The new e-noying law
 

http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-anno...3-6022491.html

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

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.

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.

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."

It's illegal to annoy
A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

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.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."

That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.

Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)

Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.

"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"

Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.

"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."

He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.

It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.

If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.

And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.

Raph's Girl note: WTF?! :o

Well, that means we can now get people who harass people on this board in prison! Horray! :ohwell:

I'm all for it. People can harass people irl and get arrested, it only makes sense. aslong as it doesn't get abused anyway.

Oh such a law will be abused, all right. Just wait. Knowing the idiocy of a lot of people these days (well, at least on the coasts, anyways) it's just bound to happen.

Some believe freedom and/or laws should be taken full advantage of -- meaning in their minds, the freedom to take advantage of other people.

Thank goodness we don't have snots like that running amok in this forum. Seriously.

That means the Feds are speeding to your house right now.

Yeah, Im afraid it will be abused also. the idea is good, but it's going to get ruined by the same morons you are talking about. and quickly I bet. it should be reserved for the people that get not just called names a couple of times on forums, but for people that seriously just attack other people constantly. And even then, people shouldn't necessarily use it.

Quick! To Mexico! Or even better, Canada! As long as I wear a Leafs jersey and say "eh" a lot, I'll be just fine!

And dont forget to drink Beer!

What's wrong with beer?

Anyways, an interesting law. Not that I'd care about your laws, since I'm not affected by them in any way, but it could sure help to keep the flaming down.

But is it just me or did I understand it like it's more against spam than against regular flamers on message boards?

that message from the government annoys me can I have them put away now? lol
-Putrescent

Well, that would be worth a try. But I doubt that they'll listen, they're always above the law, you know. That's democracy for you, everybody's equal, but some are equaler...

I believe it's more for harrasment than flaming. Like if someone starts bothering you on a message board, brings it to email, Deviant Art, Live Journal, IMs, other message boards, takes out ads in Rollingstone and during the superbowl Etc.

I dont like the language its using. especially the annoy part. harrassment i get, but annoy. hell. I get annoyed by what i read on the net on a daily basis.

Not to blindly defend this law, but it probably uses the same reasoning as private nuisance laws.

A nuisance can be defined as a substantial interference with the right to use and enjoy land, which may be intentional, negligent or ultrahazardous in origin, and must be a result of defendant's activity. Switch out the word "land" for "the Internet" and maybe that's what's going on here.

This does sound like an anti-spam law to me. The "block sender" option works pretty well most of the time with individuals who are annoying you via email. However those of use who have been graced by the attention of a cyberstalker may see things as more complicated than that.

The problem I have with legislation like this is it often doesn't suggest a burden of proof for the plaintiff. I guess a burden is implied in "innocent until proven guilty," but the lack of specificity does ease abuse, at least initially. If there's no established burden, it will be decided by the precedent of the first cases on this matter.

I don't think this is going to imperil Usenet or Usenet-alikes. Flame wars are practically an expected part of the service.

Unfortunately it will be up to the courts to interpret this law.

Which means that there's gonna have to be some petty flame war brought to court before the vague language is improved upon. All those suits (and counter suits) are gonna tie up the lower courts and cost taxpayers a ton of money...

If you think about it, our whole governing system is a flame war.

Heheh...Let's hope none of the partisan bickering is done over email.....our whol political system could be in jeopardy!

This comes at an intresting time when the largest organized hack/spam assault in Internet history has just gone down. 3000+ members of the YTMND, Genmay, 4Chan and Fark hacked, spammed, and otherwise tore up the Ebaums world forums. Ebaums has had a reputation of stealing other people's content, and they happened to steal a popular .gif file from YTMND.

Apparently, this kind of assault is labeled as "cyber terrorism" (typical of the Bush Administration). YTMND members mostly lead this, through the weak "dont do it guys" facade of the owner, but all this is well documented on the YTMND sites:

http://cyberterrorism.ytmnd.com/

I can't say Ebaum didn't deserve it though, because he did.

That is the most annoying sound a web page has ever blared at me out of the blue.

I doubt that's a facade on the owners part. If people do illegal stuff and point to a site owner, the site owner or anyone they point to is gonna get drawn into a legal situation. Incitng riots tends to be frowned upon. (That's why I have people sign a contract saying they're responsible for their own sorry butts.)

But I'm a little slow and I don't see what any of that has to do with this. Different category of law.

Umm...

If that does not describe the Ebaums raid, then I dont know what does.

Nobody pointed to the site owner of YTMND. As a matter of fact, the owner took no action even as the raid was being discussed on the YTMND forums. Its sure as hell looks like he's putting on a benevolent face to avoid getting in trouble. I'm not saying he organized it or anything, and its not his fault. Its just that he didn't do anything about it.