It’s been a year since a federal law has gone into effect that makes it a crime to harass anyone online.

Well, there’s one small catch: if you do it using an online moniker, you’re in violation of the law. If you do it, using your real name, you’re safe.

[1] ZDnet had an article about the law on its site a year ago. [2] http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6024695.html

On January 6, 2006, tic swayback, posted a response to the article, saying:

Papers, please!

First they take away our ability to travel throughout the country
without presenting identity papers to authorities, now they’re going
after anonymous discourse.

I guess they really do believe the Constitution is “just a G-D piece
of paper.”

Another person, George Mitchell, replied to the article, as well, explaining

The constitutional nightmare …

often comes down to trying to balance the right of free speech with the right of privacy. The constitution guarantees both. But when does my ‘right’ to anonymous unrestricted speech infringe on your right to a reasonable expectation of privacy? That is what the courts have to balance.

In that regard, what is the difference between the telephone and email? Why should one have to put up with annoying email as opposed to annoying phone calls? If I get annoying anonymous calls, I can report them to the police and get the caller prosecuted. Annoying emails are every bit as much a violation of my privacy and should indeed be treated the same way.

The application of this rule to web sites is the real red herring. No one can force me to read an annoying Web site so I see no privacy issue there. That one is a carte blanche for the powers that be to crack down on free speech in the public forum and its disturbing.

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.

As [3] SeanRox said in a [4] post about the law that he wrote last year:

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.

In doing a quick Google search, I haven’t really found anything major coming from this new law, which is surprising. The law seems to be more comprehensive than the [5] CAN-SPAM Act, which is supposedly a tool to help the [6] Federal Trade Commission (FTC) track down and prosecute those scumbags who send millions of [7] SPAM emails each year. It seems as though the online harassment law could be better applied to this purpose, as there’s not a single SPAM king or queen, here in the U.S. or abroad, that sends anything under their real name.

Maybe one of the new faces in Washington — you know, one of those people gushing about how much they accomplished in less than 100 hours of meetings (forgetting to mention the cost to taxpayers) — asking them if they would push the Justice Dept. to use this law to hunt down and prosecute people who SPAM the rest of us.

I don’t know about you, but in one of the several emails account I have, on a “slow” day, I get at least 1,300 SPAM messages. These are messages that get past aggressive SPAM filters I have in place, which I create each day from SPAM that I delete. These are also SPAM messages that pass my mailserver’s SPAM lists. Why do they get past the filters? Because the tactics are constantly changing. The only thing real about the SPAM is that the people sending them are sending them from anonymous accounts, annoying me, nay, harassing me (wanting to be sure I use the correct words to get the proper attention), causing my index finger to get tire out from all the action, not to mention all the premature wear on my mouse.