By Bud Kennedy
bud@star-telegram.com
In Texas, pardner, we don't much cotton to Twitter fakers.
Under state law, the punishment for faking somebody else's identity on Twitter or Facebook can be up to 10 years in prison, particularly if your jokes aren't funny.
Seriously, Texas has one of the toughest online harassment laws. And one of the least-enforced.
But when Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck asked police to investigate a Twitter account using his name and photo, he wasn't just objecting to bad grammar or feeble one-liners.
As Texans say: "It's the law."
"It's a mess if somebody gets on the Internet and pretends to be you, no matter who you are," said state Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson, a co-author of the state's 2009 law punishing online harassment.
The law was written after a series of widely publicized bullying cases, including a hoax that led to the suicide of Missouri teenager Megan Meier.
That year, state Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano, filed a bill against social-media bullying and online harassment.
He teamed up with Orr, who wanted to protect Johnson County residents from fakery and also from impersonations in text messages.
The House passed the bill, 146-0. It was signed by Gov. Rick Perry.
The law imposes punishment for using anyone else's name on social media to "harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten."
That does not seem to include satire or jokes about the mayor.
But the law also makes it a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail to send or post an e-mail or comment hurtfully using someone else's identity.
Obviously, funny Twitter accounts such as the dormant "@GovPerrysHair" seem legal. But they have to be labeled as fake.
At least one Texan has been convicted under the law.
A 20-year-old Longview woman posted a photo of her genitals on Craigslist but gave a Kilgore rival's phone number.
Orr remembered a different case.
Before the law was enacted, a Mansfield family with a basketball goal was surprised to see somebody loading it into a truck.
A pranking neighbor had posted a Craigslist ad for free playground equipment and listed the family's address.
That's why the law is tough, Orr said: "The people brought this to us with a lot of concerns. We tried to respond."
They left little room for jokes.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Twitter @budkennedy817-390-7538
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