Andy Chalk said:
Internet Trolls Face Jail in Arizona
If you insult someone out in public, both of you have the opportunity to walk away and end your interaction, and neither of you has any claim to remove the other. You can surely complain to whomever owns the space, but odds are the law isn't going to come into it unless the involved parties start fighting (in which case both are usually in some trouble).
Now, if someone
comes to your house to insult you, that's another matter. There, you have the expectation of being free from harassment, or even annoyance, from people you don't want to be there. If you tell them to leave and they don't, problem. If they leave, but come back again, problem. And the law will generally back you up on this (unless they somehow have some legal right to be there, too).
The legal system is pretty good at telling the difference, as evidenced by the fact that
we aren't drowning in cases of people going to jail for calling someone an idiot at the DMV. The internet is just a different communication tool. It has its "public" spaces, and it has (to a degree) it's "private" spaces.
The idea that this law is going to be problematic is just our own reflex whenever we hear someone mention "internet" and "law." The problems we're predicting don't happen with analogous media in real life, so there's no reason to assume they're going to happen here. Will someone try it? Surely. And when it fails, we'll have clear legal precedent established, just like for our other laws.
