Am I e-nnoying you?
I just couldn’t pass up writing about this one. I recently read an article on CNET news titled Create and e-annoyance, go to jail. President Bush passed into law a prohibition making it illegal to post annoying web messages or send annoying email without disclosing your true identity. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Buried in the new law, rewrite, or what ever it is, there is a statement saying to “[Prevent] Cyberstalking” by amending the existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.” What the heck is intent to annoy? As the CNET article exclaims, “What is annoying to some people isn’t annoying to others.”
I can wholeheartedly agree with the annoying email. Essential those who send junk email found me not the other way around. If this law was passed to stop spam emails from occurring then I say rock on. (Although I really don’t think using such official legal terms as annoy will stop viagra pushers from showing up in my email box telling me I shouldn’t be afraid of my erectile dysfunction problem.) However, in terms of publishing something on the internet, why should the US government tell me what I can publish. Now I’m not big on getting into arguments about civil liberties and just and unjust who-ha. I just wonder if someone lands on my site and finds it annoying, can’t they just click close or click back. Is it my fault MSN search got them to my page, shouldn’t MSN be responsible for showing my content to a user? I didn’t find them, they found me.
All I have to say is good thing my name is the site, I don’t want to annoy someone and incur a stiff fine or go to jail.
Read the article and let me know what you think.
Erik