TROLL WAR!!!
[}:)][}:)][}:)]
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quote:Originally posted by dcon12
quote:Originally posted by He Dog
I don't know why we never seem to get a droll troll.
No demand. Don
dcon 12--and I say this with the greatest of affection--isn't that you?
[:D][:D][:D]0 -
quote:Originally posted by JamesRK
BOOK HIM! [:D] [:D] [:D]
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance,+go+to+jail/2010-1028_3-6022491.html
[black]Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
By Dean McCullagh
Published: January 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
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. ....
OMG, please tell me this is a joke. How much $$$ is it going to take to overturn this POS legislation, well-intended though it may originally have been?
If ANYBODY can explain to me how this stands a chance against the first amendment, then please do so immediately.0 -
quote:Originally posted by tapwater
...A newbie (maybe) ripped on JamesRK. 'nuff said.
I was referring to a newbie stepping on a newbie, and both of said newbies have been accused of being under-the-bridge matter.
Don't even ask me which thread...I don't remember. I saw it and decided to start something before heading out of the house for a few hours.[}:)][}:)][:D][:D]0 -
Could we not arrange to feed said under-bridge-dwellers forage from the family Euphorbiacae? That would relaxe them some methinks. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
OMG, please tell me this is a joke. How much $$$ is it going to take to overturn this POS legislation, well-intended though it may originally have been?
If ANYBODY can explain to me how this stands a chance against the first amendment, then please do so immediately.
I posted it because I thought it was funny. Now that you mention it, I guess it's not very funny. It never crossed my mind that somebody might try to enforce it.
I came across it while I was looking for the exact wording of an old Woody Guthrie quote, "The more laws you pass, the more criminals you gonna have." Never did find the quote. Another one I was looking for was "All laws become jokes, the problem is the jokes which become law". When I saw this law, I thought it would fit right into this thread, so I posted it.
Evidently it has been the law of the land since 5 January 2006. I haven't heard of anybody being charged under it yet. I don't think Arlen Specter meant it as a joke. I don't think the man has cracked a smile in his whole life. I suspect it was intended to slow down the SPAM, but we know how thoroughly Specter thinks things through.
I'm confident that if anybody tries to use this as a real law, it won't last a day in court. But then again, we do have a law against "hate" where the criminal is punished for his frame of mind instead of the crime he committed.0 -
James, Thoreau wrote that the easiest way to reduce crime was to make fewer laws. That is what we need now, fewer laws, profoundly, fewer laws. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by He Dog
James, Thoreau wrote that the easiest way to reduce crime was to make fewer laws. That is what we need now, fewer laws, profoundly, fewer laws.
So what you are saying is fewer laws. Don0 -
quote:Originally posted by JamesRK
BOOK HIM! [:D] [:D] [:D]
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance,+go+to+jail/2010-1028_3-6022491.html
Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
By Dean McCullagh
Published: January 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
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 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.
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.
Biography
Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's chief political correspondent. He spent more than a decade in Washington, D.C., chronicling the busy intersection between technology and politics. Previously, he was the Washington bureau chief for Wired News, and a reporter for Time.com, Time magazine and HotWired. McCullagh has taught journalism at American University and been an adjunct professor at Case Western University.
Thanks for the post JamesRK. On the surface, it smacks of anything but American. Why should that surprise anyone though? The democrats already want him booked, and he seems to be trying his best to have most everyone feel the same way! [:D][:D][:D]0 -
quote:Originally posted by He Dog
James, Thoreau wrote that the easiest way to reduce crime was to make fewer laws. That is what we need now, fewer laws, profoundly, fewer laws.
Is that H. Ross Thoreau?0
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