y Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-anno...10-1028_3-6022
491.html
Story last modified Mon Jan 09 04:00:00 PST 2006
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.
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so next time any of you call me a name your goin to jail!!!
