“A South Carolina man arrested on an Internet stalking charge has pleaded innocent in U.S. District Court. Robert James Murphy… was arrested earlier this month and charged with 26 counts of using his computer ‘to annoy, abuse, threaten and harass’ Joelle Ligon, 35, of Seattle, who saw him in court for the first time in 13 years… Murphy is the first person to face charges under a federal law, adopted in 1997, that equates sending obscene e-mail to making obscene telephone calls… Investigators believe Murphy began sending obscene and sexually explicit messages and pictures to Ligon and her co-workers in 1998, tracking her from his computer as she moved from state to state and job to job. Ligon said she deleted and ignored the messages for four years, then began saving them as evidence and approached police, eventually gaining the help of the FBI, U.S. attorney’s office and King County prosecutors.” — RedNova News (US)

It’s amazing that this is the first time this cyberstalking law has been invoked. Certainly this cyberstalker — who had dated his victim but was ditched thirteen years ago — can’t be the only sad reject to bombard his lost loves and former flames with predatory emails. Probably most victims just shrug it off or set up email filters to trash incoming messages from such obsessive dweebs. “Jesus,” you want to tell these guys. “Get over it. Get a life.”

What makes the disuse of this law even more amazing is that we are all — every email user — assaulted by sexually obscene emails sent by persistent jerks. These cyberstalkers bombard us with invitations to buy Viagra and porn and drugs to enhance our penile staying power. You know who these jerks are — spammers! Would it be trivializing this cyberstalker statute to convict a few spammers of harrassment?

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