A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"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."

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.


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."

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16

and, more importantly, how do we make money from it?

There should be a law against Bush annoyingly killing people ,imprisoning anyone he feels like locking up and trying to start world war three !!...

Can they extradite for it?

And to whom do I forward all my annoying Spam?

Sounds like a good idea, but why try to slip it in??? More reading needed. The important bits are probably in what it does not say, and in how it can be used in totally unrelated areas.

The definitions and interpretations of "annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass" probably depend on need and who has the higher paid lawyer. These days, it seems any and every words and phrases can and will be redefined to suit the ends.

What's the implications for BB's like MoneyAm with posters and lurkers who are US citizens or live/travel in the US?

cue Dil ;-)

Jimmy,
Bush is simply trying to make up for the US being late for the last two world wars by being early for the next one.
Alan

There was a case in this country a couple of weeks ago where a man won compensation from a spammer.

Nice one Al ,,,only thing is he couldn't find Osama Bin Laden ,, and he was so pissed he had to take it out on someone .

Does this mean that hiding behind a nickname is no longer relevant?

If I want to rant at someone, what personal details do I need to include to make me immune to prosecution?

A few years ago I sent two or three anonymous emails to an old student friend, as a lead-up to sending them a book as a present. The emails were intended to entertain and amuse, and contained cryptic clues together with enough mutually-known information to have pointed to me as the source. Or so I thought. After getting a similarly cryptic reply I assumed they'd got the joke and went on to post the book. But then... nothing. The next time I spoke to them on the phone I asked if the book had arrived OK, only to discover that they hadn't twigged what was going on. It turned out that they'd viewed the emails as potentially sinister, and referred the parcel containing the book to the local police. As they never subsequently referred to the book's title or contents I can only assume that it was destroyed as a suspect package.

My old friend didn't find it funny. Neither, but for different reasons, did I. Having known them for so long I found it hard to accept that they could have been so dense, but as far as I know they weren't having me on.

There's a moral there somewhere.

You aint seen me ,,right .

Kayak :-)

I am currently preparing a list of annoying people that I will be fowarding to the FBI in the hope that if these people set foot on US soil they will be arrested immediately and banged up for life.

Anyone know where I can get a list of all 50 odd million English tw*ts ?

Does this include spamming threads or bbs also. If so we should send Blingers details...

e-mail me explosive one, I long to hear from you

lol!!!!!!!!!!

And your email is????

I understand that if enough people complain to a ISP about "spam" then they will shut the website & e-mail address down.

But how do you find out the e-mail address of a ISP to send complaints to?

Check out:

http://iptools.seekover.com/

Here's a nice Connection Speed Tester and also some other really good information tools

DocProc

I managed to locate a couple of "abuse" email addresses. Sent e-mails, but its going to take a lot of time to notify them but if it works it will be worth it.

Watch out Dil.

cheers GF.

The problem little woman is that the email address that seems to be sending to you is normally forged. All someone has to do is to enter a fake address into their mail program. From looking at the headers of the email (Properties) you can tell which ISP the spam is coming from and sometimes the IP number, but this will be no use to you without the cooperation of the sending ISP, and in any case most spam is sent by abusively using third party mail gateways or PCs who have no idea they are being used in this way.

The long and short of it is that unfortunately you will be wasting your time doing that. If it were so easy spam would not be the problem that it is :-)