annoyed yet? ha ha ha.

[firsty]

http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyan ... &subj=news

Perspective: Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
By Declan McCullagh
Published: January 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PST

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."

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."

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."

That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.

Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)

Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.

"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"

Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.

"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."

He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.

It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.

If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.

And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.


Biography
Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's Washington, D.C., correspondent. He chronicles the busy intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

[Lightning Rod]

I think my only choice is to plead Guitly As Charged

[firsty]

anyone who gets annoyed by me can contact me for personal information, let it be said hereby and herewith.

anyone who gets annoyed by me can also go fuck themselves with my personal information. ha ha ha. including george w bush.

[mousey1]

As our freedoms get whittled and chipped away I lose my right to cyber-stalk under a pseudonym. And not only that, annoying is my middle name, if I can't annoy I may as well just quit breathing now.

JESUS H. CHRIST IS THERE NO END?!?!

The joy of life is being sapped by the moral, and I may one day have to take a stand. Ahhhh, maybe I'll just crack a beer instead.

[firsty]

i was once annoyed by a cyberstalker, as was someone who i close to me.

in both cases, it was the same person.

unfortunately for me, legally, with a few searches, i was able to ascertain his name.

if his name is available by searches, does that then render him untouchable for legal action? as in, if we know who he is in order to file a suit against him or to file criminal charges against him, doesnt that mean that he's not breaking the law?

i do keep a blog under a no name, and i dont wish it to be made public that i keep it. i'm sure it annoys SOMEONE.

ah, fuck it. who cares. it's stupid. bush is a loser. my name is firsty.

[Lightning Rod]

my name is firsty.

and I approve this message

[mousey1]

Well, if you say anything or post anything on the net there is always the chance you will be slapped in the face with it one day. I mean look at Paris...silly twit, she's annoying all the livelong day, she's web-camming and cyber-sexing, or whatever, with her boyfriend and thinks it's anonymouse, completely anonymouse...yeah, right, she may truly be a rube of high degree.

In any case, we are who we are and if under the assumption that we are anonymous we decide to perpetrate all manner of wierdness on the net we must face up to the possibility that we can be taken to task for it. And as embarassing as that may be, it's still me and I wouldn't do anything on the net that I wouldn't do in reality, albeit surreptitiously.

Anywho and anyhow, law enforcement and the judicial system is so backlogged and overlogged it'd be years before they catch up to me. Let the annoying continue until such time. And upon that day I'll stand up in the courtroom where the minions have gathered and shout..."I'm innocent I tell you...innocent!!! I was framed!!!" And as they haul me away I'll ponder to myself, "Hmmm, I wonder if they have internet access in prison?"

[stilltrucking]

I don't get around much anymore, this is the only cyber community I hang out in these days. I pretty much stay annoyed, i am a charter member of annonomously annoyed. Sorry about the spell checker , I know it is annoying to some but sometimes the spontaneous gibberish is worth it.

The worse cases I saw were on litkicks, I used to call it brookyln's asylum for the terminally vain. He was persued by that calisauri(sp?)

Sounds bad firsty, but I been so got damned worried about those soon to be five catholics on the spupreme court. Not to hijack but this new closeness between the wacko right wing homophobic bush base protestant preachers and the plotters of Papists plots is new to me. Those old time radio preachers never let up on the Pope and The Catholic Church, it was an anathema to them. Now they are best of friends.

Mousey1 I would love to visit Nova Scotia sometime but I don't think I agree with those wonderful hate speach laws you all have.
I think it was atlantic queen who told me i should be prosecuted under Canadian law for telling my Jew/pizza joke on litkicks.

Read an op ed piece that use the peachy word impeachment today.

a voice in the wilderness?

hope this ain't another annoying say hi jack posts of mine. but I should be careful because I tend to annoy

[firsty]

stilltrucking, what the fuck are you talking about? ha ha - i mean, i understand your post, i just dont get a connection from me in this thread to the pope or courts. unless you were talking about my post a few weeks ago about the dream i had where i was the boss of two crime families - the mob and the catholic church. ha ha that was a good one and every bit of it true.

you can hijack any of my threads because thats my rule. all threads are merely starting points for conversations. you know my theory, it's in my sig. i stand 100% behind everything i've ever said here or anywhere else. sometimes anonymity is nice because it frees me up. if certain people found my blog, it wouldnt kill me or put me in prison, just cause unnecessary bad feelings because many people dont have the depth of understanding about things that i have in my eminent wisdom compassion and insight.

[firsty]

anyway as far as anonymity goes, everyone here knows who i am, so it dont bug me none. i yam what i yam.

[mousey1]

Ya, I'm a yam too!

[stilltrucking]

i just dont get a connection from me in this thread to the pope or courts

well hells bells I meant that it annoys me that a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny is threatened by religious zealots. Now I am just a man, thank god, so I am just annoyed. I might be more than annoyed if I was a woman.


NOthing I stay here allways connects, LR told me he gets me about half the time. So there is probably was no connection.

so anyway how is the research on the mode thingy going?