Cosa ne pensate di questo decreto Bushiano?
Anonymous Internet Annoying Is Illegal in the U.S.
How bizarre:
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.
[...]
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."
What does this mean for the comment section of this blog? Or any blog? Or
Usenet?
More importantly, what does it mean for our society when obviously stupid
laws like this get passed, and we have to rely on the police being nice
enough to not enforce them?
EDITED TO ADD (1/9) Some commenters to BoingBoing clarify the legal issues.
This is from an anonymous attorney:
The anonymous harassment provision ( Link ) is the old telephone-annoyance
statute that has been on the books for decades. It was updated in the widely
(and in many respects deservedly) ridiculed Communications Decency Act to
include new technologies, and the cases make clear its applicability to
Internet communications. See, e.g., ACLU v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 829 n.5
(E.D. Pa. 1996) (text here), aff'd, 521 U.S. 824 (1997). Unlike the
indecency provisions of the CDA, this scope update was not invalidated in
the courts and remains fully effective.
In other words, the latest amendment, which supposedly adds Internet
communications devices to the scope of the law, is meaningless surplusage.
From:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/anonymous_inter.html
