{"id":106,"date":"2006-01-10T11:24:24","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T11:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=106"},"modified":"2013-11-28T02:39:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T02:39:24","slug":"criminally-annoying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=106","title":{"rendered":"Criminally Annoying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CNet has an <a href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/2010-1028-6022491.html\" Target=\"Offsite\">interesting column<\/a> by Declan McCullagh.  He warns (or promises) that &#8220;annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime&#8221;.  At first I thought this could be a bad news\/good news.  Although it sounds like more outrageous government meddling, I can think of some annoying people that I wouldn&#8217;t mind having locked up under the new law.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A closer look at McCullagh&#8217;s story, and the cited law, shows that it&#8217;s not quite that simple.  As he goes on to say: &#8220;President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.&#8221;  So you can only have people arrested for annoying you if they do it anonymously.  Then further reading says it prohibits anyone from using the Internet &#8220;without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.&#8221;  So the intent to annoy has to be there.  Some of the folks that annoy me the most have no clue they&#8217;re annoying, which makes them immune.<\/p>\n<p>\nSeriously, although the law isn&#8217;t as bad as McCullagh&#8217;s lead-in suggests, it does appear to be a little too broad.  It&#8217;s in a section titled &#8220;Preventing Cyberstalking,&#8221; which may be a worthy goal.  But, as written, it doesn&#8217;t seem to make any distinction between serious threats and immature jerks with cutesy screen names needling each other on a bulletin board.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut, just to be safe, if anyone is annoyed by anything I&#8217;ve written here, I didn&#8217;t intend to annoy you, and my name is Matt Simpson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNet has an interesting column by Declan McCullagh. He warns (or promises) that &#8220;annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime&#8221;. At first I thought this could be a bad news\/good news. Although it sounds like more outrageous government meddling, I can think of some annoying people that I wouldn&#8217;t mind having locked&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=106\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Criminally Annoying<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-1I","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}