So last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages, anonymously. Essentially this is an amendment to an earlier ruling that prohibited the same sort of thing on telephone lines. Basically what it amounts to is that you can’t post anything on a blog or send flaming emails to someone anonymously, but it’s totally cool as long as you put your name on it.
On an even sneakier note, Senator Specter and other sponsors slided this section into a bill to fund the Department of Justice so that it would be ultimately impossible for anyone to oppose it.
One of the most successful facets of the internet is that it preserves anonymity. That is essentially why the internet has become home to many different types of people, information, and opinions. Refugees, for example, fleeing from a persecuting country, look to the internet to share their opinions to the world. Recent stories about threatening New York camera stores were published on the internet anonymously. But thanks to this new law that blatantly violates the First Amendment, all of that is now illegal.
Thanks a lot.
