Trolling Is Now Illegal: Two Years In Jail in the States.
Contributed by Mike on Monday, January 9th, 2006 @ 10:13AM
from the there-go-half-our-comments dept.
Why do we still let our government attach totally unrelated bills to each other to sneak in terribly written laws? It seems to keep happening, and the latest one is that a bill attached to a bigger bill concerning funding the Department of Justice (something very few politicians would ever vote against) has a tiny bit of language that now means if you're anonymously annoying online, you face two years in jail. The specific text says that using the internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." Yes. "Intent to annoy" seems like an incredibly vague standard and has basically criminalized an awful lot of the internet -- including quite a few of the folks who comment here at Techdirt. Anyway, for those of you who enjoy anonymously trolling all over the place online -- watch out. You may face jailtime. Of course, it seems quite unlikely that "intent to annoy" would hold up under Constitutional review, but it may be some time until that test case comes.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060109/1012239_F.shtml
Contributed by Mike on Monday, January 9th, 2006 @ 10:13AM
from the there-go-half-our-comments dept.
Why do we still let our government attach totally unrelated bills to each other to sneak in terribly written laws? It seems to keep happening, and the latest one is that a bill attached to a bigger bill concerning funding the Department of Justice (something very few politicians would ever vote against) has a tiny bit of language that now means if you're anonymously annoying online, you face two years in jail. The specific text says that using the internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." Yes. "Intent to annoy" seems like an incredibly vague standard and has basically criminalized an awful lot of the internet -- including quite a few of the folks who comment here at Techdirt. Anyway, for those of you who enjoy anonymously trolling all over the place online -- watch out. You may face jailtime. Of course, it seems quite unlikely that "intent to annoy" would hold up under Constitutional review, but it may be some time until that test case comes.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060109/1012239_F.shtml
