[Gustafa]

I came across a celebrity death hoax today on Facebook, it stated

facebook posted:

At about 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, our beloved actor Morgan Freeman passed away due to a artery rupture. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page.

It was posted in August and the page has since received just over 942,000 likes. The message above has had over 1,300,000 likes. Now while many people can quite plainly see this is a joke from reading the comments, some people have taken this seriously. Now there is no telling what sort of effect this might have on the celebrities family and friends, seeing something like this could cause a huge amount of panic and distress, not only to the family but to fans across the world.

Do you think these hoaxes should be punishable by law or not, and if so how severe should the punishment be? Personally I believe they should not be legal, due to the widespread confusion and distress this can cause via social networking channels.

(User was banned for this post ("No debate presented, asking a question" - Megafan))

[cdr248]

No

[Scotty.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...w_of_headlines

[swagboat]

Gustafa posted:

Personally I believe they should not be legal, due to the widespread confusion and distress this can cause via social networking channels.

It is of course sad and when someone who did something great passes away, but it's obviously generally done with reason, and with the exception of those doing it merely for the attention it should be perfectly viable for somebody bothered by the public to do something about it.

That it causes confusion and distress is not them to blame for, rather blame the world for reacting exaggeratedly to something that would eventually happen either way.

[Mr_Awesome]

No.

[Gekkosan]

It becoming illegal or legal doesn't mean it's not wrong and that it's merely trolling and shouldn't be done anyway.

And the worst thing that could happen is someone taking a step ahead and preparing the funeral already, or someone getting a heart-attack from the news and dying himself.

[YourFriendJoe]

It should be stopped yes but I don't see why they would make it illegal.