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.

…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.

You’ve got to be shitting me. First of all, that’s what I do. I annoy people. The last thing I want to hear is that my first amendment right to annoy someone is in danger.

Who the hell determines what’s annoying? If I were to leave spam in someone’s comments or keep posting profanity on someone’s blog, that’s probably annoying to the blog owner. What if in someone’s comments I called someone an insensitive jerk because he said something offensive, racist or otherwise borderline? Because in this politically correct world we live in, in the definition of annoying better be goddamned well-defined.

If I read on the Internet that the war in Iraq is based on oil for blood, or that 911 never happened—that it was a conspiracy theory, I’m going to be annoyed. Much more fucking annoyed than if someone leaves a comment here called me a jackass.

So what’s annoying and what’s not? I’m so fucking angry right now I don’t know.

But I’m not done yet. If I disclose my true identity, then I can be as annoying as I fucking please!

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."

I love this part:

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.

A fucking Federal Crime to annoy someone? They better send a shitload of process servers over to my house because I’m annoyed by almost everything I read!

You can go ahead and read the whole article, this one’s actually worth it.

One last taste:

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

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.)

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.

This sickens me.

via BaneRants