Flaming someone on the Net anonymously: Totally against the law!

Posted on January 9, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 31 Comments

Declan McCullagh of C-Net is the first with the word:

Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.“

“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.“

As near as I can gather, this means at least 80% of the content of every message board on the Internet is now illegal under US law. And you thought board moderators were bad before!

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  • http://Anonymous Anonymous

    Don’t suposed i can change my name to Anonymous

  • Vasion

    The way I see this, unless you do something truely anonymously you’re safe. Like what I am posting right now, if I wanted to I could give some bogus data to the fourm but I’m not truely anonymous, most fourms will write your IP down and store it in a log. If they mean anonymously to the extent that you don’t know exactly WHO the poster is, then the federal government just outlawed the Internet. This law seems to be going after people that make new accounts for the intent to harass someone else, in which case fuck them those 13 year olds can go right to pound me in the ass prison.

  • http://therrik.blogspot.com Therrik

    You think it’s only 80% of message boards? I’d say it’s probably a bit higher ;)

  • anon

    FU, Scott

  • Kalain

    Really, it seems targeted towards any anonymous postings. While I can see the need to cut back on the anonymous flaming towards a company that’s pretty much pure libel, it also seems like you could bust whistleblowers with it in a heartbeat.

    I hate riders though. How it’s still allowed to attach things to a FUNDING bill amazes me.

    Though on second reading, it seems to be directed. “who recieves the communications” is odd wording. Does this mean I can’t send you anonymous flaming emails, but I can post anything I want on my blog, and since it’s not me sending it to you anonymously, it’s ok?

    *cries* I hate legalese.

  • http://therrik.blogspot.com Therrik

    “I hate riders though. How it\’e2\’80\’99s still allowed to attach things to a FUNDING bill amazes me.”

    That’s how they get most of these rediculous things thru. No one in their right mind would vote for them otherwise. You could make a bill that was going to solve all the issues with homeless people and slap a rider on it to kill kittens and it’d pass.

  • Kalain

    But therrik, those two things ARE related!

    Erm, nm..

  • Turlow

    This law, at least at first, will be used for entirely partisian reasons. It will be used to go after anti-Repulican bloggers and forum posters. Oh yea, and pedophiles.

    We have a very important mid term election coming up. The justice department is controlled by the Repulicans. Both parties did alot worse in the last election than use a law to silence their opponents. Call me a liberal if you must, but in 11 months we’ll have at least one case going before the Supreme Court challenging this law that came directly from the election.

    Yea, I’m jadded and cynical. But it doesn’t take a genius to see how this law will be used to effect the election.

  • http://blogs.gameblogs.org/grownupgamer Mr. Falcon

    Vasion: If the law only applied to people who made it impossible to discover their identity, then the law would be useless. By your logic, if anyone was charged under this law, they could say “Well, obviously the post wasn’t really anonymous, because you found out who I was”.

  • RedWick

    I’m just curious to see how they’re planning on enforcing this, as I can’t think of any practical way for them to do so.

  • imweasel

    “I\’e2\’80\’99m just curious to see how they\’e2\’80\’99re planning on enforcing this, as I can\’e2\’80\’99t think of any practical way for them to do so.”

    At least for emails, they can probably monitor every single email sent out on the internet if they wanted to.

    As for games, websites, forums…who knows really.

  • Anon

    Screw you, I’m Canadian!

    Hey, who is knocking at my door?

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless_

    Well people have sued for less… a lot LESS.

  • Dexter

    Disregarding the utter -stupidity- of this law, doesn’t it mean absolutely horrid things for people running a virtual world?

    If player D insults player C repeatedly, and then player C requests D’s data from Admin E, doesn’t that mean that if Admin E doesn’t disclose that data, he’s viable to get locked up for 2 years?

    Hell, we can’t even have privacy policies anymore. Of course, very few people are going to pay this ANY mind, and it’ll take all of thirty minutes for somebody to find a loophole, but Jesus, do the people who write these laws even know anything about the medium they’re writing them FOR?

