[HN Gopher] Emoji are legally actionable
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Emoji are legally actionable
Author : chrisaycock
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-12-30 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| Baldbvrhunter wrote:
| How am I supposed to know how emoji's are rendered on your
| device.
|
| What if my water pistol turns into a pistol by the time you see
| it and my harmless fun turns into a threat?
|
| https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/01/technology/apple-pistol-emo...
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Fortunately the legal system is flexible enough to accommodate
| questions like this, both with interpretations of the law and
| with juries to determine the facts.
|
| This isn't a new problem caused by emoji. You could make a
| similar argument about conversations had over the phone, turn
| signals, even physical contact.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Yeah. It's amazing that people in technology so often are
| unable to comprehend that the legal system is not a bunch of
| statements where debating the meaning of words or symbols or
| obscure things like rendering somehow are magic to bypass the
| law's intent.
|
| The simple answer is, it's not "what it looked like to the
| other person" it's the intent of the author.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| A nitpick, but for your latter point it depends on the
| question.
|
| In some cases it's the intent that matters, but the law
| often tries to avoid questions about actual intent because
| that's too difficult to figure out. Instead the question
| might hinge on what a reasonable person would have thought,
| or what the victim actually thought.
| prepend wrote:
| > often tries to avoid questions about actual intent
| because that's too difficult to figure out.
|
| Of course the law tries to avoid it. But that's sometimes
| impossible, thus disagreements and trials and judges and
| whatnot.
|
| It's not like ambiguity causes everything to crash. It
| just requires judgement that usually gets settled before
| it gets to court.
| konschubert wrote:
| Yep. What Color are your bits.
| stickfigure wrote:
| You have an optimistic view of the legal system. Sure
| intent matters, but you may still get arrested, spend many
| nights in jail, get fired from your job, and spend
| thousands of dollars on legal fees and bail while the
| system figures out your intent.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note in America many nights can easily mean many
| years in jail without a trial.
| staticman2 wrote:
| If you were accused of using a pistol emoji you or your lawyer
| would present evidence that it was a water gun on your device.
| throwaway8877 wrote:
| But what if you knew that your water pistol is rendered as a
| gun
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| The prosecutor would argue it at trial and a jury would
| decide if the argument is convincing beyond a reasonable
| doubt.
| clearleaf wrote:
| On the article, the "side-eyed-moon" doesn't look like a side
| eyed moon to me. It looks like a normal smiley face.
| o11c wrote:
| Same here. Firefox on Linux; not sure what extra font
| packages I've installed at various times.
| kistaro wrote:
| Even worse, sending a friendly affectionate yellow heart -- how
| was I supposed to know the recipient was using [Android
| 4.42](https://thenextweb.com/news/pink-hairy-hart-emoji)?
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231230141637/https://www.theat...
|
| https://archive.ph/Sm6Ym
| User23 wrote:
| It's fascinating living in a country whose legal system treats
| vowing before God to stay with someone exclusives until death as
| absolutely meaningless but will treat a smiley face picture as a
| legally binding statement.
| stonogo wrote:
| Marriage doesn't have to involve God, and securities fraud
| doesn't require "legally binding statements" to execute. Once
| you take away the hyperbole, there's not much left to examine
| here, except to ask what is fascinating about it.
| gumby wrote:
| Why, because it's rational? A visual expression can be produced
| in court. A verbal promise is binding n some US jurisdictions
| (e.g. California) but hard to litigate when you can't subpoena
| the witness.
|
| Also in a contractual matter (such as marriage), if the
| "exchange of value" or guarantor is entirely mythical how can
| such an agreement be binding? It's not like the injured party
| can collect from the guarantor.
|
| That's why some contracts require a payment of a dollar (e.g.
| patent assignment to your company) so it can be "for value
| received". Now if you're a cryptoweenie I suppose you'd say
| that the "fiat dollar" is just as mythical...good luck
| litigating that.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Oh boy lots to unpack!
