Crank Blogging, Like Phone Calling, Now Illegal

On Thursday, President Bush signed into law a must-pass DoJ appropriations bill which contained a little gotcha for the internet. For decades, making anonymous abusive phone calls has been a federal crime, good for up to two years behind bars -- and the term "abusive" has included threats, harassment, and the much weaker "intent to annoy." Now, that telecommunications law has been extended to include the Internet, so when you post an anonymous troll to wind up your least-favorite blogger, you may break the law. This is silly: the law needs to start taking into account the qualitative differences between things like telephones, email inboxes, blogs, and IM accounts. A 3 AM phone call is different from a post to blogger.com calling me a jerk. I don't need federal protection from that Night Elf who keeps /chickening my Orc.

Comments

Re: article or opinion?

[stupidfoo]

It should also be noted that every single one of his articles takes pot shots at repubs and especially the Bush admin, whether they are warranted or not. This one was no exception. The law is portrayed as being pushed through the congress by those tricky freedom hating republicans, even though it was approved unanimously.

As a regular reader of his it gets rather annoying and distracting and it diminishes the effectiveness of the arguments he tries to make.

Re:First Anonymous Post

[technothrasher]

THANK YOU for referring to The united States of America as a republic and NOT as a democracy. I am so SICK of hearing every pundit, politician, and 'journalist' trying to brainwash us into thinking that we live in a democracy.

What the heck are you whining about? A republic is often, and definitely in the case of the US, also a representative democracy. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. If you're getting all pissy because you think the use of the word democracy should refer soley to direct democracies and no other forms, that's an issue you need to work through with your therapist.

Re:Is this law really needed?

[GileadGreene]

Not all libertarians believe in having no government. Libertarians in general are for a "minimal" government. There's a lot of debate between the various stripes of libertarians (anarcho-capitalists, market anarchists, minarchists, etc.) as to what actually constitutes "minimal". Some think that they can get away with no government. Others want government limited to providing courts and police (and maybe some military for national self-defense). There's plenty of shades of gray in between. About the only thing I've really seen libertarians agree on is that power in the hands of a government tends to be misused and abused, so keeping that power as limited as possible (for some definition of possible) is a good thing.