Dear Fairfield Lifers,
For the well-being and continuity of our group, I post the
following information, from today's New York Times news reports:
Annoying someone via the internet is now a federal crime.
Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on post-
ing annoying web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages with-
out disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a
blog as long as you do it under your real name.
This prohibition is included in the "Violence Against Women and De-
partment of Justice Reauthorization Act". Criminal penalties include
stiff fines and two years in prison.
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, a subsection called "Prevent-
ing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to
prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his iden-
tity and with intent to annoy."
Here's the relevant language:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to ori-
ginate telecommunications or other types of communications that are
transmitted, in whole or in part, by the internet... without disclos-
ing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass
any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under
Title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
My commentary:
Since the law uses the vague word "annoy", along with the stronger lan-
guage ("threaten, harass, abuse"), the result for a discussion group
such as ours may be:
1. You CAN discuss someone's ideas anonymously.
2. BUT you must reveal your true identity if you push the argument
very far, if you are perceived as "arguing", to where the other
person could get "annoyed" with you - whether for your perceived
"resistance", your differing point of view, etc.
3. And you must certainly reveal your true identity if you move
from debating his content (his ideas) to making any disparaging
or even merely uninvited comments about the person himself - in-
cluding comments about his motives, state of mind, character,
believability, qualifications, etc. - any of which could easily
be predicted to be "annoying" to someone expecting polite discus-
sion of his ideas only, and some of which may move beyond "annoy-
ing" and into the realm of "threatening" or "harassing".
The bottom line: by virtue of this new Federal law, we must each either
stop posting anything that could be reasonably expected to be annoying
to another, or continue posting these things but do it under our true
names (rather than anonymously). And the standard is low; it doesn't
take much to "annoy" someone. Probably a great majority of the posts
on our group would be considered "annoying" to someone that they were
directed toward.
The solution is simple: stop posting anonymously unless you put on kid
gloves.
Since I always post using my real name, this really doesn't affect
me, but there are many anonymous or pseudo-named posters on this
list, and often the posts get very contentious and many people's
feelings get "annoyed" and beyond. ;)
Since Yahoo is committed to preventing illegal behavior in its groups,
according to a number of sections of Yahoo's "Terms of Service" (that
we agreed to when joining up), Yahoo would have to discipline any in-
dividual poster (or group) that doesn't abide by this new Federal law -
anyone who posts potentially "annoying" posts anonymously or using a
screen name or pseudo-name. Yahoo would have to remove from its service
an individual who was reported to them as persisting in violating the
law. And a group like ours, if its leadership didn't self-police the
group by requiring posters who could possibly be perceived as annoying
anyone to post under their true names, would run the risk of being
deleted by Yahoo without warning, should Yahoo get some complaints.
From our past history, we can almost certainly count on Yahoo getting
complaints arising from our disgruntled or offended members using this
new Federal law.
Although I, and many freedom-of-speech advocates, think the language
of this law is way too vague and over-reaching - it IS the current
Federal law - and Yahoo pledges to uphold the law.
Hope this info is of service.
Namaste,
Michael
PARA - THE CENTER FOR REALIZATION
and THE RELATIONSHIP INSTITUTE
Michael Dean Goodman Ph.D., D.D., Director
Boca Raton (Palm Beach County) Florida * 561-350-3930 * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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