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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.
Actually, I think the entire law against crank calling is pretty worthless now, anyway.
We have Caller ID -- we can refuse to answer the phone. If crank calls were a major concern, you'd see market solutions to the problem. Companies would come up with "quiet time" phone features that would prevent any ring after a certain hour unless you coded it with numbers that were acceptable.
As you can see with this law, and thousands of other bad laws, you enter into a slippery slope of stupidity.
The Department of Justice is completely out of control -- nearly 99% of the Department is unconstitutional and unnecessary at the federal level. In this end, this is an abridgement on the freedom of speech. Every time government wants to penalize "edgy" speech, they are just finding another way to control normal speech.
I think we know who the real cranks are in this case -- read the entire law/budget, you'll find more bad things than usual. In fact, I can't see anything in the budget that seems worthwhile anymore.
I'm not concerned with this particular bill as I am with one of the tactics that was used.
Namely, I'm talking about the embedding of other mostly unrelated things into a bill. It's especially bad, since with a bill such as this one, the existance of the DoJ relies on this bill getting passed to get its funding. Because of this, members of congress feeled pressed that the bill must be passed (as was noted in the first sentence of jamie's summary).
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.
Yes, you're right. What sane person would need such a law?
But on the other hand, I can see how politicians and people in power might need such a law. It would make it illegal to criticize them anonymously.
This law is just part of a continuing effort to erode and limit the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Continuing attacks on fundamental rights in the United States will continue as long as fear replaces philosophy as the primary tool used to win elections and retain/attain power in elections. It is imperative for citizens of democracies to fight laws which restrict rights -- even if that means protecting the rights of those they find offensive. The test of any action should be whether that action restricts of limits the freedome of others. If it does, then the act is bad., If it does not, then it should be tolerated even if it is ugly and indecent.
If software can't do something useful in 10 minutes, it won't
The point of all this bullshit is simply to create a web of laws which can be used to ensnare anybody.
The next time some wingnut retard says 'so long as you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear', point this out (and tell them how annoying they are).
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
It should be a crime to prosecute someone unconstitutionally.
This law sweeps across with a broad stroke and that's bad legislation.
One problem is a matter of 'annoying' people. What is annoying varies from person to person.
On the one hand, this means that spammers face yet another law against them. So, spamming while in the U.S. is a really bad idea. I'm sorry, if your name is really Ivan Charles Wiener, then, ok, I guess you can continue to send me erectile dysfunction ads as I.C. Wiener. But Heywood Jablowmie had better look out!
My question then is a matter of whether or not posting anonymously on a blog is a problem. If you allow real anonymity and you aren't prepared to handle the system, well, you're a fool. But most blogging software takes care of that. And if you force people to register, problem solved.
The big problem is that 'recipient of communication' is undefined. So, if I have a blog, and I allow people to post anonymously and they don't annoy me, is it a problem if some politician visits my blog and sees that? The original author is anonymous. Granted, as the owner and effective publisher who is not anonymous, well, I would argue that it's now my problem, and too bad, and so on. But sites, like Slashdot, that allow anonymous and disavow ownership of any kind of the post, well, that could be a big problem, as then Slashdot is not committing a crime directly, but can be considered an accessory.
Hopefully, this thing will be given a reasonable smackdown, but I doubt it.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
You miss the same thing that Bush supporters and detractors alike miss, repeatedly.
We are not at war.
Every time Bush or a supporter says "so-and-so must be done because of the war on terror" or "this right must be suspended because of the war on terror", remind them that the United States has not declared a war in over half a century.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And yet here we are, posting here and in all those articles MarkusQ referenced... free speech is alive and well, believe it or not, and people bitching about it not being free while they freely post their rants here are too oblivious to see the irony.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
And yet here we are, posting here and in all those articles MarkusQ referenced... free speech is alive and well, believe it or not, and people bitching about it not being free while they freely post their rants here are too oblivious to see the irony.
The fact that some people in some cases are able to express their views does not mean that "free speech is alive and well." The point of free speech is that everybody can do it, without recrimination.
-- MarkusQ
We are not at war.
Good catch. I keep forgetting that. I guess that's a good demonstration of how "the Big Lie" works; they keep repeating it and after awhile you start going along with it even though you know it's false.
--MarkusQ
"If you think we are not at war now, you must have been living in a cave for the last few year."
