Let Us First See A Brief Summary

While, reading the case, Elonis v. United States, I was astonished to see that someone would post something so explicit, offensive, and inhumane. Basically, the case of Elonis v. United States is about a man named Anthony Elonis who is an upcoming rapper and used his stage name, Tone Dougie. His Facebook page consisted of him posting disturbing rap lyrics. Even though Elonis was going through a divorce with his former wife, which did not stop him from writing and posting crude lyrics. Eventually, it got to the point where his wife felt that she was being targeted by his lyrics. According to an article on, New York Times, Elonis wrote that he wanted to see a Halloween costume that included his wife’s “head” on a stick. Obviously, she felt threatened and reported the assaults to the police. Anthony Elonis was convicted for posting threats that targeted his wife, his coworkers, police officers, a kindergarten class, and even an FBI agent. Although Elonis argued that his posting are not considered to be a “true threat” and that he is protected under the First Amendment. I believe he wanted to cause fear towards his wife, Tara and therefore, is his lyrics are a true threat. Basically, a true threat is defined as something a person would consider to be “purposely” harmful and cause pain. Elonis mentioned that his post were not offended nor were the threatening anybody. He stated that he did not have the intent of trying to harm anyone, he was just trying

In today’s world, social media have a part in many people lives. Social media allow people to express themselves however and whenever they want. This is exactly what Anthony Elonis did. After a divorce Elonis claimed he adopted the rap persona Tone Dougie and posted long rants in the form of rap lyrics on Facebook. These rants expressed violence and killings. Elonis also stated “Art is about pushing limits, I’m willing to go to jail for my constitutional rights.” He also posts disclaimers or indications that his rants were aspired to be art or therapy .Although The First Amendment guarantees our right of free speech, a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone should be considered a threat whether its face to face or through social media. Freedom of speech end and become a specific threat to another person when you direct a violent act toward anyone. As a consequence of his Facebook post, Anthony D. Elonis was indicted with five counts of making threats.

As of today, the supreme court has interpreted the first amendment to say “The First Amendment provides no protection for obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes what has become widely known as “fighting words.” The First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television (as opposed to speech transmitted via cable or the Internet), and public employees’ speech.”(Ruane, Kathleen Ann) with this loose definition in mind many people have begun to think whether freedom of speech should be further limited to several cases seen in recent years such as what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.

  Did you know that nearly 1 in 3 teens have admitted to being a victim of cyberbullying? That’s an absurdly large number of teens! But what really is cyberbullying anyway? Well, the Cyberbullying Research Center defines it as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices”. Congresswomen Linda Sanchez is currently sponsoring a bill that would make bullying through an electronic means a federal crime and I wholeheartedly support it! Individuals should definitely be prosecuted for statements made on social media.

In “The Problem with Public Shaming,” an essay that first appeared in the Nation, Stryker argues against the form of public shaming promoted by online networks and how people have figured out a way to deal with crimes but not with social media. Stryker introduced the essay’s subject matter through social media examples, while reflecting on past experiences and stating important details that reinforce the subject of public shaming as well as “dox” and discusses this term throughout the essay. Stryker helps define the term “dox” by listing the common traits and information “doxxers” try to gather, which include—name, phone number, address, social security and financial

The Supreme Court case, Packingham v. North Carolina (2016) debates whether convicted and registered sex offenders should be limited in their social media usage on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which are most predominantly populated by minors. The constitutionality of North Carolina’s criminal law is being debated as it considers it a felony for any person registered as a sex offender in the state of North Carolina to have an account on social media sites such as Facebook, or any social media platforms that allow minors to have an account. The current North Carolina law is unconstitutional as it limits a clear example of free speech, and does so in a very broad and unjustified way,

For example, in the case of Elonis v. United States, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to address this increasingly relevant issue in deciding whether an individual’s Facebook posts qualified as true threats. Elonis was charged in accordance to Section 875(c) of U.S. Law. Section 875(c) governs the class of statements that do not enjoy First Amendment protections because they constitute true threats. As aforementioned previously, while the Supreme Court has upheld the protections of free speech, this trial marks an instance where true threats were declared as a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. When analyzing statutory provisions that reference true threats, however, the Court has applied varying intent standards to the crimes, without referencing the First Amendment implications of these statements. (Best 1132) Even so, the significance of Elonis v. United States is unequivocal-the Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect legitimate or “true” threats, and that any speech that targets or endangers the wellbeing of another is not free speech and can be

This is the primary flaw in Elonis’ argument of standing behind the First Amendment and shouting freedom of speech. Anthony Elonis shared his words via social media to threaten and intimidate others.

