If you ever doubted that Bush was letting his quest for power take control of his position, here is your chance to rant. The internet, a long-sanctified refuge for people to do and act as they please under cover of pseudonym or nicknames has lost its shield of privacy. A new law signed by George W. Bush requires that anyone that "annoys" someone online must divulge his or her real name.. The problem is, different people get annoyed in different ways.
If I say I like Barney, one of the 100k members on a forum must get annoyed at that, it?s a statistical fact. If I say I hate Barney, another person (probably more) will also be annoyed that I said that.
If I even said ‘The sky is blue,’ a psychologically challenged person might feel offended that I overstated the obvious, and if I neglected to mention the color of the sky, someone might just take that the wrong way and I’ll find myself in jail.
Why?
According CNet:
"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. 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. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison."
I’m going to make my stance clear: I am not under any circumstances required to give my name out. I’m CG, maybe if I feel like it I’ll tell you my name, but you know what? Ban me, I’m saying what I please under the First Amendment on any forum or blog I choose. Do what you like, see if I care.
Right on! This is poppycock, and besides… if you are anonymous, how can anyone enforce this. So here’s how it goes: you annoy someone, and then there is a lawsuit filed to have someone (?) track you down and then what? Does this apply to servers hosted in the U.S.? What if the data is backed up in the U.S, but the abuse happened in Micronesia?
Well here’s the thing… You’re making this sound as if the whole point of the law enacted was to make illegal anonymous posting. That’s an outright falsehood, as is your portrayal of President Bush as a power-mad fascist.
The bill was not written by the president. The bill was not passed via the house and senate by the president. It was SIGNED by the president. And what would people be saying if Bush had vetoed this bill? “Bush Hates Women, Endorses Wife Beating!”
This is a typical tactic in Washington, slipping horrible stuff into must-pass bills. Don’t blame the President. Blame the slimeball senators who stuck the provision in there knowing full well Bush would HAVE to sign this bill.
I don’t think that can be used as an excuse..
I believe it is the right of the Citizens of the United States of America to have a president who will send back the bill, tell them to fix it, then send it back.
To me it makes no difference if it was a part of a 300 page book, or two sentences. Bush signed it in knowing fully well the reprecussions. Don’t tell me you seriously believe that the law is a package deal, that it cannot be changed? He just had to vetoe it, send it back to the house with his comments, then they would have changed it and a week later it would have been signed.
And BTW, it’s not as if wife-beating was previously legal anyway…..
Just to start things off: I think that this is pure horseshit
1) how do they enforce if? If someone Anonymously posts with “the intent to annoy” and somone requests their name, how do they know that it is true? How will the police (or who ever) know that the name is false? Are they just gona guess and cross their fingers? I sure hope not.
Also, what happens if you want to blog about somthing that happened at work because your boss came on to you sexually, but don’t want to give your name out in fear of your boss firing you?
What happens if you think your local goverment is corrupt, and again, don’t want to give out your name
It just makes it easier for stalkers, they get your full real name, then they just have to go to a site like http://www.daplus.us and boom. They have your phone #, your adress, everything. So much for privacy
I hope this law gets deamed unconstitutnal.