But I don't want you to know who I am!
 

New Jersey is proposing a law that would eliminate anonymity for those posting on message boards such as this.

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bi...00/1327_I1.HTM

"This bill would require an operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish, maintain and enforce a policy requiring an information content provider who posts messages on a public forum website either to be identified by legal name and address or to register a legal name and address with the operator or provider prior to posting messages on a public forum website."

Hmmm......I'm sure there has to be reasons, such as libelous postings in the public arena, but I don't like this. MBC would be knocking on my door with a truckload of small appliances!

I don't like it either. Sounds like an open invitation for stalkers.

Admit it, Scaeagles! It was you in IKEA! :p You were probably shopping for small appliances to dump on MBC's doorstep.

Nope, would be the end of message boards.

Of course, if I have anything to say about it ... The LoT would flaunt any such unconstitutional regulation.

I don't see how a law New Jersey passed would affect us. We don't have anyone for NJ, do we?

No, but if it's passed nad somehow holds up under court scrutiny, it's likely to be brought up in other states, if not federally.

I've never been in an IKEA, though I've driven by one along I-10 on the south side of the metro Phoenix area.

I love you, man.

They want people to be identified always by name and address?! As if.

Fck the government.

I thought this was a free country.

But New Jersey's different.

Sadly, this is no free country. Not in any respect.

I don't have the time or the tools to look this up now, but wasn't there something that happened with Google, or Yahoo, or maybe even eBay regarding some sort of transaction sort of thing and France... Where France's laws affected the business operations of whichever of those big mucky mucks I mean to say.... ? If this sounds familiar, haha, please let me know. This was last year sometime. It's in my Finance Law notes, I'm sure...

So in that vein, if a law in France could impact a business run in the US, I wonder if a New Jersey law could require a message board or business in California to operate in accordance to their law... For example, do we have any posters from Jersey?

I can remember issues with Ebay and others being banned from selling Nazi memorabilia (kind of an icky term), but that may not be what you are referring to.

I respect the right of all nations to set their laws for businesses to operate. But I also think that if the requirements are immoral - such as GOogle's current dealings with China - that the business should opt not to do business in that country.

Yeah, I'll have to look up what it was all about... That may very well be what I was trying to remember. While I agree that the selling of Nazi memorabilia might be considered morally wrong, a US based business was affected by something that entirely took place somewhere else, by someone else, and they took the flack for it.

Actually, I'm waiting for Prudence's analysis of the situation, I realize...

*waits patiently*

Well, LoT will just have to move their country of residency to Switzerland. Fuc|< that.

Yeah, but the people from New Jersey would still have to post their full names and addresses (at least that's how they make it sound).

Maybe this is a plot to lower the population of New Jersey.

This is where it gets stupid: The law is written such that it's the operator's responsibility to enforce the policy. So does that mean that we, as operators, would be required to maintain that information for anyone posting from New Jersey, even though the law is written in a jurisdiction that does not cover us (I just checked, the servers are located in the Los Angeles area)? Hell no am I dealing with that.

No way NJ can enforce that.

This proposed law is as ridiculous as Louisiana's proposed ban on low-cut jeans.

They did that?

I could be mistaken, but I believe Mousepod is from New Jersey, isn't he? He's no longer, so it's not his fault.;)

Didin't they just ban smoking in strip joints, too?

Oh, I doubt it. The key word there is "proposed," meaning some wacky government-type thought something up, and some reporter wrote a wacky story that ended up on Yahoo's "offbeat news" section.

It was a funny article--it began with the lamentation that poor, poor Britney Spears would need a new wardrobe before returning to her home town in LA for her concert.

The proposed punishment for wearing low-cut jeans was community service--the wacky guy wanted the low-cut jeans girls out picking up trash on the side of the road.

I'm fairly sure that LA never seriously considered such a law, and if they ever did, they've certainly got bigger problems at this point.

The article quoted in the OP of this thread says "proposed" as well.

Can they wear their low-cut jeans while picking up trash by the side of the road?

Yeah... my parents still live there. I'm going to have to have a word with them.

