Don’t e-Annoy Me; You Might Go to Jail

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Yeah, and I’m already annoyed. I’m annoyed at how stuff like this gets buried deep inside bills and the public rarely gets to know about it before the fact. An article at News.com details how a prohibition buried in the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act signed last week by President Bush, could possibly have wide-reaching effects.

Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.” (emphasis mine)

There’s an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an “interactive computer service” to cause someone “substantial emotional harm.”

That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.

Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone’s probably going to be annoyed. That’s enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won’t file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.) Source: News.com

Update: News.com has a useful FAQ on this issue, at FAQ: The new ‘annoy’ law explained.

We Say: The article continues on, with quotes from Clinton Fein, owner of the Annoy.com site, as well as additional information regarding past cases, including one involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; it’s interesting reading.

Now, personally I would assume (hope?) that anyone involved in enforcing this law would take the spirit of the law into account and realize that the writers probably meant annoy as defined in definition #2 by Dictionary.com (To harass or disturb by repeated attacks), rather than definition #1 (To cause slight irritation to (another) by troublesome, often repeated acts). Or perhaps I assume (or hope for) too much?