#57418: moioci — 01/11  at  09:29 AM
Whaddya think you've been doing all this time? Yer killin' me!

#57431: — 01/11  at  09:53 AM
PZ, I've got the annoy market sewn up. Please respect my market niche and stick with abuse threaten and harass.

#57456: Seth Finkelstein — 01/11  at  10:53 AM
Well, since there is in fact no new law "against anonymous internet communication", it's a moot point.


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

[Orin Kerr, January 10, 2006 at 1:12am]
A Skeptical Look at "Create an E-annoyance, Go to Jail":

"Declan McCullagh has penned a column that is custom-designed to race around the blogosphere. ...

This is just the perfect blogosphere story, isn't it? It combines threats to bloggers with government incompetence and Big Brother, all wrapped up and tied togther with a little bow. Unsurprisingly, a lot of bloggers are taking the bait.

Skeptical readers will be shocked, shocked to know that the truth is quite different. ..."

[Declan's also the fabricator of the Al Gore Internet story]

#57458: Orac — 01/11  at  10:56 AM
Actually, it occurred to me that if they enforced this law, most of Usenet, particularly alt.revisionism and misc.health.alternative (my two old stomping grounds) would become illegal...

#57469: — 01/11  at  11:30 AM
As Seth says, the current opinion amongst the lawyerly types commenting at BoingBoing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/09/flame_someone_anonym.html

is that this amendment doesn't do what people are afraid it does, and that it's pointless anyway because the law already had language covering modern media and was confirmed by the courts to do so.

#57485: — 01/11  at  12:49 PM
I would commment, but it might be illegal.

#57486: The Countess — 01/11  at  12:54 PM
I bet you're not surprised that the Mad Dads are talking up a storm about the new law. That said, I think that anonymous trolling will still be allowed. Anonymous trolling is practically required on blogs. Without it, blogging wouldn't be as much fun. ;)

I wrote about that new law on my blog. I think it goes after very nasty acts of "annoyance", like the asshat who sent me a death threat via e-mail and posted what he thought was anonymous crap on my blog. I tracked him down via Google. You are never completely anonymous on the Internet, ya know.

I can think of a couple of trolls I'd love to throw the book at... Heh.

#57595: — 01/12  at  03:36 AM
Actually, as was noted in a (http://www.themote.com/viewThread.asp?thread=27&Last;=1) brief discussion on this subject, the idea is that because you can be held responsible for what you say, yes, anything goes. But not being able to hide behind a monicker has an inhibiting influence.

And I know you were joking.