  • http://www.worldthinktank.net/wttbbs Lance Winslow

    Indeed interesting comments. Yet chances are we have all be slandered and libeled on the Internet by vindictive, nut cases. If we own companies, we have had competitors do this. Most often someone will make up something and make a fake name and try to destroy your brand name, personal integrity out of jealousy, competitiveness or simply spite. If this stopped all at once, we could have better quality communication and maybe people would not be so fast to attack someone if they knew it could be traced back to them? The Internet is the greatest communication device in the history of the human endeavor, we need to protect its integrity, so people should use their true identity, especially if they wish to slam another or libel them. Think how upset you were last time someone attacked you? What if they didn’t wouldn’t that have the best for all concerned? So if it makes people think twice, it could turn out to be a very good law. I know why it was created, because politicians would get attacked via slander comments from opposition, no wonder they all voted for it? They are tired of being attacked. So, that abuse now is coming back on those who falsify their identity only to slander, annoy or libel. So, anyway, some flipside comments for the debate here.

  • D 0ne

    A law that clearly misunderstands the technology it is trying to regulate.

    We are all posting anonymously. We are all annoying, etc.. As this law broadly defines these things. We are all guilty under this law. The Supremes once given the facts will toss this law on the trash heap of ill conceived ideas.

  • http://www.edgecase.net/devsite Cael

    “At least for emails, they can probably monitor every single email sent out on the internet if they wanted to.”

    Run a quick search via your favourite engine for ECHELON. “They” already do.

    And then go get PGP.

  • Kalain

    The issue is it doesn’t attack slander or libel directly. It attacks Annoying.

    While I agree we need to clean up the trash that is half the internet, which is uninformed or downright maliciously lying, this attacks Everything. And it attacks it under an absolutely bizarre concept that US law means jack all outside the US.

    Libel and Slander are already Illegal. The problem is the truth can be Annoying. I can be Annoyed that people are posting that my game’s uninstaller can accidentally format your PC. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t post on a message board (which for all intents and purposes would be anonymous to me, a non admin user) that my game does this.

    This does seem directly targeting the whole anon flame campaigns. But as is, wouldn’t it be enough to sue the provider under libel laws if they won’t provide the name of a website demonstrated to be hosting libelous content? All this law does is lower the burden of proof from “lies designed to hurt my image” to “hurts my image”

  • Evangolis

    I like the Internet the way it is, spam and all.

  • Aufero

    The way it’s worded, it looks intended to do more than just stop spam – it could cover anonymous political criticism, corporate whistle blowing, and legal blogging (like Groklaw) as well.

    I seriously doubt those uses would stand a test before the supreme court, but I suspect it will end up there eventually.

  • Soliae

    First time this comes up, it will be voided for vagueness. The term “annoy” is so vague that virtually every individual who posts anonymously will most certainly “annoy” someone, somehow. There’s no clear standard written into the law as I’ve seen it quoted. I have not, however, reviewed the entire piece, merely what is being reported in the media, so if they have further defined “annoy”, then I could be wrong in it’s certainty to be voided.

  • Brent Michael Krupp

    Look here: http://volokh.com/posts/1136873535.shtml

    This has nothing to do with internet flames, it’s about applying existing telephone harrassment law to Voice-over-IP. I am not a lawyer, but the guy at that link is.

    Move along, nothing to see here…

  • Kalain

    You’ll understand the concept discussed in the link you provided, however:

    The wording, as written, covers Every Single Bit On The Internet.

    If this is not the INTENT of the law, it should not be WRITTEN as such. Instead, as discussed on said link, it’s a vague and overreaching law as written, under the assumption that when your appeal finally hits the supreme court, the charges will be overturned due to a violation of the first ammendment.

    Knowing this, the question is raised: Why would we put something unconstitutional down on paper as Law? Exactly what is the point of this (and in lesser related news, the repeatedly mauled by courts anti violent game legislation). We’re writing rules that have no chance of ever being enforcable, as if the entire point of congress is to make token gestures then look to their districts and go “hey, I tried!”

