Police in a small Mississippi town are investigating the ownership of two parody Twitter accounts. According to the Clarion-Ledger, one of the accounts was created after the city's Chief Administration Officer was fired by the Board of Aldermen and the other after a veto by the mayor was overridden by the board.
The two accounts were supposedly labeled as parodies, but the yet-to-be-discovered account owner(s) could end up facing criminal charges under a 2011 Mississippi law. The statute made it a misdemeanor to impersonate another person on the Internet.
[A]ny person who knowingly and without consent impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet website or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening or defrauding another person is guilty of a misdemeanor.While the statute does not explicitly exempt parody impersonations, is does require that "another person would reasonably believe ... that the defendant was or is the person who was impersonated." Surely labeling the account as a parody would fix that.
The statute punishes the crime with a fine of $250 to $1,000 and/or between 10 days and a year in prison.
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