A small side note on law and technology in Illinois

This is the fourth installment in my series on estate planning for virtual assets.

As I have already mentioned, the normally law creeps forward at a snails pace. Technology flies forward at a fast pace. In comparison to each other, technology is going light years faster than law. This disparity in development leads to some confusing, discordant, and unintended results.

One example of the result of these differences comes from an attempt made by the State of Illinois with respect to sexual predators. As of January 1, 2010, the Illinois legislature amended the Illinois Criminal Code to make it a crime for a person convicted of a sex offense to access or use social networking websites.

Here is the statute:

730 ILCS 5/5-6-3(8.9) Conditions of Probation and of Conditional Discharge.
(8.9) if convicted of a sex offense as defined in the Sex Offender Registration Act committed on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 96th General Assembly, refrain from accessing or using a social networking website as defined in Section 16D-2 of the Criminal Code of 1961;

The Illinois legislature defined the term "social networking website" in the law:.

720 ILCS 5/16D-2(h) Sec. 16D-2. Definitions. As used in this Article, unless the context otherwise indicates:
(h) "Social networking website" means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

Although you cannot discount the good intentions of the Illinois legislature and the noble goal of keeping sexual offenders off of places like facebook and myspace, the new law, unfortunately, demonstrates the inability of the law to keep up with and define the current state of "Web 2.0". The statutory definition of a "social networking" website is so overly broad that nearly any modern commercial webiste, blog, site with a message board, shopping site, or Linkedin will satisfy the definition.

There's a lot of shakeout left before the law can properly deal with web-related technology issues. Until then, we'll just need to do our best.

Click here for part three
Click here for part five