Abreu Report is not a one-man project. Just before I parted the US last week, I [and by I, I mean "Abreu Report"] published an article titled: Grandmotherf*cking in da 'Hood.
That article is attributed to Chubby -- the pseudonym of my good friend from Yale. Any Dominican person who is a bit chubby receives the nickname "Chubby," including one of my own 5 siblings.
Chubby is also my editor on occasions and he has in the past helped me publish satire articles for the Yale Daily News. In November of 2007, I published: Making US a Police State Would Lower Health Care, Prevent National Disaster. In that article, I foresaw how the size of the US prison population would become a contentious issue, as well as predicting that health care programs would be used to strip US citizens of their freedoms.
There can be no doubt that for almost a decade I have been known as a writer of satire, not only for the Yale Daily news, but also for the Rumpus and multiple other publications. Satire often borrows from reality, exaggerating events, using names to confuse reality, and arguing the opposite point-of-view to prove how ridiculous some opinions can be.
However, we have reached the point where even the person who edited an article can be fined for slander. Abreu Report does not censor any story submitted by one of our approved submitters. Isn't it possible that I told a story to one of my friends about an incident with a Dutch policewoman, and that he decided to write about it from the comfort of his home in California?
If indeed it was the case that a story was published by another submitter for Abreu Report -- a submitter based outside of local Dutch jurisdiction -- can the police file charges against him for insulting a policewoman in Amsterdam?
Just recently, a town in Quebec decided that it was illegal for people to insult cops online. If I were to write "offensive" material about an officer in Granby, Quebec, does that mean that I could be fined all the way here in my house in the Netherlands?
To just what extent are we willing to tolerate online speech being criminalized?