About the internet thing, or the strip joint thing?;)

Things are weirder than usual- no wonder Hunter checked out. A person has to be in battle-ready form to be able to withstand the crap coming down the pike. Everywhere you turn, rights are being restricted and in some cases eradicted, and sooner or later it will get to the point where only but the most comfortably fascist and/or well-financed will not be affected.

This was a while ago (more than 6 months ago - back when the legislature could waste their time :rolleyes: ) - and I remember it particularly with respect to guys - The criteria was undergarments showing.

And back to the OP - what happens if I'm traveling to NJ and posting from there? I'm contemplating renting points from a DVC member, and I'm probably going to use my work address because I don't want to have to deal with random strangers getting my home address. (Mind you, I'm proposing a few hundred dollar transaction with this stranger, but that doesn't bother me QUITE as much as them having my address.)

I hope you meant "flout", not "flaunt". :D

What if you wore undergarments under the undergarments? Would it then be legal for the outer layer of undergarments to show?


And what about Superheros? Would they be required put their undergarments under their clothes?

Er, um, :blush:

I'm not sure how this will go. Courts are generally way behind the times when it comes to technology and tend to fail to appreciate the realities of how people use technology.

Can a service provider in one state, providing content legal in that state, be charged with violating the laws of another state when citizens of state B used that service? (Does that even make sense? I'm so tired...)

Example: US v Thomas (74 F.3d 701, if you want to look it up) was a federal obscenity case. I might miss some details because I don't feel like reading it, but basically a BBS in California made pornography files available for download. A Postal Inspector in Tennessee signed up for the BBS, downloaded the files, and then charged the BBS with violating obscenity standards for interstate transportation of obscene materials. Obscenity is evaluated based on "community" standards and while the images were not considered obscene in California, they were considered obscene. The burden was on the BBS to refuse access to folk from Tennessee. Which then brought up all sorts of fun issues about the nature of "community standards" in a webbed world and really demonstrated (in my opinion) just how behind the times the court can be.

Anyhow, this isn't an exact match, of course, but there are similarities - there's a precedent of requiring one state to follow the "rules" of a different state when providing BBS services - so why not for the Internet?

One significant differece is that US v. Thomas involved a federal law, albeit one that can be interpreted differently depending on where one is. NJ is considering a state law, and thus might be stepping on Congress and the Commerce powers. It arguably affects interstate commerce, I think.

But the commerce clause makes my head hurt so I'm going to stop talking about it.

Interesting

I do wonder how one would be expected to enforce it. You caould require it part of registration, but what do you verify the information against? I suspect an awful lot of John Smiths and M. Bormans to sign up.

On the other hand, here on LoT there are few of you that I don't know personally, so privacy in some ways has already been forfieted.

I think what troubles me most about this kind of thing is that the lines between home and work are getting fuzzy and the workplace is creeping more into the home and limiting speach in ways governments cannot (i.e. terminating employees that talk about their workplace). Already I've heard too many stories of that kind of thing happening.

I think we need more safe havens than our lawyers, priests, and doctors for us to be able to talk freely about our lives without fear of retribution.

Heck, workplaces are limiting speech and behavior outside the workplace, even when the speech/behavior isn't particularly related to their work. We're marching down the road to "we just don't want that type of person associated with my business." Hell, if the taxpayers ever saw the contents of my bedside cabinet I'm sure there'd be an expose on the nightly news. Happened to someone I know.

haha - you said nad.

Well, it didn't say you had to DO anything with it? Like taking a photocopy of your Social Security Card when you start a new job - I don't believe there is any requirement to actually CHECK it against a database. (Maybe there is now, but I don't think there was initially)


But (in my case, anyway) I would not have started posting on any internet message board without an initial anonymity to it. And I've only met a couple of people in person, so that means I give up my privacy to ALL? And THIS is a manageable size community - what about the mega-boards (I've been posting on the Disboards recently because I want to rent points - yikes that place is huge!) - I MAY have met a couple of people on that board only because of their association with other boards, does that mean I give up my privacy to ALL of them?

Waitaminute... the LoT would flaunt this law?
:p :D

Ooop, looks like Lisa must have taken over my typing fingers.

