Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Annoying People on the Internet is now a Federal Crime

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-09-2006, 07:34 PM:

quote:
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.

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
It's illegal to annoy

A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing 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."

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."

Source

Looks like we can all still annoy each other here at Film-Tech since we all (supposedly) use our real names. Those of you who submitted a false name because you are afraid of the internet will now have to serve some time if you've ever annoyed us.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-09-2006, 10:37 PM:

There's two wierd things about this legislation.

1. How will they enforce this law? Most trolls take all kinds of steps to anonymize their tracks -with the most likely step being they hang out in some coffee shop with free WiFi hoping to meet hot women while they go trolling via the coffee shop's IP. Or they just tap into one of their neighbor's unsecured WiFi points.

2. Why even bother with the legislation? If you're going to be an asshole, there's no better way than putting your face and name behind the barbs. Lots of people in our media are getting filthy rich doing just that. People who troll anonymously: pussies.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-09-2006, 11:37 PM:

This is actually "sort of" welcomed legislation. It provides another means to prosecute spammers who attempt to hide their identity and annoy people with their 'messages'.

Of course it's almost certainly unconstitutional, an unenforceable given that it's overly broad and vague.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-10-2006, 01:52 AM:

Here here. I wish we had something like it .

All the problems related to pointless flaming, personal abuse and misleading information circulating I've noticed on other forums and listserves has had one root cause: that people are able to post anonymously. Policing a system in which identities are checked (either proactively, at registration, or reactively, if a problem comes up) means extra work; but as this site shows, it's definitely worth it.

I'd go even further and make it a legal requirement for ISPs to clearly publish the name and address of anyone registering a domain name. For one thing that would make it more difficult for phishing sites (or those selling illegal goods, e.g. pirate software) to operate, and for another it would hold to account those who use the web to conduct hate campaigns anonymously. For example, this site was set up by a group of anonymous individuals (or at least, it's claimed to be a group - it could be one individual) in 2004 to oppose funding cuts at the British Film Institute. While a lot of their concerns are valid and I share them, rumours quickly started doing the rounds as to who was behind the site, was it former staff who had scores to settle, etc.? That speculation undermined their message, the assumption being that it they had a legitimate case there was no reason why they couldn't make it openly. Some of the 'signatures' on that site are probably false, especially the celebrity ones; and a few of the posts amount to little more than vindictive (and possibly libellous) attacks on other people.

Do a 'whois' search under this site's domain name, and all you'll get is the ISP in Bristol which hosts it. If ISPs were forced to verify the identity of and publish the name of the individual or organisation (with company registration no.) which registered the domain, this sort of crap would end.

I now get instantly suspicious of anyone who contacts me and will only give a Hotmail address and/or a mobile 'phone number, because both can easily be obtained anonymously. While I guess some would argue that the ability to communicate anonymously can be a democratic safeguard, my experience is that it can cause huge problems (as John Siegenthaler found out in his brush with Wikipedia).

Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 01-10-2006, 04:34 AM:

Anytime an article quotes anything from the ACLU I get suspicious of the intent of the report. The ACLU is an extreme leftist group.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 01-10-2006, 08:49 AM:

I'm with Wolff on that.

I don't think that law goes far enough. I think it should be illegal to send advertising that specifically includes mis-spelled words, improper English, and hidden text intentionally meant to foil auto-sorting mechanisms in the user's email software. That way, any time I get an email advertising "C1al!s", I should be able to track that illiterate moron down and prosecute him out of existance. The fine for that should be about six billion dollars tax free. That way I can make a couple of bucks along the way.

It should also be HIGHLY illegal to pretend you represent a legitimate corporate entity that you don't. So the next time I get an email from e-bay, that really isn't from e-bay, or from Microsoft that really isn't from Microsoft, THEY can send in a hit squad and take that person out. Anyone who does that should be shot in the head with one of those rail guns from Quake III.

And another thing....

quote:
"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
It's illegal to annoy

People who do not use proper English punctuation annoy the hell out of me.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 01-10-2006, 12:09 PM:

And yet the government budget for online crimefighting was recently cut, yet again. Just the time for new laws.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-10-2006, 01:46 PM:

Well; its looks like if I annoy anonymously; I can't get caught. However, if I annoy under my own name I am OK with the law. How annoying! Louis

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 01-10-2006, 02:08 PM:

There is more to the article. If you read the entire article on the link, you can actually get a feel for the leanings of the author. You can also get a feel that the author doesn't take harassment seriously. After all, he is a reporter, and they make a living harassing people.

This kind of law might actually require reporters to print the truth all the time. That could be very hard for many reporters who rely on heresay and conjecture to write stories and columns.

The law is intended to protect people from others who maliciously post things about them that would be considered libelous and slanderous, and also to protect people from others who intent to cause them harm for their own selfish and personal reasons.

As rediculous as the law may appear to rights activists and player haters [Roll Eyes]

, it actually makes perfect sense and is grounded in reality. While it makes it illegal to annoy someone on the internet, we must actually look at the legal definition of annoy, and the intention of the law. This is what judges are going to do when faced with criminal and civil litigation based on this law.

What the critics fail to address is that many laws start out very vague in initial context, and require judicial review to define through court cases just how the law can be applied. At first we will see some seemingly frivolous attempts to enforce the law, and through those we will find out just how it can be applied.

