Slashdot Mirror
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.
...does that mean when you get a -1 Flamebait on slashdot, the authorities are dispatched?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
The law doesn't spell out everything. It's up to judges and juries to decide what qualifies as harrassment. Would they decide repeated 3AM calls is harrassment? Probably. Would they decide somebody calling you a jerk is harrassment? Probably not. But it's something that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis, not something that can be spelled out explicitly by law ahead of time.
I don't need federal protection from that Night Elf who keeps /chickening my Orc.
No, but if you were a small-time blogger just scraping by on ad revenue, you might need protection from people making your comment system utterly useless with continued abuse. If Slashdot didn't have full-time staff to program things like the moderation system, the comments would be useless. And believe me, people aren't coming to Slashdot for the crappy game reviews, years-old news and dupes.
I ave fellt personally harrased and annoyed by many statements made by politicians. Can I press charges? How can this new law not apply to any form of speech?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The intent of the medium should be considered in these kind of laws.
Blogs are public with an implicit invitation ( unless comments are shut off ) by the owner to contact the owner to share your views.
That is not the same with a phone.
...is paved with Congressional legislation. Who are they kidding? Just how enforceable is this going to be? Are the federal courts (which are already overburdened with real criminal cases) now to be swamped with case of "he called me a fsck-head on Slashdot?" The intent is good, allowing people to avoid harrassment but the execution is lousy. I can't see this standing up to the inevitable challenge by the ACLU in front of the Supreme Court.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
For every -1 Flamebait that appears on Slashdot we should all file a federal lawsuit that must be investigated and tried. Sometimes you just have to prove that something is too stupid to be in the rule book. We'll see how long the justice system can withsatnd a very stupid law that can be invoked by the average citizen. Any takers on a template complaint form to save lawyer fees? :D
And just for clarification, I'm all for protection agains harrassment, but a law against making an anonymous message that annoys someone is ridiculous.
Currently the internet is not trusted. I don't really know who you are and you don't know who I am and we can pester each other without really being able to do anything about it.
Total open internet doesn't work. That is clear from slashdot alone else why would we have moderation and bans? If you ever run a website you will quickly learn that you will need to secure your site from many attacks.
There is something about being anonymous that can bring out the worst in people and with the internet it doesn't matter how small a group it is, they still number in the millions because of the global reach. Or put another way I don't need to worry about some kid from Japan gatecrashing my Dutch LUG. That same kid however can easily try attacking the website and I can't grab him by the throath and show what happens to little punks.
So lets move to a totally un-anonymous internet where who you are is known. Post a troll on slashdot and be assured someone from your hometown will come by and teach you a lesson.
Nice idea no? No. Because for all the trolls and flamers and idiots and time wasters there are also those people who contribute stuff they can get in trouble for but we would really like to know. Oh they ain't many, every slashdot story has trolls versus only a handfull that have inside information BUT some people find that the trolls are worth it.
And yet should that mean anyone can do anything they want and not have to fear being punished for it? Saying that people should be able to harras, threathen or even annoy while hiding behind anonymity is al very good until you are at the receiving end.
I happen to know one of the people who claims to be one of the gnaa members. Yes he is as sad in real live as well but that is not the real funny thing. He sometimes gets "attacked" himself and then bitterly complains about how people are costing him bandwidth from a DOS (yeah a DOS not even a DDOS). A lot of people are for freedom but only if it is them being free, the moment someone else uses freedom against them it is time to get the law involved.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This says you are free to speak. Strictly speaking it does not say you do not have to face consequences of what you say. (Shouting fire in a crowded theather example) It certainly does not say you have the right do speak anonymous. The amendment was clearly not written by lawyers. Not good ones anyway.
Of course it also was written a long time ago when if you wanted to say something you had to either own a press or stand up in front of your audience. The tech to speak from another continent without ever having to show yourselve was unheard perhaps even undreamed of.
This law has a lot of nasty possibilities but as someone who has had to clean to many websites after a visit by a person with the intent to annoy I am torn in two. The majority of me knows this is going to lead to trouble and the other part of me has a list of IP's in his firewall that he would loved to have traced by the feds and their users put in a wooden chair with leather straps and a link to another kind of net.
Should at least make for some intresting bash.org posts when someone convinces an annoying kid they are about to be arrested for talking in caps.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perhaps this is the legal vehicle to aid in the prosecution of electronic harassment. A growing trend with middle and high school kids is to create blogs/website/emails to harass fellow students.
I have seen some very vicious blog sites devoted to the defamation of a fellow student. Without the legal ammo, law enforcement has their hands tied as to the extent they can investigate and remove the content.
With the web, you can anonymously bully fellow students from the comforts of your own bedroom.
We need to weigh your right to flame someone with the rights of people to be protected from harassment.
What amazes me, more than anything, is that some people seem to feel the need to draw a line between the real world and the Internet. For example, are on-line auctions THAT different from real-life auctions? How about shopping carts?