Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.
It’s no joke. 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.
Update: Here are two different views of this law:
Orin Kerr says:
This is just the perfect blogosphere story, isn’t it? It combines threats to bloggers with government incompetence and Big Brother, all wrapped up and tied togther with a little bow. Unsurprisingly, a lot of bloggers are taking the bait.
And Cal Lanier blogs that this amendment simply applies the existing law to VOIP.
Here’s the important part of the new definition: includes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications .
If that doesn’t ring a bell, you probably aren’t familiar with the battle to define VOIP (voice over internet protocol). The previous law assumed that all phone calls would be made via a “telecommunications service” using a “telecommunications device”.
