Annoyed

Via Atrios, this morning we find that Congress and the President have repealed part of the First Amemdment:

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It's no joke. 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.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

[...]

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."

So let me get this straight: If an anonymous blogger writes something that annoys, say, a certain Junior Senator from Pennsylvania said blogger faces financial disaster and two years in prison?

A few years ago I would have said the Supreme Court would toss this out in two seconds flat but today, who knows?

Oh, and I left out this part:

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.

Remember: Specter is the guy running the Alito hearings.


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