Crank Blogging, Like Phone Calling, Now Illegal 666
On Thursday, President Bush signed into law a must-pass
DoJ appropriations bill
which contained a
little gotcha for the internet.
For decades, making anonymous abusive phone calls has been a federal crime, good for up to two years behind bars -- and the term "abusive" has included threats, harassment, and the much weaker "intent to annoy." Now, that telecommunications law has been extended to include the Internet, so when you post an anonymous troll to wind up your least-favorite blogger, you may break the law. This is silly: the law needs to start taking into account the qualitative differences between things like telephones, email inboxes, blogs, and IM accounts. A 3 AM phone call is different from a post to blogger.com calling me a jerk. I don't need federal protection from that Night Elf who keeps /chickening my Orc.
Re:Really reason, Bush googled himself (Score:3, Informative)
Re: article or opinion? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. It's by Declan McCullagh. Declan is an advocacy journalist. A traditional journalist would have been less likely to know about annoy.com and Thomas's concurrence in McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission.
Declan runs the politech list, and writes for Cnet.
If I recall correctly, he was a student government leader at Carnegie-Mellon when a free-speech controvery happened there, and parlayed that into a job with Time magazine.
Slashdot readers may remember his interview with FEC commissioner Brad Smith, which set off a firestorm of bloggers versus the FEC.
He's also a photojournalist, visit his web page for photos of geeks.
His coverage suggests that Spectre, and the congress, have once again violated their oaths of office. That annoys me.
At majors.blogspot.com [blogspot.com] I have links to the 4 major cases that uphold the right to be anonymous and annoying. I litigate in this area, but not very effectively. I'd be willing to work with people who want to challenge this statute. - arbitrary aardvark.
Re: article or opinion? (Score:4, Informative)
As a regular reader of his it gets rather annoying and distracting and it diminishes the effectiveness of the arguments he tries to make.
Re:intent of the medium (Score:3, Informative)
Somehow (gee, I wonder) it got kinda screwed up on the way to the bill, and now inludes all internet communication.
Responding to what's written (Score:3, Informative)
He said:
You could certainly argue that this law in particular perhaps goes too far, but you're almost saying it's OK to harass people, until some company invents technology that you can purchase to stop harassment. That is just plain silly.
You said:
Fine. I'll pay $6 for a caller ID box and $24 a year for piece of mind. You want to pay for bureaucracy and red tape and non-effective unconstitutional legislation? You should pay your share of what you use, I'd like to bow out of it.
What does your response have to do with his comment? He is saying that your philosophy, as you phrased it, implies that you don't believe we should be protected from harassment unless there is a non-governmental way of doing it. You are not addressing his point that it is "just plain silly" to argue that the only allowed way to protect from harassment is through the market.
Now, it so happens that I agree with you that the DoJ has gone way beyond what the constitution allows, and that too many powers have bubbled up to the federal level. I even agree with you that the market is likely a better solution to harassing phone calls than legislation, although I think it is worth debating.
I do not agree that "the market" is the way to solve every problem, or even the problem of harassment in general.
Re:Is this law really needed? (Score:3, Informative)
Unconstitutional federal crimes, right?
Based on what you said the Feds could never have gone after Enron, Worldcomm or others except on SEC crimes like stock fraud.
Actually, Enron and Worldcomm used powerful lawyers and accountants to find loopholes in the SEC rules -- loopholes that did exist. I blame the SEC for overregulating accounting practices that end up costing consumers tens of billions of dollars in higher costs and less choice.
They could have never prosecuted the KKK
I'm not sure what the KKK did that was a federal crime. Anything the KKK might have done that was illegal would be better suited in State or County court.
they could have never enforced Handgun Registrations,
I'm against registering handguns and I believe handgun registrations are tyrannical.
or broken up Chid Porn rings
This is a State crime per the 9th and 10th amendments.
or intercept drugs from Colombia.
The War on Drugs is a war on freedoms. I don't do drugs but I support the right of others to.
The DOJ is the parent organization of the FBI, Civil Rights, BATF,DEA and many others.
Civil Rights laws are unconstitutional and these laws were passed in order to combat other bad laws of government. On top of that many Civil Rights legislations makes it harder to hire minorities. The FBI, the BATF and the DEA are unconstitutional.
Take a look at http://wwww.doj.gov./ [wwww.doj.gov] Therefore your post is 99.75% WRONG QED
You mean DED because I just showed you all the unconstitutional departments the DOJ supports.