  • savagex

    In the long run its probably unenforcable

  • TPRJones

    Most importantly, nearly 100% of spam email is now highly illegal. Let’s ge to prosecuting!!

  • Brent Michael Krupp

    Ok, I am still not a lawyer but here’s a really smart lawyer saying that in fact this *is* a concerning law after all: http://volokh.com/posts/1136923654.shtml

    It’s the same site as the last link I posted, but a different guy.

  • Kemor

    This is quite insane :)
    I mean, the law is “buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act”. Wtf is this? There are two things here that really scares me (I mean REALLY):

    - Internet is included in what is usually named “Telecommunication”. This is bad. While it can be used as a “communication” tool, it’s passive most of the time, meaning that you must search for all these “annoying” things, they are not forced onto you. Telephone on the other hand, is forced communication, it rings, vibrates and even if you don’t pick up, your line can’t be used meanwhile. How these people can link the two under the same chapter is beyond me.

    - Your folks seem to be able to vote laws for whatever, whenever, and apparently know the system so well that they hide them deep inside some bullshit “Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act”. THAT is scary. May makes you laugh just now because this law sounds stupid, but some day, someone is going to find a hole, vote the law while nobody’s watching and once done, there will be such abuse!!

    Makes me sad to know that the congress of one of the biggest country of the world is full of bullshit and even sadder that everyone, including them (prevent cyberstalking? come on), agree on that.

  • Kalain

    It’s in that act for a reason, because it’s an addendum to a statue on stalking (which is typically a complaint by women, so it was brought up when that bill was being passed). It’s attached to this funding bill because the funding bill addressed a need for more funding to enforce the bill, so they attached the reupping of the bill to it. There IS a link, it’s just very tenuous, and very odd that stalking laws would be in an women’s violence bill instead of, say, it’s own set of laws. It’s even more worrisome that the origional text of the ammendment was acceptable (basically it said stalking, not “annoy”, via the internet). This modified version borrows wording from an already unenforcable section of law, and makes it Broader.

  • Kalain

    I hate being unable to edit, but the other reason this is very disturbing is it allows a legal method to unmask anonymous posters. If someone leaks information about anything anonymously, you could use this statute as him trying to annoy you, and thus to press charges you need the identity of the poster (IP logs, registration information, whatever). Our lovely MS insider blogger (who didn’t reveal any trade secrets, but did complain loudly about policy) could have been shot down in his first week with a simple lawsuit to claim annoyance, when it would really be an effective “reveal your source” statute.

    While you can’t jail someone via this law (as it will get overturned in court pretty much automagically), the discovery abilities alone would allow for some interesting abuse of the court system to reveal sources in extreme cases. (not that I’m saying it’s the intent of the law, it’s obvious that the intent is to mirror the existing anti stalking laws, but the wording allows for Gigantic Loopholes and Extremely Broad Interpretation. Moreover, it creates a situation where your posters don’t know if what they want to post is legal anymore.)

  • Dren

    I don’t believe message boards can be included just due to the fact that when I annoy people anonymously, I’m annoying annoymous people. I just know their made-up names. I don’t *know* them.

    If I flame a made up name, is that covered in this law too? I may wish a painful plague upon Lum, but I absolutely do not want to annoy Scott.

  • Turlow

    “with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person\’e2\’80\’a6who receives the communications\’e2\’80\’a6″

    Dren, I read this wording to mean anyone who ends up with the communication, whether they be anonyous or not as well as whether or not they are your intended receipient.

    The word ‘intent’ makes this even harder to enforce (above and beyond all the other things brought up above) since intent is often hard to prove. If I post somewhere that I hate strawberries, I could legitimately dislike strawberries, in which case my intent is simply to state my feelings toward strawberries. On the other hand, if I know a strawberry grower reads the forum, my post could be intented to annoy. As long as I keep my mouth shut, a pattern of past activities would have to be established to prove my intent was to annoy. Hrmm, now that I think about it, this will be easy to prove on alot of forum posters since they have a long history of flaming.