Posted on 01/10/2006 12:15:49 PM PST by laney
A piece of legislation recently signed by President Bush makes it illegal to send an e-mail or a message over the internet that will annoy someone without revealing your full name. The courts will get to decide what’s annoying and what isn’t, and the penalty, if you are found to have annoyed someone, is two years in jail and a stiff fine. I find it extremely creepy that our Congress believes they should regulate annoying behavior. We really need to clean house in ‘06.
It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
“The use of the word ‘annoy’ is particularly problematic,” says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “What’s annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else.”
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.”
To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section’s other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.
In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess. . . . . .
I guess this makes me a criminal every day around here!
So this does what besides give unstable and violent people the ability to take personal physical revenge for any perceived slight on a messageboard?
I see 5-10 years behind bars in my future.
THIS WHOLE POST IS VERY ANNOYING!
How many times can this article or others on the same law have to be posted before I can be officially "annoyed"?
So, if I go into the "From The Left" chat room on AOL and insult someone I can do jail time?
I am annoyed with the number of times this story has been posted here.
Yes.
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