I'm surprised you have so much time to post on
Actually, I'm waiting for my barber to free up for the past 45 minutes. Nice to have slashdot on the go so I can take are of e-mails, handle questions from customers and browse slashdot while I make money. What are you doing?
Re:Is this law really needed? (Score:3, Informative)
This is a myth.
Another myth is that it is wastefull. All the government accounts are available. I suggest you look at what you get for your dollar, and how much is wasted. It's all public information.
you say: "I'll pay $6 for a caller ID box and $24 a year for piece of mind. "
now multiply that by every phone. Lets call it 100,000,000 phone in the US. Your solution is 3 Billion dollars a year.
"Government doesn't support everyone -- in fact laws are fairer to those who can afford a lawyer."
no. The laws are equally fair, the system favors those who can get a lawyer. A very important difference.
"Not everyone can go and sue someone for harassing them. If someone harasses you a few times from an unknown number, good luck getting the cops to stop them."
This really depends on what you are considering harassing. If I call to ask if your refrigerator is running is one thing, if I call and threaten you it is another. IF you are recieving threatening phone call, there is action you can take.
Now, this bill was createed to prevent Voip harrasment. You think getting email spam was bad, Voip spam will be a lot more annoying. In fact, once it gets going it will probably kill voip.
Unfortuantly the internet changes pretty fast, and in an attempt to cover all the situations it is too wide.
Re:First Anonymous Post (Score:1, Informative)
Lets start with Bill Clinton refusing to take Osama Bin Laden after he had blown up several of our overseas locations, when offered by a north african country that had captured him. Or maybe about how an army intelligence group saw the hijackers for 9/11 enter the country and were forbidden to tell the FBI or go to jail because of the separation of the intelligence community.
Don't forget John Kerry is a war criminal if you believe what he claims he did in vietnam, go listen to his testimony.
George Bush didn't lie, to lie you have to know the opposite. When 3 of the top intelligence agencies in the world say "Yes he has them", and yours another supposed top agency says probably, you probably believe it.
Re:sneaky sneaky (Score:2, Informative)
He would regularly take out words such as "not" or edit the phrase "Program X gets $A dollars of funding, and Program Y gets $B dollars of funding" to "Program X gets $AB Dollars of funding". We dont need that silly "dollars of funding, and Program Y gets $". Or just remove the "not" in 'the state may not raise taxes'. Other days he would get creative and just completely slice and dice words apart and together to create statements that were nowhere near the original passage of the bill.
Then it takes a 2/3 vote to override the veto, which of course is nearly impossible to do, especially in Washington.
Bad Analysis? (Score:2, Informative)
I mean, read the definitions, and where it says an interactive computer service doesn't count, and then where it says an interactive computer service includes the Internet.
Re:sneaky sneaky (Score:3, Informative)
That's just an example of a poorly implimented veto law.
The word "Veto" does not imply that the president can change the wording of the law. It is a yes or no question. Veto really works like this:
"Mr. President, Congress just voted to pass this law. Do you agree?"
"Yes." (Law is passed.)
"No." (Law is vetoed.)
There is no room in there for an answer like, "Yes, but only if blah blah blah is changed to blah blah."
So, in the same vein, line item vetoing would be a yes or no question, but for each line.
Line 285: Program X gets $A of funding
Line 286: Program Y gets $B of funding
Line 287: The Supreme Court will heretofore be known as the "Poopyhead Patrol"
And the President then gets to say either yes or no to each of the lines. He would NOT get to reword any of the text, as that would require a new bill in Congress.
Anything else upsets the checks and balances between the President and Congress with regards to lawmaking.
Columbia House tried this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:First Anonymous Post (Score:5, Informative)
What the heck are you whining about? A republic is often, and definitely in the case of the US, also a representative democracy. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. If you're getting all pissy because you think the use of the word democracy should refer soley to direct democracies and no other forms, that's an issue you need to work through with your therapist.
Re:So wait... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh wow, I love this game, it's a lot of fun! It's called: let's put words in judges mouths. From your article, here's why Alito actually dissented:
I haven't read the actual warrant, so I have no idea who I'd side with. But I'll wager you haven't either. All I know is that the issue has nothing to do with Alito wanting to see little girls strip-searched or not, but was instead a ruling on a specific warrant, how it was phrased, and how it was executed.
Re:Is this law really needed? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So wait... (Score:3, Informative)
I meant a fake judgement that will determine THAT you are guilty.