Emerging Technologies Blog

A Wisconsin man has been banned from the internet. Yes. That is legally possible. After harassing a neighbor by sending “gentlemen callers” to her house through a Craigslist ad without her knowledge. Jason Willis, 31, was arrested and took a plea deal this week, but one of the provisions of the deal is that he cannot use the internet. At all.

And if he goes online at all, in any way, he could end up serving time in prison. Willis put his neighbor’s address on Craiglist as a practical joke, and men by the score popped up at her house, all hours of the day..some wearing… well, not that much in the way of clothes…

The victim, named only as Dawn, contacted cops in Nov. 2012 and they traced the adverts to Willis.

Judge Allan Torhorst said the internet ban was an appropriate punishment, arguing “If you want to drive drunk, you’re not allowed to drive… 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.”