17 states have criminal libel laws for the web defamation

With lots of web creeps hiding behind an veil on anonymity, it's not uncommon to see people's reputations trashed on the web. Until recently there was not much that you could do to protect your good name on the web, but that's changing.

For details on now these new laws help victims to nab internet bad guys, see my book "Web Stalkers: Protect yourself from Internet Psychopaths".

In Colorado, state law makes criminal libel a felony carrying up to 18 months in prison and a fine up to $100,000 for the first offense. In general, web libel is posting false information about someone that defames them, commonly accusations of criminal acts, marital infidelity, dishonesty or that you have a nasty disease..

According to this article, if you live on one of the 17 states that enforce criminal libel (Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, along with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), you can file to lift the veil on anonymity for someone who defames you and have them arrested on criminal charges.

In Colorado, a man received a a paltry 23 years sentence for "spreading lies on the internet", but some states are getting tougher on libel crimes.

Internet libel is a felony!

Many people on the web think that privacy laws protect their anonymity, but that's not the case when criminal charges are filed. Google's motto is "Do no evil" and they are cooperating with law enforcement to help prosecute crooks by introducing their Google searches as evidence.

In sum, this article notes "Everything you Google can and will be used against you in a court of law". Google is also cooperating with law enforcement to help convict hackers, such as this case where a stinking hacker was sentenced to over a year in prison for interfering with a wireless network:

"Court documents say that Schuster ran a Google search over CWWIS' network using the following search terms: "how to broadcast interference over wifi 2.4 GHZ," "interference over wifi 2.4 Ghz," "wireless networks 2.4 interference," and "make device interfere wireless network.""

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