Did you know you can be arrested for saying the wrong things on the internet? That’s what happened to Anthony Elonis of eastern Pennsylvania, who was sentenced to 44 months in jail for threatening to kill his wife on Facebook in 2010.

Elonis’ case will go to the Supreme Court this fall, hopefully to answer a popular 21st-century conundrum: Can what you say on the internet be used against you in a court of law? And where is the line between freedom of speech and protecting one’s safety online?

Allow me to get this much out of the way: Your right to privacy or free speech does not undermine another person’s right to feel safe and secure.

It’s already illegal to make direct threats like those Elonis made on Facebook using any medium other than the internet. And who can deny those comments emanated danger?

Elonis was frighteningly specific in a post that read, “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.”

On top of this statement to his wife, Elonis made inexcusable threats to the undercover FBI agent who was investigating him. After the agent visited him for questioning, Elonis posted another threat in the form of rap lyrics on the agent’s wall.

“Little agent lady stood so close, took all the strength I had not to turn the (woman) ghost,” he wrote. “Pull my knife, flick my wrist and slit her throat.”

A comment becomes criminal when it makes a reasonable person feel threatened, and it’s safe to this is one of those comments.

Some, including Elonis himself, have argued that if the Supreme Court decides against him we will lose our rights to free speech and privacy on the internet. Elonis has said he is willing to go to jail for those “constitutional” rights.

I am perplexed as to which rights Elonis was speaking of.

If he was talking about the right to privacy, that fight is not here. I am a strict proponent of privacy both on and off the internet, which is being lost daily. However, that struggle is not highlighted by this case.

That fight follows legislation that has been changing for more than a decade. The actions of the federal government – especially those granted power under the PATRIOT Act – have already challenged our right to privacy.

If you want to fight the government’s intrusion into our private lives, by all means do so. But let’s not muddy those waters with Elonis’ cruel stunt.

Perhaps Elonis was talking about the first amendment. That, too, is something I can get behind.

But here’s where things get tricky: In the 1969 Supreme Court case Watts v. U.S., the justices decided it’s OK to say you want to kill the president when making a political statement and not a direct threat.

Since then the court has specified that threatening statements are only protected when it’s clear that no real danger is present.

Elonis’ threats were neither political in nature nor simply hyperbolic. They seemed imminently dangerous and terrified those to whom they were directed. And so they don’t meet the court’s criteria for acceptable use of the first amendment.

Elonis should lose the battle he started, which has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with citizens’ safety. Like I’ve said, people have the right to feel safe and secure, and Elonis brazenly violated that right.

The time to stop online threats is now. If you agree, you can help by supporting Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in her fight to revive the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2013.

The bill targets cyber bullying in higher education and would give universities the legal authority to fight bullying online. If passed, it hopefully would set a precedent for laws against conline harassment and bullying everywhere.

As for Elonis, let us hope the Supreme Court decides against him and the deplorable statements he made online. He doesn’t deserve a trophy for stretching the constitution past common sense and striking fear in another human being.