Not only would we flaunt it, we would deify anyone who tried to contraindicate us in the process!

HEY! I wasn't even around!

I have mixed feelings about "privacy." Once upon a time people lived in small communities where everyone knew each other's business, why shouldn't we expect other people to "know" about us. But I may be confusing concepts of privacy with anonymity.

See I wonder about that - people conceal their differences in anonymity, and sometimes we are expected to do just that. The work place is sometimes that way - just act corporate, show no odd interests and nobody's feathers get ruffled.

But when we all know each other's quirks - you're somewhat forced to accept them - or realize they aren't all that wierd after all. It's the unknown that we are most afraid of and anonymity creates a lot of that.

This is one of the few places that I am comfortable enough to post my real name, and that of my family. I learned how precious privacy is when I had aquired a stalker from a chat room. After he took things offline to threaten me and Nickolas, even going so far as to call my house and tell David exacly what Nick wore to school that day and to tell him I was having an affair with him (because I refused to have an affair). I learned my lesson. If this law goes into effect this would be the only place I would remain a member.

After the comment about the child I'd have agreed to meet him in person. In some dark secluded romantic spot, perhaps near a swamp or a particularly deep and murky lake.

Yes, but there are two key differences between the work place/small town analogies and the situation that would be created by this proposed law.

1) In the former, there are some controls as to who's in and who's out. Not so much for an internet community. As we have seen, they can grow to staggering proportions rather quickly. Now, the easy rebuttal to that is that this law isn't putting your info out for all members to see, just the adminsitrators. But there you run smack into...

2) Lack of reciprocation. In the small town/work place situation, there's a bidirectionality. "You can know everything about me, I can know everything about you." Not so with this law. You'd be require to divulge info to the operators of whatever board, while they are under no obligation to return. Such one-sidedness makes it far easier for the less scrupulous operators to do less scrupulous things.

I'll grant you that - but I do still wonder if technology enable us to have that small town relationship in a much larger community. Of course there are psychologicaal and physiological barriers at some point - but the technology seems to at least enable things moving in this direction.

The other thing about technology is I wonder over time whether or not privacy is even possible. After I saw the movie The End of Violence, I became hyper aware of all the surviellance cameras there are just about everywhere you go. It's kind of big brotherish but we already spend an awful lot of time on camera, add the GPS feature on cell phones - red light cameras, IP address logging etc. maybe we should focus less on protecting our privacy and more on protecting our rights to be ourselves in public.

There has been research that seems to indicate that whether you live in a small community or a large metropolitan area, people tend to have close relationships with about the same number of people. It seems like we're more impersonal in big cities because you come across more people you don't know, but in the end, we all hit some maximum upper limit of social capaicty which is relatively stable (accounting for the expected statistical distribution of individual variations) from person to person. So while the internet may offer the advantage of widening the georgraphical net of who you know, it most likely just means that other acquaintances will fall off the table, or never get on the table to begin with.

Shhh!!!! Don't say her name ! ;)

Call her 'Kindly tall woman of tangly red hair'.

I hear the number is somewhere between 200 and 250 - I've notice that that also seems to be the breaking point for online communities - factions are created, splits occure, or cyber neighborhoods of specialization are carved out. Happens in the work place too.

But still there has to be some impact of having access to the same information on strangers that you have with your intimates. I just hope as we move forward it becomes more comfortable or easier to just be who you are instead of having to conceal things for fear of judgemental idiots, stalkers, and critics.

The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh


Yeah, maybe I'm tired, but that was my first thought.

If we achieve step one of living without fear of them, what's to be done in step two about the inevitable idiots, stalkers and critics?


(ok, mostly about the stalkers ... assuming no murky lakes are available)

Good question - it may involve living with and accepting the fact that there are cretins among us. But perhaps these same tools can be used to curb their otherwise anti-social behavior in something I shall dub "meta-stalking" for stalking couldn't be done in secret anymore either.

oh kindly tall lady of tangly hair, won't you please tell us next of the Laidly Toad of Bamborough Keep?

For example, I am (mostly) accepted around here.:cool:

HEY... that was posted on my birthday!

Hehehe.. I smell a LoT parody...:D