Carnal Reason

A willfully stupid idea:

Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal. The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Representative Couch says he filed the bill in hopes of cutting down on online bullying. He says that has especially been a problem in his Eastern Kentucky district.

…

Representative Couch says enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge.

I imagine it would be a challenge to impose a Kentucky law on the entire nation, much less the world. But a law like this one would offer great opportunity. One could pick a hated site, register under a false identity, and make scandalous remarks. The goal would be to trigger fines against the site and so silence it. In anticipation of just such a thing, most sites would be forced to disallow comments. A small price to pay to keep Kentucky cyber-bullies in from saying mean things.

Posted on March 10th, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: law