casual Encounters ad on Craigslist impersonating a 17-year-old girl with whom the woman had an Internet argument. There was also a case where a group of teenagers posed as one of their peers on Facebook. They represented him as a sexually obscene racist and amassed hundreds of “friends” as if he were running the profile himself, which the targeted teen believed had turned off college recruiters.

The law goes into effect at the beginning of 2011, and critics say it could have a chilling effect on free speech. A group that does impersonations of corporations for the purpose of activism, Yes Men, told IDG that “political cronies” could use the law to attack those trying to expose information to the public through parody.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes the law will undermine the First Amendment protections for parody and satyr:

Here’s the problem: temporarily “impersonating” corporations and public officials has become an important and powerful form of political activism, especially online. For example, the Yes Men, a group of artists and activists, pioneered “identity correction,” posing as business and government representatives and making statements on their behalf to raise popular awareness of the real effects of those entities’ activities, like the failure to Dow to adequately compensate victims of the Bhopal disaster and the U.S. government’s destruction of public housing units in New Orleans. These sorts of actions regularly receive widespread media coverage, sparking further public debate. Last year, the activists staged a thinly veiled hoax, presenting themselves at a press conference and on a website as the Chamber of Commerce and, in direct opposition to the Chamber’s actual position, promising to stop lobbying against strong climate change legislation…

Others have taken a similar approach, using spoof sites and identity correction to raise awareness about community issues, environmental threats, and, most recently, the historical roots of Haiti’s economic problems. Unfortunately, the targets of the criticism, like the Chamber, have responded with improper legal threats and lawsuits. It would be a shame if Senator Simitian’s bill added another tool to their anti-speech arsenal.

They say the bill is not necessary and recommended in August that the Governor not sign the bill. They say that while the bill implies victims of such online abuses have no recourse, they do. There are laws in place for fraud and defamation which will not be helped by this law, turning free speech through parody online into a misdemeanor.

According to the bills sponsor, Senator Joe Simitian, the bill updates California’s “antiquated” impersonal laws for email and social networking.

“The Internet makes many things easier,” said Simitian. “One of those, unfortunately, is pretending to be someone else. When that happens with the intent of causing harm, folks need a law on the books they can turn to.”

There will be challenges to the law on both sides, reports many, as they feel the law has little teeth and impinges too much on freedom of speech, so only time will tell how this law will hold up in the courts under test cases.