Bill To Outlaw Internet Forum Anonymity

[Marsofold]

Peter Biondi, a state assemblyman from New Jersey, USA has introduced a bill to outlaw participation in all internet forums failing to provide the actual name and addresses of participants who post there. Besides compromising US first amendment freedoms, can anyone also see the inevitable problems that would arise should forums for children and teens be required to post their names and addresses? However, in the current climate of US Homeland Security, who knows if this jerk's bill would pass?

Here is the story on Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060307-6332.html

Here is the text of the actual bill: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bi...00/1327_I1.HTM

Reputation Comments on this post:

i live in nj and didnt even kno abt that

[Hotboxed151]

I could see alot of innocent 10-17 year old kids getting sent to jail for being curious about drugs. This will lead to a huge decline in the internet bringing many websites to a fall. Possibly leaving multi-millionare site owners to go broke. Here is where the economy comes into play Pete. Think it through.

[Pinkavvy]

This would not effect internationally hosted forums such as this one, would it?

[Marsofold]

If this moron's bill became law, it would only affect people living in the state of New Jersey, USA. They could in theory be busted for participating there. Although most legal scholars wouldn't give such a law much chance of surviving a legal challange, who knows? If it did survive, it could become the model for eliminating politically inconvenient internet anonymity in the USA...

[Alfa]

Even if that bill would pass (and there is a fat chance of that. lol) it would be useless. Like the article says, Peter Biondi seems to be without a clue on the workings of the internet and the possibility to go about anonymous. And like I or any other forum webmaster outside of Jersey would give a rats ass about complying to that bill. Biondi is just pissed, because someone stepped on his penis on an internet forum.

[sadskills1987]

i live in jersey, if the guy can get one or two groups of "concerned parents" or "concerned christians" in a tizzy, the whole thing gets shot down. around here, the parents and bible beaters barely even know what they are fighting for, it's actually pretty funny to watch. one gets upset, fires of some flustered and completely false and propagandist email to all her friends and then they send it to their friends and so on. they'd stop friggin ghandi from doing a speech within a 5 state radius if the poor guy was still alive. now from anywhere else i may sound like a raving lunatic, but most people who live near or in nj know this is true. although if one person takes a quick look and thinks its good, then most of nj's gonna b askin mcgreevy(our gay ex-governer who used the fact that he was being a butt pirate to hide a corruption scandal) if he's got any extra ass-lube.