The U.S. Supreme Court will issue a finding on a thorny issue, the circumstances under which Facebook threats are protected under the First Amendment. Federal courts ruled in the case of Pennsylvania man that his rants threatening to kill his wife were not protected. The man said his postings were not serious and therapeutic. (VentureBeat, June 16, 2014, by Barry Levine)
The Court faces a challenge in bringing clarity to the law in the Internet age 40 years after it ruled that speech had to be a “true threat” to fall outside First Amendment protection. Two standards for judging a true threat have since emerged, the “subjective,” whether a person making the threat intended to carry it out and the “reasonable person,” that asks if a reasonable person would think the threat would be carried out. (TechNewsWorld, June 16, 2014, by John P. Mello Jr.)