New Michigan law outlaws cyberbullying; violators could face 20 years in prison

[Swordsmyth]

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan signed a bill into law that would make cyberbullying a crime if the victim of the bullying was harmed as a result of posts made onto social media or other forums. Michigan’s Public Act 457 (http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2017-2018/billintroduced/House/pdf/2017-HIB-5017.pdf) defines cyberbullying as posting a message or statement onto a public media forum with the intent to mislead, damage, intimidate, frighten or harass a person to cause emotional distress, or to cause the person to be harmed or harm themselves.
Under the new law, if a person who cyberbullies someone causes the victim to suffer from an assault or battery by the bully or by any other person, the bully can be charged with a misdemeanor and imprisoned for up to a year and fined $1,000.
The law stated that if a cyberbully causes the death of a victim, regardless of whether the bully physically caused the death, they could be charged with a felony and face up to 20 years in prison.
The act was set to go into effect 90 days after Snyder signed it into law.

https://fox13now.com/2018/12/29/new-michigan-law-outlaws-cyberbullying-violators-could-face-20-years-in-prison/

[KEEF]

Snyder is a chode. Strike that, I don’t want to sound like a bully, so let me rephrase that... If I were to live in a certain mitten shapes State, the gentleman who is the current lame duck governor of that State may resemble the area found between the pubes region and anus.

[pcosmar]

Michigan is Competing with California for stupidest state laws.

[dannno]

They should already have laws on the books to deal with this stuff if what they did is legitimately illegal, and these laws could be misconstrued to get innocent people in trouble.

For example, saying, "This guy sucks, we need to string him up!" or something, and then somebody goes out the next day and shoots them, well.. they should already have a case under current laws.

On the other hand, if somebody says, "This guy sucks!!" or something, and then somebody goes out the next day and shoots them, well.. that's not the responsibility of the person who merely said the guy sucks..

[oyarde]

So if I was in michigan everyone would have to be nice to me ?

[Swordsmyth]

So if I was in michigan everyone would have to be nice to me ?
But you would have to be nice to Danke.........

[oyarde]

But you would have to be nice to Danke.........

Winter up there sucks anyway .

[Occam's Banana]

They should already have laws on the books to deal with this stuff [...]

They do. It doesn't matter.

Once you've covered the basics - assault, battery, theft, homicide and a few others, plus some civil stuff like contract enforcement - then you're pretty much done.

But that wouldn't give the Michigan state legislature et al. the opportunity to create new rules ex nihilo ad infinitum et nauseam in order to "justify" their continued existence.

After all, they're not called "lawmakers" for nothing. Legislators gonna legislate ...

Fiat law is the greatest bane to human liberty. Liberty cannot endure if some persons are allowed to conjure up new rules from out of their asses and impose them on everyone else.

[kpitcher]

Michigan lame duck Republicans have been especially busy this past month. I would go further on what I actually think about such politicians but it appears they want to stop people from talking the truth about them.

I'm surprised no one used the existing act against our sitting president because they felt emotionally hurt by a tweet

[Schifference]

People on this forum need to be concerned where red bar Zippy lives.

[pcosmar]

Anything you say Can and Will be used against you..

good to know

:(