It will all work out on its own, and will not be a hinderance to free speech, as some would like to believe. Free speech does come with many responsibilities, such as making sure that your speech is actually true, accurate, and not inciteful of a criminal nature. You cannot call for the murder of your neighbor, nor can you yell fire in a crowded theater when there is not a fire.

Ciao

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 01-10-2006, 05:36 PM:

What fun is it to annoy someone if they don't know it's you doing the annoying?

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 01-10-2006, 05:51 PM:

Ya wanna anonymously annoy and send some jerk a "kiss" over the inet? Go HERE !

Not only can you tell them like it is, ya can also learn the latest inet and life censorship crap!

Great site!

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-11-2006, 08:34 AM:

quote: Dave Williams
Free speech does come with many responsibilities, such as making sure that your speech is actually true, accurate, and not inciteful of a criminal nature.

Amen to that. The Siegenthaler incident was very worrying, I thought. He found out the hard way that he had no legal means of forcing Wikipedia either to delete the libelous content or identify the author. Indeed, it later emerged that Wikipedia could not identify the author, because he had posted the content anonymously. The scary thing is that Siegenthaler is, relatively speaking, a rich celebrity who can publicise his case in his own national newspaper and can afford to hire nasty lawyers. If anyone did something similar to me, I would not be able to do either; in fact, I would have no legal right to have the identity of the author revealed, even if the ISP involved had that information.

One solution would be to introduce a form of criminal libel in which ISPs were responsible for libelous content on any sites they hosted or emails their servers sent. But the resulting hassle and insurance costs would probably force around 80% of websites to close, including many which do a lot of good and are responsibly run. It would also increase the cost of running the Internet, becuase ISPs would have to pass the costs of policing onto their customers.

The only other option that I can see is to get anonymity out of the system as much as possible. Forcing an ISP to check the identity, hold accurate contact information for anyone they allow to release data into the Internet and to provide that information if required to do under certain circumstances is a lot easier and cheaper than making them responsible for the content itself. And let's face it, the damage caused by anonymous use of the Internet far outweighs the safeguards it offers in some, very limited circumstances, in every scenario from some teenage kid wanting to stir up trouble among his friends to the 9/11 hijackers.

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 01-11-2006, 07:28 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
The Siegenthaler incident was very worrying, I thought. He found out the hard way that he had no legal means of forcing Wikipedia either to delete the libelous content or identify the author...

What you (and the quoted report) fails to mention was that anyone, including Siegenthaler or a representative thereof could have changed the entry. You dont need a lawyer, or a law, you just need to act. Wikipedia (at the time) allowed anyone to edit anything. It has mechanisms in place for handling confrontations and disputes.

It is a widely help opinion that what we have here is a newpaperman who wanted a story rather than simply to quietly have it fixed.

Wikipedia isn't perfect, but its a useful tool, however its not a substitute for decent research.

quote: Leo Enticknap
For example, this site was set up by a group of anonymous individuals (or at least, it's claimed to be a group - it could be one individual) in 2004 to oppose funding cuts at the British Film Institute. While a lot of their concerns are valid and I share them, rumours quickly started doing the rounds as to who was behind the site, was it former staff who had scores to settle, etc.

On the site it says

quote:
There has been much criticism of the Custodes Lucis as hiding behind anonymity and refusing to make our real identities known. Among the Custodes are members of staff of the British Film Institute and people who work with the Institute in a variety of ways.

We do not believe that any of us in those categories who identify ourselves publicly will be allowed to retain our jobs at, or connections with the BFI. We therefore remain resolutely anonymous.

Anomnity isn't necessarily bad.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-12-2006, 01:58 AM:

...if the statement you quote is true. I have reason to believe that it isn't, but am not at liberty to discuss my evidence for this on a public website. And the fact that no-one has any way of establishing who the author of the Film Archive Action site is means that you've got no way of knowing whether he/she/they is/are right or I am.

The ability to publish what are in effect poison pen letters with complete anonymity and which the whole world can see at the click of a mouse is open to massive abuse; and the only safeguards it offers could almost always be secured another way, IMHO.

Point taken about Siegenthaler. However, I'd guess that he made a public issue of the incident because he suspected that there might be untruths about a whole load of other people, not only on Wikipedia, but on other sites which the victim would not be able to have changed as quickly or as easily. OK, he also wanted to sell a few papers; but I'd much rather someone goes about their campaigning by selling newspapers - which are covered by libel laws - than by publishing material in a way which lacks any accountability. Personally I wish he'd sued the hell out of Wikipedia, simply to send the message that you can't casually play around with people's lives and reputations just by writing what you like on the Internet.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-13-2006, 08:19 PM:

Oh No! This may mean that I have to leave Film-Tech..... [Eek!]

. Or I could come annoy you all in person... I don't think thats covered by the new law.....

Mark

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 01-14-2006, 06:36 PM:

US law has the concept of a ``common carrier''. A common carrier isn't held responsible for whatever content/materials it handles if there is something objectionable that they carry, but it also isn't allowed to filter out things based on its own judgement of what is objectionable. I think traditionally the telco and various package handling services (USPS, UPS, Fedex, etc) were considered common carriers, and I think I've seen conflicting claims over whether ISPs are common carriers.

There tend to be lots of people in the US who run open 802.11 access points, and the encryption tools that exist currently make it difficult to secure an access point against a determined attacker and still make the network conveniently usable by legitimate users. Even if ISPs did readily release information about who had made an anonymous post, you'd likely end up fingering innocent people if the person making the anonymous posts had half a clue about how to hide effectively and cared greatly about being anonymous.