Anonymous Annoyance Now Illegal

... and no, it's not an anti-spam bill. It's an application of the telephone harassment laws to the world of the Internet, and it just doesn't work; not least because communications on the Internet are by default reasonably anonymous and damn near anything can be construed to "annoy". Like many other laws, the only hope of reasonable application comes from the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in choosing who to charge, which only reminds me of the words of Ayn Rand on the nature of government power:

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

That is exactly what we are seeing today. This disturbs me, but I am not sure how to stop it, much less reverse the trend. What we have been doing doesn't seem to have been very successful, except in replacing the labels applied to the party in power; their policies on liberty do not appear to have shifted significantly.

Lots more on this from Anarchangel and SaysUncle. And a word to the wise: "cyberstalking", no matter how much the media loves to talk about it, is nothing more than being annoying online. You can't kill someone over the internet. Making real threats of harm is illegal regardless of medium.

Posted on 2006-01-11 00:41:59.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

Check the groups below and enter your email address to receive updates by email:

The trackback URL for this entry is: http://triggerfinger.org/weblog/servlet/trackback/6949

No trackbacks have been posted so far.

No comments have been posted so far.