Behave yourselves!

[Rob_K]

Saw this reply to an editorial post on a Yahoo Group that pointed out that posts that criticised other people were outside the guidelines for the group:

"There will be no need to worry about flaming and other offensive behaviour if other states do what Arizona is considering: However, this could adversely impact on astronomical research. If a person criticizes someone else's data, the person whose data or conclusions are being criticized now would have a law that gives them ammunition to sue, claiming the person doing the criticizing did so to intentionally annoy, offend, or harass.

http://www.azleg.gov//FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/hb2549s.htm&Session_ID=107
Arizona House Bill 2549, which would make it unlawful for anyone to post messages "with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend," passed both the House and Senate in nearly unanimous votes last week. The bill is reportedly being tinkered with by legislators before being passed to Gov. Jan Brewer.

The group Media Coalition sent a letter to Brewer lambasting the bill for dealing an Orwellian blow to free speech, saying the bill “would update the state's telephone harassment law to apply to the Internet and other electronic communications. It would make it a crime to communicate via electronic means speech that is intended to 'annoy,' 'offend,' 'harass' or 'terrify,' as well as certain sexual speech. However, because the bill is not limited to one-to-one communications, H.B. 2549 would apply to the Internet as a whole, thus criminalizing all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying.” "

Now that would make us all behave like nice little space cadets...

Cheers -

[mill (Martin)]

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO then I could never get anyone to tell me what is wrong so I can LEARN you can't learn if no-one tells you what is wrong

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Doesn't that destroy the scientific method by removing the peer based review, only because it annoyed the writer?

[Rob_K]

Originally Posted by A23649

Doesn't that destroy the scientific method by removing the peer based review, only because it annoyed the writer?

Like all similar laws, you would have to be able to demonstrate that the intention of the peer-based review was to annoy you, and that you suffered demonstrable loss because of the annoyance. Or not!

Cheers -

[Ric]

+1