BLACKWELL, Justice.
Matthew Chan has a website on which he and others publish commentary critical of copyright enforcement practices that they consider predatory. Linda Ellis is a poet, and her efforts to enforce the copyright in her poetry have drawn the ire of Chan and his fellow commentators. On his website, they have published nearly 2,000 posts about Ellis, many of which are mean-spirited, some of which are distasteful and crude, and some of which publicize information about Ellis that she would prefer not to be so public. At least one post is written in the style of an open letter to Ellis, referring to her in the second person, and threatening to publicize additional information about Ellis and her family if she continues to employ the practices of which Chan and the other commentators disapprove. It is undisputed that Chan never caused any of these posts to be delivered to Ellis or otherwise brought to her attention. But it also is undisputed that Chan anticipated that Ellis might see the commentary on his website, and he may have even intended that she see certain of the posts, including the open letter to her.
Ellis eventually did learn of the posts, and she sued Chan for injunctive relief under the Georgia stalking law, OCGA § 16-5-90 et
1. We begin with the settled principles that inform our consideration of the meaning of OCGA § 16-5-90(a)(1). A statute draws its meaning, of course, from its text. See Sentinel Offender SVCS. v. Glover, 296 Ga. 315, 328(3)(a), 766 S.E.2d 456 (2014). When we read the statutory text, "we must presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant," Deal v. Coleman, 294 Ga. 170, 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted), and so, "we must read the statutory text in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would." FDIC v. Loudermilk, 295 Ga. 579, 588(2), 761 S.E.2d 332 (2014) (citation and punctuation omitted). The common and customary usages of the words are important, Hendry v. Hendry, 292 Ga. 1, 2-3(1), 734 S.E.2d 46 (2012), but so is their context. Smith v. Ellis, 291 Ga. 566, 573-574(3)(a), 731 S.E.2d 731 (2012). "For context, we may look to other provisions of the same statute, the structure and history of the whole statute, and the other law — constitutional, statutory, and common law alike — that forms the legal background of the statutory provision in question." May v. State, 295 Ga. 388, 391-392, 761 S.E.2d 38 (2014) (citations omitted). With these principles in mind, we turn now to the relevant statutory text.
In pertinent part, OCGA § 16-5-90(a)(1) provides that "[a] person commits the offense of stalking when he or she ... contacts another person at or about a place or places without the consent of the other person for the purpose of harassing and intimidating the other person."
2. That a communication is about a particular person does not mean necessarily that it is directed to that person. This principle is reflected in Collins v. Bazan, 256 Ga.App. 164, 568 S.E.2d 72 (2002), and Marks v. State, 306 Ga.App. 824, 703 S.E.2d 379 (2010), two cases in which our Court of Appeals addressed questions about how the stalking law applies to speech about another. In Collins, the trial court entered an injunction that, among other things, forbade the defendant to "discuss" a medical condition of his ex-girlfriend with others. Reversing that portion of the injunction, the Court of Appeals held that it could not be sustained as merely an injunction against stalking, inasmuch as "[p]ublishing or discussing a person's medical condition with others obviously does not constitute ... contacting that person." Collins, 256 Ga.App. at 165(2), 568 S.E.2d 72. In Marks, the defendant was prohibited as a condition of probation from "contacting" his ex-wife, and his probation was revoked after he "posted untrue statements about her on several websites." The Court of Appeals reversed the revocation of his probation, citing Collins and holding that the defendant posting about his ex-wife on the Internet — posts that the ex-wife discovered only as a result of searching for her name on the Internet — did not amount to the defendant "getting in touch with or communicating with [her]." Marks, 306 Ga.App. at 826(1), 703 S.E.2d 379.
The limited evidence in the record shows that Chan and others posted a lot of commentary to his website about Ellis, but it fails for the most part to show that the commentary was directed specifically to Ellis as opposed to the public. As written, most of the posts appear to speak to the public, not to Ellis in particular, even if they are about Ellis. And there is no evidence that Chan did anything to cause these posts to be delivered to Ellis or otherwise brought to her attention, notwithstanding that he may have reasonably anticipated that Ellis might come across the posts, just as any member of the Internet-using public might. The publication of commentary directed only to the public generally does not amount to "contact," as that term is used in OCGA § 16-5-90(a)(1), and most of the posts about Ellis quite clearly cannot form the basis for a finding that Chan contacted Ellis.
Judgment reversed.
All the Justices concur, except MELTON, J., who concurs in Divisions 1 and 2 and in the judgment.