|
| * If we subscribe to principle that "legal system impacting
| everyone equally" and "personal religious beliefs" should be
| separate (and I do!:), then "vowing before God to stay with
| someone" should indeed be "legally absolutely meaningless",
| unless you also enter in a bespoke legal contract, understood
| by both parties to be such, with details on what happens when
| two parties want to terminate the contract, jointly or
| individually. Basically, if you want to talk "legal contract",
| let's talk legal contracts, which are rarely truly inescapable
| and have well established means of binding and exit. If you
| want to talk divine commitments, by all means, but that's
| really between you and your divine being of choice, and it is
| my understanding that most divine systems handle such cases
| appropriately (whether by eternal damnation or multiples of
| readily-available virgins, et cetera:). Just, let's not mix
| them up to make some vague points.
|
| * "Smiley Picture" and "funny written scribble" (a signature)
| have similarities. We readily in most legal systems accept "if
| I use a funny written scribble to really really mean something,
| no take-baksies!", then what's the real difference to smiley
| picture?
|
| * Or put it another way, what are the first principle under
| which a signature should count for something, or a written
| expression, that a emoji, used to convey same meaning, should
| not? I.e. if I ask "will you deliver to this contract", and you
| text back "Yup!" or thumbs up emoji, what is the difference?
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/thumbs-up-emoji-...
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| We have an entire legal framework revolving around the
| dissolution of marriages and the surrounding issues. Its kind
| of a big deal (and has nothing to do with God, who the
| government does not enforce contracts for). Churches can (and
| do) enforce the "until death" vow part by treating divorcees
| differently within their organization.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Kerb_ wrote:
| Could be in part because of the separation of church and state,
| and that monogamous pairings under organized civil legal
| systems has existed far longer than your God and already had
| routines in place for dissolution of said pairings, especially
| in cases where one partner is harmful to the other, despite
| fantastic and ritualistic promises and vows.
| tahoeskibum wrote:
| Just replace "emoji" which has low brow connotations, with
| "pictographic symbol language". Then, everything will make sense.
| zharknado wrote:
| This example is particularly salient because one point of
| evidence is a single emoji in a tweet: <full moon face emoji>
|
| This is a bit analogous to the "Shouting 'fire' in a crowded
| theater" idea, in that by default my intuition would be that
| conveying a single word or symbol couldn't possibly be weighty
| enough to constitute a crime on its own, but in certain contexts,
| it probably can.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Speech has to incite "imminent lawless action" to be illegal.
| Brandenburg v Ohio
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And it has to be _intended_ to do so.
| dcan wrote:
| Emojis are contract law in Canada:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/thumbs-up-emoji-...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I find the results of that famous case completely insane. A
| "thumbs up" emoji doesn't always mean "I read the contract and
| I herby sign it", it's often a lazy answer for "I read your
| last message with your request and will tend to it when I have
| the time and will get back to you later with my final answer".
| Majromax wrote:
| > I find the results of that famous case completely insane. A
| "thumbs up" emoji doesn't always mean [...]
|
| I invite you to read the decision itself (https://www.canlii.
| org/en/sk/skkb/doc/2023/2023skkb116/2023s...), rather than
| rely on mass-media summaries. In this case, the court does
| not in fact decide that a thumbs-up emoji _always_ means
| something. Instead, it considers the parties ' histories to
| note that prior contracts between them were often approved
| with a simple 'ok,' 'yup', or 'looks good'. The parties did
| not have a history of initially confirming receipt of a
| proposed contract and then later negotiating terms or having
| a separate signing.
|
| In that very specific context, the court found that thumbs-up
| emoji was a short approval much like 'yup'; see paragraphs 21
| and 34-36 of the decision.
| antisthenes wrote:
| If Emojis are legally actionable, then is "in Minecraft" a
| legally valid defense?
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(page generated 2023-12-30 23:01 UTC)