The Friendly Guide to Internet Regulation: Overbroadness and Vagueness

Starting a series on the concepts that define Internet regulation over at FriendlyToS. The first concept to be introduced: overbroadness and vagueness.

Suppose your friend wanted to stop people from reproducing a picture she made, so she demands that everybody she knows stop copying any pictures. That sounds like a bit of an overreaction right? Or she says that people cannot share her picture. Well what does "share" mean? Can I post a link to her original picture on Facebook?

You can read the whole post at FriendlyToS.

2015-12-29 Update

FriendlyToS is no longer on the Internet. The content of the originally referenced post has been reproduced below.

Understanding why Internet regulations are the way that they are is confusing. So, FriendlyToS is creating The Friendly Guide to Regulating the Internet, a set of brief introductions to the most important concepts in Internet regulations. Today we add the final section to this guide - a discussion of how tricky national sovereignty can be online.

Overbroadness and Vagueness

Suppose your friend wanted to stop people from reproducing a picture she made, so she demands that everybody she knows stop copying any pictures. That sounds like a bit of an overreaction right? Or she says that people cannot share her picture. Well what does "share" mean? Can I post a link to her original picture on Facebook?

A number of speech regulations have been struck down because they were overbroad - they needlessly regulated "good" speech that is beyond the scope of the regulation's focus. Speech regulations have also been struck down because they were vague - the laws did a poor job of defining what would be a punishable action.