Your honor, the jury, emotional distress is defined as mental suffering, and a victim reacts through worry, shame, humiliation, and fright. It is an invasion of personal rights when such distress disrupts the daily life. Therefore, the First Amendment could not protect the person who caused the distress. The defendant, CJ Pearson, caused similar distress towards Alex Billings. Both of them met at student orientation of KHS. As they progressed further into the year Pearson harassed Billings for over a month. So ponder, why does someone insult some? Is hurting someone civilized? And the most important question of all, did Alex Billings depict all the symptoms of PTSD? The answers to these questions make CJ Pearson

expressed or inappropriate without the regard to the speaker’s intended meanings is not protected in the First Amendment. Threats must be true in order to be legally actionable. A reasonable person must foresee that the statement would be interpreted by the recipient as a serious expression of intent to carry out the threat to cause harm. For example, the U.S. v. Voneida case. A university student was convicted of posting threats to others on a social media page two days after the shootings at Virginia Tech. The student had posted several statements and pictures to his Myspace page, including a number of violent statements, such as, “Someday I’ll make the Virginia Tech incident look like a trip to an amusement park,” and captioning a posting,

The case, Elonis vs. United States, conveys that threats on social media are a crime. In this court case, the convict quoted a rapper’s song on social media towards his wife and the FBI. Whether or not the convict intentionally meant what he threatened, the representatives

Every day, millions of people use social media to either converse with their peers or to post pictures. There has been much discussion on whether or not individuals should be prosecuted for rude statements made on social media. Individuals should not be prosecuted for derogative statements made on social media. Although some may say that prosecuting cyberbullies for statements made on social media is beneficial, it would have many negative consequences. Prosecuting individuals for statements made on the internet would discourage personal responsibility, be a violation of the first amendment, and squander tax payers' money.

According to Bennett, with cameras and high speed internet everywhere, it is almost impossible to protect one’s privacy. While some people ravel in being the internet celebrity or villain in an instant, others do not want to play such a role in life and are thus frustrated. A student at Lewis & Clark University in Portland, Ore was publicly accused on Facebook of sexually assaulting another student (Bennett 579). The teen was branded a rapist all over the internet even when such allegations had not yet been reported to the authorities. Bloggers quickly picked up the story and revealed graphic details of the incident according to the alleged victim without even including the perpetrators version of the

Also found through a popular website named facebook is a states written by an Ohio fighter who said “One dog is more important than a million n*****`s.” Which cause an outcry to the town’s mayor to fire him. What people write on social media can be compared to the Lucifer effect, in which typing behind a screen gives you more power to allow you to say and do whatever you want. The Lucifer effect is when someone who is in a place of power crosses the boundary between what’s good and decides to make bad decisions with the power they have. An examples of that is when President Trumps uses his twitter to make ignition comments about different race groups like when he said “ when Mexico sends its people, they`re not sending you. They`re sending people that have lots of problems, and they`re bringing crime. They`re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

I believe that the guy from the beginning should’ve used his brain and go to a therapist rather than rant on Facebook to people who don’t know any better would overreact. People do things online without much thought put into it, I think this was definitely a case bound to happen anyways. One thing is he did in fact post disclaimers in the comments saying his posts aren’t threat .The ACLU argued that context matters…” Words are slippery things," wrote Stephen Shapiro. He said that a statute that limits speech "without regard to the speaker¹s intended meaning" runs the risk of punishing protected First Amendment expression simply because it is "crudely or zealously expressed." I think the conviction was a tad harsh, 4 years imprisonment 3 years