Well I think we are not at war and I haven't been living in a cave. There is nothing technical about it-we have been fighting terrorists for a long time. We are engaged in multiple conflicts and troops are suffering casualties. Nothing unususal there-it happens regularly.
Frankly the "war on terror" is roughly akin to the "war on drugs" or the "war on x". They all are poorly defined and generally impossible to win. Because they fail to address the underlying problems. Invading a country is easy. Changing a society is hard.
Frankly I am not concerned about Osama. Neither is the US government based on its actions. I am concerned about a government that wants to reduce my rights and priviledges for a false sense of security and so they can be seen as "doing something". Of course, I am more afraid of the clueless people like you who support those measures. That is the real threat.
Remember that terrorism is insignificant when compared to other preventable deaths. More people are killed driving in a month than died in 9/11. But you don't see a "war on road deaths".
"there will have to be a trial to determine if you are actually guilty"
You mean a trial to determine that you are actually guilty...
Most of you are looking at this from an individual perspective and you are grossly mistaken. How foolish you all are to think this law is to protect you! You the people! Hah! This administration doesn't do things for the people, they do them for big businesses with lots of funding to contribute to campaigns and with lobbyists who have big entertainment budgets. In other words corporations who are tired of trying to use ineffective civil law suits to stifle free speech about them. So this law is _not_ to give you power--it is to give corporations the power to criminalize product and corporate criticism on the internet. After all, civil suits are so darned expensive, but if a corporation can send a few people to jail, then that will have an immediate and severe chillng effect and squelch bad product reviews and negative comments about customer service and corporations. Don't believe me? Wait an see.
Total open internet doesn't work. That is clear from slashdot alone else why would we have moderation and bans?
No, Slashdot is not an example why open internet doesn't work. It's the opposite, it's one of many working models which facilitate a community despite and because of the near-to anonymity. Moderation in particular is a great way to deal with a lot of crap that people post when they don't need to fear real world retribution.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I haven't read the actual warrant, so I have no idea who I'd side with.
My friend, you don't have to read the warrant; you just need to read Alito's dissent a bit more attentively.
The important line is the last one (emphasis added): Second, even if the warrant did not contain such authorization, a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so, and therefore the appellants are entitled to qualified immunity.
Now understand that: Alito's saying that it's OK if a cop misreads a warrant and does something it doesn't authorize, the cop can't be sued.
Now let's think about that. If your doctor misreads a drug formulary and gives you Topamax (an epilepsy drug) when he meant to give you Toprol-XL (a drug for heart failure), and as a result you have a heart attack, would you say that you shouldn't be allowed to sue?
Now as to the facts of the case Alito dissented from: the warrant only described, and authorized, the search of one adult male. When the cops went to the man's home to arrest him, that adult male's wife and daughter were with him. Even though the warrant only authorized a search of the man, the cops also strip searched his wife and the ten-year-old daughter.
The warrant names one adult man, and the police "misread" it to include a ten-year-old girl, and they make her take off all her clothes and bend over and be searched by a stranger.
That's a pretty substantial misreading, you'd agree? Well, maybe you wouldn't agree, but consider this: Alito's opinion was a dissent; that means two other judges disagreed with Alito and thought the police went too far.
And one of those other judges was none other than Bush's current head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff -- no "liberal" he.
So, friend, does my explication help you decide that police strip-searching a ten-year-old girl is wrong?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Of course nobody wants to see little girls strip-searched. Stop avoiding my point by bringing emotional rhetoric into it.
Alito did not say that any mistakes a cop might make are ok. Let me change the emphasis on the same quote and see if it sounds different:
The suggestion appears that if a reasonable were to think he had permission under the warrant to search the family, then it's appropriate to grant him immunity. Now, I'm no lawyer, but I think that's the same sort of reasonableness standard that's applied elsewhere in the law.
What the text of the warrant specified and why the cops thought they were allowed to search the family is exactly what we should be discussing, but you haven't brought that up because you keep trying to make an emotional appeal that's unrelated.
So if you'd like to discuss whether the cops were reasonable, why they thought they had the right to the search, and whether they did or not, then by all means, let's discuss it. I'm not predisposed toward agreeing with either side until I look at the warrant and the circumstances. But please stop headlining with inflammatory text like "ALITO SUPPORTS UNAUTHORIZED STRIP SEARCHES"