Say what?

[greatbear]

Are you being annoyed by someone on the internet? By someone not using their real name to identify themselves? Take solace in the knowledge that the person is now committing a federal crime, thanks to actions of Sen. Arlen Specter (R. PA) and others, and signed into law this past Thursday. I am surprised this has not been more widely reported on. This law has serious consequences for free speech and privacy on the internet, but does that surprise anyone given the totalitarian regime controlling this country now? Have a read, and spread the word. You might want to mirror the text too. Just, you know, in case, you know...

Returning to work today I find that the articles I had in a rough draft form were not on the PC. My fault, saving something else and overwriting the previous using the same file name. That's what I get for mixing work and op-ed pieces I suppose. Kinda put me out of mind and mood to start from scratch. It was a crazy day anyhow, so I would not have gotten much done. Too late to get much done at the moment either, so it will have to wait. Some recent events in the news regarding the same things I have been writing about as well. It's beginning to catch the ears of the general populace, rather than those techie sorts like me.

More blarg @ LJ for random 'database unavailable' and technical problem errors lately. The F5 key is your friend, especially if you wrote out a long post and it looks in danger of being eaten alive when you hit "Update Journal" and you get hit with an error page and going back nets you a blank screen (usually not a problem in Firefox). On the error page, hit F6, OK the 'POSTDATA' dialog and you should be fine.

Speaking of Firefox, I've been having issues with it ever since a Microsoft automatic update and moving to v.1.5. Some of my favorite extensions are broken, most noteably Adblock, even though it's compatible with the newer version. Also, FF will begin slowing down after extended use and eventually crashing. Not making me a very happy camper.

Speaking of blargh, why is it that I can do a couple thousand bux worth of business with a company (Newegg) without issues, and my last order gets put on hold due to billing/shipping address issues? And it did not make me any happier to find this out in an email sent a half hour before their closing time, and my call back to them with 20 minutes to spare nets me a bubbly 'we are closed now' automated message? Jumpin' Jesus on a rocket-powered pogo stick. I am half tempted to cancel the order if I get any sort of 'tude from their staff.

It looks like someone has a case of the Mundays.

Comments

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

BoingBoing has an ongoing post regarding this- it appears all is not as dire as it seems, and that existing, largely irrelevant laws have merely been updated to include the internet, but it could be a worry if laws which havent been invoked before suddenly become handy for, Oh, I dont know, how about the Recording Ass. of America? Or Hollywood? Or homeland security? It could very well turn into another DMCA debacle...

Signed,
Anonymous Growler.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

My take on it is that it opens the door to a broad range of interpretation. "Threaten", "abuse" and to a lesser extent "harrass" are mostly clear-cut in definition. "Annoy" can be taken in so many contexts and levels. A post critical of a politician in a blog can 'annoy' him as he might claim, and it would not take much of a court hearing to agree with him. A bothersome article nets the author two years in jail at worst. All it will take is a couple high-profile prosecutions to make people clam up in a hurry, and that's not good. Someone could find bits of my blog 'annoying' for one reasong or another and I could be thrown in the clink for it.

Can you imagine my time establishing my jailhouse cred with the inmates when I say my reason for being there was because I sent an annoying email? lol

[charliebearnj.livejournal.com]

The discussion following the article has this in it:


The bill was an amendment, the word annoy appears in the original bill Section 113 of this law called "PREVENTING CYBERSTALKING" is the specific section in question (from HR 3402). It amends a previous law (Paragraph (1) of section 223(h) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 223(h)(1)).

It is this previous law that contains the "annoy" language. The very important thing this story left out is that the communication act says that the annoying content MUST ALSO BE obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent".

So this law does not apply to just normal annoying criticism. It only affects anonymous annoying communications that are filthy, lewd and obscene.

The relevant law that was changed is available here: http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf


So it looks like the ammendment is there so Vonage can't be used to do things that are crimes when done with POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

There are plenty of other reasons to worry, this does not seem to be one... but "I am not a lawyer".

hugs, Charlie the reader of LJ posts....

[le-lapin.livejournal.com]

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

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.

I think you forgot this bit near the end of the article. If I read this right, the law as written could be not all that much of a threat due to our first ammendment rights.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Granted, it would not likely stand up to constitutional muster, but the present administration does not consider the constitution to be much more than a piece of paper. It will be one of those laws that is selectively enforced if anything, with the net result being to silence critical debates or opinions.

What bends me outta shape is that this would be made into law knowing that it would never pass constitutional muster.

[inqueery.livejournal.com]

Oh lovely ... what a cute little law. Of course one that if ever really tested in court, I suspect would get the boot for major ambiguity.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It's one of those 'take that' sort of laws. It was done under the guise of aligning the internet with existing telecom laws, but certain aspects dont interchange well or apply between the two technologies. It's another court-clogger, with the lawyers the only ones benefitting.

[whiskerfish.livejournal.com]

I haven't had any "issues" with the new FF, in fact it seems to crash less than the older version on my G3 PowerBook.
I was a little alarmed, at first, when I clicked on something that opened in a new window and it "grew" out of the upper left hand corner instead of just appearing. Now I don't even notice.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

There is been some issues with this PC for a while, this PC is the only one that has the FF crashing issue, others I have are running the same version without trouble, aside from Adblock being 'broken'. Hopefully it's fixed soon, a lot of similar chatter has gone up on the Adblock developer forums.