WI Man Receives 30-Month Internet Ban After Sending Random Craigslist Users To Neighbor’s House

Date posted: February 14, 2014 | Posted in Odds & Ends | 0 comments

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It’s almost the weekend, so here’s a relatively light-hearted story for you all. Sometimes a headline just says it all, and yesterday’s Gawker post entitled “​Man Banned From the Internet for Sending Naked Men to Neighbor’s Home” certainly caught our attention. The facts here are suitably ridiculous, and another example of dumb things that people do online. In this instance, a 31 year-old man in Wisconsin used his female next-door neighbor’s real name, address and photograph, and posted a series of personal ads on Craigslist, encouraging gentleman callers to, well, call. As the local NBC news station reports:

One of the men showed up wearing nothing but a trench coat.
“He had my full name. He knew my address. And he said, ‘Oh, I got it off of Craigslist. You put an ad on there,” ‘[the neighbor]’ exclaimed.

After he was identified, the culprit accepted a plea deal, and is to serve 30 months of probation, during which time, he’s not allowed to go online at all. Imagine all the memes, novelty hits and emerging social media platforms he’ll be blissfully unaware of! On the other, less-flippant, hand, he’ll find it very difficult to find or maintain employment without access to an email account for two and a half years. The Internet has been deemed a basic human right by the UN, and cutting off this man’s access to it for such a long time may raise some eyebrows.

Racine County Circuit Court Judge Allan Torhorst explained his unusual sentencing:

“If you want to drive drunk, you’re not allowed to drive,” Torhorst told TODAY’S TMJ4.
“To me, a public availability of the Internet—to use it the way he did—is unconscionable. Everybody knows it’s wrong. He knew it was wrong. He admitted it.”

The defendant has a month to disconnect his existing service, and could face up to a year and a half in prison if he lapses during the period of his probation.