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Legislation In New York To Ban Anonymous Speech Online
Fluffeh writes "Republican Assemblyman Jim Conte said, '[this] turns the spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.' Republican Senator Thomas O'Mara added, '[this will] help lend some accountability to the Internet age.' The two are sponsoring a bill that would ban any New York-based websites from allowing comments (or well, anything) to be posted unless the person posting it attaches their name to it. But the bill also goes further, saying New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, must 'remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.'"
What about CDNs physically located in NY that serve news and video from very popular sites? And how are you going to verify all this information? Like, I go through Tor, I tell you I'm Jim Conte, I give you his home address and then I verify that I'm indeed him and all this time someone on the staff of this news site is ... doing what exactly? Verifying how? Are they calling ISPs and saying "Hey, does this IP address check out for this home address? And how on Earth are they going to be able to afford to do this for anonymous comments?
My work here is dung.
Lawmakers don't have a clue what they are doing and whenever they do something it's only for the ruination of things we enjoy.
Guess I won't be posting on any more websites hosted in New York.
What a great way to drive business away from your state. How long before they're all relocated in Jersey? Days?
... that sissies are not allowed on the internet. Is trolling/cyber-bullying bad, sure it is and I'm not condoning it. It's just sad that people are so thin-skinned that some goobers in politics feel the need to attempt to outlaw trollish comments!
Of course this probably has nothing to do with cyber-bulling or trolling and likely has everything to do with stopping leaks, dissent and general repression of free speech. After all, there is no speech more free than anonymous speech. Are they banning anon tips to the police and anon letters to the editor as well?
Good thing we didn't have laws like this when the Federalist Papers were written.
If there's one thing New York is good at, it's driving away businesses. I've watched cities around the state raise commercial taxes claiming it will bring in businesses, vote down major infrastructure improvements because it would "hurt businesses" and try to turn already clogged five lane avenues into two lane streets to "force people to slow down so they will see all of the businesses along that road".
you fuckers will start treating AC posts with some respect!
This will probably cost New York a pretty penny if it passes and they get sued over it.
Fortunately, crap like this wouldn't even make it out of the gate in New Hampshire, where I live, not after our legislature created a "constitutional review" standing committee a couple years ago. Any bill that a legislator believes to be possibly unconstitutional gets referred to that committee after coming out of its first committee, and they get to attach their recommendation when the bill gets voted on by the full legislature.
Liberty in your lifetime
Just goes to show how out of touch our legislators have become to believe it's even technically possible, let alone constitutional.
They're so disconnected from reality (i.e. the normal lives of their constituents) that it's like being ruled by space aliens.
Anonymity is necessary for Joe Public to exercise his right to free speech. The rich and powerful can't crush him like a bug if they don't know who he is.
We all agree on that, but I have to wonder where this is coming from? I don't mean from the (R) fellow, but where the money trail leads to. Maybe because I'm tired, but I can't think of who stands to monitarily benefit from this. Google? FBI? What's the point...?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Listen, I'm not saying that anyone who posts anonymously is definitely racist, I'm just saying that we can't currently prove that they aren't.
- MickB1942.
In the US, you can call yourself anything you want to, as long as you aren't trying to defraud someone. While they *might* be able to enforce this for NY residents, people who live in other states or countries would be free to do as they pleased.
I'm Jim Conte, you're Jim Conte, we're all JC. If this bill passes, I propose that slashdot change "Anonymous Coward" to "Jim Conte" (Oh, I see, he just wants to go down in history with Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens, and Santorum)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
One must bear in mind that this was back when private companies still had a shot at establishing the network effect now realized by the Internet.
Seastead this.
I hope this doesn't signal a new "I'll get my bill auto-approved by saying it addresses _____" era. While I support almost any thing to stop bullying, I worry that this is just a "well we tried bill".
Yeah, I've got nothing...
This law would likely do exactly the opposite of what it's theoretically intended to do. When someone posts something that you don't like, you'll have all the information you need to stalk and harass the poster. Forget online bullying, this would enable physical bullying.
Something tells me "Jim Conte" and "Thomas O'Mara" will be doing a lot of comment posting if this goes through...
In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, a 1995 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court found that "Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society."
How does this alleviate bullying, again?
I assume that the 'deanonymized' data would not be shown for most people, but it must be for the site owner (apparently), so even if it's not hacked and exposed, the site owner is now a target for social engineering or direct manipulation or even bullying
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
...let Anonymous kindly step in and do its thing with Mr. Conte/O'Mara...that would be a nice ironic touch here.
I love when politicians bring forth these kinds of "true identity" issues, for they are usually the LAST ones who wish to have certain activities tied to them. Perhaps feeding them a dose of their own medicine would shift opinion.
I'm Jim Conte, wtf are you talking about?
... colocation facilities in New Jersey and Connecticut see a rise in business.
Do these idiots know that electrons don't care about state boundaries?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
My first thought, like many of the comments here was that this would be completely unenforceable. Then I realized, it doesn't have to be enforced across the board. Sure, there is no way a law can completely eliminate anonymous speech on the internet, especially a law that is only applied to one state. What this does do however is give anyone who is against free, anonymous speech a new tool for removing posts they don't like from the internet. If the site is hosted in NewYork this is a 'get it off the net free' card for anybody who wants to remove something.
I'm Jim Conte and so's my wife!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
'[this will] help lend some accountability to the Internet age.'
Why don't we focus on transparency and accountability in our leadership first?
How could the problems caused by any individual even begin to compare to the damage government failures cause?
apply this to all media, including print and radio.
What? You can't really verify someone's identity when they call in to a radio show? And those letters to-the-editor are similarly also difficult to ascertain the true authorship of?
Oh my, we've NEVER had any way to do this? The horror!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It might not get anywhere, but pieces of legislation like this give us a glimpse of what certain legislators would pass if they got the chance. Reason enough to vote them out so they never get the chance.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Many Slashdotters might not read or reply to Anonymous Cowards as a general rule, but they'll defend their right to comment!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yes, so there are anonymous douchebags. That doesn't mean anonymity should be banned. There's no way you can craft a law which would effectively ban anonymity in the case of slander of private parties, and not end up with a law which would be mostly used for banning anonymity in other cases. First thing they'd use it for in NYC is going after anyone who anonymously wrote anything bad about the NYPD or Commissioner Ray Kelly, probably.
Doesn't work that way. You don't get to identify a problem, propose a totally ridiculous solution, then shift the burden of solving the problem to anyone opposing your solution.