Attached Link: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/A1500/1327_I1.HTM

Similar ideas are simmering on the US national level, as well.

Does this mean that users posting on forums such as this one will have to post under their birth given names instead of user names like we do now? How will they be able to enforce this one? This website is based in Tenn....will it matter? Again, this one goes back to privacy and I dont think USA'ians are gonna go for it ;)

From what I've read (I am in NJ) it means that hosts on public forums would be required to provide real names and addresses to anyone requesting them in case of libelous or damaging comments made on the forum. You would still be able to use nicknames as long as the host had your real name on file. I too don't see how they are going to enforce that one.

Quote - You would still be able to use nicknames as long as the host had your real name on file.

And how would they know if the name you gave them was in fact your real name? It's easy to make up a name.

In case of damaging comments? WTF? So I can call someone an asshole all I want in real life, but if I want to do it on the internet I have to make my full name and address public knowledge? No way, man. This will never fly...

The very first line says: "SYNOPSIS Makes certain operators of interactive computer services and Internet service providers liable to persons injured by false or defamatory messages posted on public forum websites. " Why do they make the operators liable? Shouldn't the person who actually made the statement be liable? When are people going to learn to hold the perpetrator responsible for his or her actions instead of blaming it on someone else? We (me, you, bush, Osama, the person that posted that my life had less value than a fruit loop back in the OT forum) have the ability to choose what we do. Granted, there are a few with mental illnes that may have limits, but other than that, we choose our actions. We should be held responsible for our choices. Not the operator. Not the society. Not the parents. Not the schools. They may influence, but we choose, not them.

There are problems generated online by personality types who can't really handle this type of environment. Either from being overly sensitive (the type that tends to run crying to a Mod every time that someone says "boo!" to them in a forum); or from being overly aggressive (the type whose greatest joy in life as a kid was to torture ants with a magnifying glass).......

AOL -- among other providers -- has already been sued repeatedly for being the carrier of insulting or libelous postings by its members. I don't know all of the results in every case: but the ones that I have heard about resulted in the internet provider winning the lawsuit every time. The basic idea is about like suing the Postal Service for delivering a nasty-worded letter.

But of course, the 'deep pocket' theory will always apply for those who are looking for easy money. After all, what good does it do anyone to sue some broke college kid who called you a name online? Sue AOL, instead ! They've got all of the money.

If bills like this one ever become law.......then I can just see the endless stream of court cases clogging our already W-A-Y overheated legal system......or we might even have cases of people tracking down & shooting others who've said nasty things to them online.

It would be similar to making it easy for ANYONE to walk into the DMV and find out who someone else is from their car's tag number. Like the nutcase who tracked down & killed that young actress from the TV sitcom My Sister Sam a few years back.

No, thanks. This isn't a good idea, folks.

I agree Bobasaur :) the person that posted that my life had less value than a fruit loop back in the OT forum ~Cracks up laffin'..I remember that one! {and btw, I think your life has more value than a fruit loop ;)}

Another example, XENOPHONZ, this is like suing Bell or another phone company because of a prank caller. :| It's madness...

Could ya imagine this very site being forced to announce someones real name and address just because someone says "so and so bad mouthed me, and now my sales are lower..Im an injured party" Uh-Uh....not gonna happen folks.

......and talk about being an open invitation to stalkers & predators of every stripe.........

I don't think so.

If I were a NJ resident, then I think that I'd write my reprsentative & point out the inherent flaws in a scheme like this one.

There have been a couple of times when I've been out riding my mountain bike -- and I passed by someone who was literally 75' away from my position --

"Did you see that......!!!!????? He almost ran me over.......!!!!!!!!!"

Unfortunately, the online world is likewise filled with such minds.

but the ones that I have heard about resulted in the internet provider winning the lawsuit every time. You might want to check out Godfrey vs Demon Internet. This is UK law but was a landmark decision in its day. IIRC a Dr. Godfrey held he had been libelled in a Usenet posting which was stored on news servers owned by Demon, then one of the UK's largest ISPs. He asked Demon to remove it (despite the fact that the post was stored on many other Usenet servers around the globe) and they did not do so. At trial the judge found that Demon were guilty to the extent that they did not remove the allegedly libellous message although they could easily have done so - but that they did not commit an offence for storing and serving the message itself, before being asked to remove it. Hasten to add that this is from memory and I'm not a lawyer (thankfully).

That's an interesting case - I've never heard of it before. Did the court also tell Demon how they were to determine whether the post was genuinely libellous - as opposed to just acting on the Doctor's subjective opinion? How are providers supposed to know if something comes under the heading of Libel or "freedom of speech?"

I can't remember TBH. I think the point was that they should have removed the message until such time as they had determined that it was or was not libellous (e.g. following legal advice). But in practice I suspect that nowadays the post would be pulled and never reappear - easier, cheaper, and safer, but means anyone could complain and get a post deleted.

I can understand the legal reasoning in that UK case. After a request was made to the provider to remove a specifically libelous posting -- yes, I can understand that.

Years ago, I saw a post on Usenet from a vengeful woman -- she had posted a bunch of explicit sex pictures of another woman whom she accused of having an affair with her boyfriend. She named the other woman & gave her hometown -- along with an invitation to all viewers to call up the other woman & join in the fun. IIRC, the pictures were posted under some innocuous title or other -- and were spammed across numerous newsgroups.

In such a case, I'd say that you'd have a solid libel suit -- at the very least. But I wouldn't blame the providers. I'd blame the enraged woman who made the posts.

But if a specific request was made to remove the posts? That might be a different story.....but once something goes out onto Usenet, it goes out all over the world. It's the proverbial case of closing the barn door long after the horses have already fled.

The UK legal system has one HUGE advantage over our crazy system here in the US. The UK has 'loser pays' in civil actions. If someone brings a lawsuit, and then loses the suit -- they are forced to pay ALL of the legal fees & court costs: including the costs of the other party.

A loser-pays system over here would go a L-O-N-G way towards fixing the current insanity of our totally out-of-control legal system. Most people would think twice before filing a frivolous lawsuit under loser-pays.

But of course: the trial lawyers over here would fight any such idea with every weapon that they could bring to bear.

I'm not sure if drudge understands the subpoena process, or a multitude of other issues that are involved there. how unfortunate if he were trying to play on the paranoia of an uninformed public.

But I wouldn't blame the providers. I'd blame the enraged woman who made the posts.

That was the big concern in the Demon case - that they would be found guilty of publishing the post in question. That would be like suing the phone company for allowing another person to make a slanderous phone call. That, at least, didn't happen.

Re US v UK systems - it's funny, but we tend to think that the guarantees on freedom of expression in the US make for better libel law because it prevents people with wounded egos (or more money than morals) from suing someone who makes the slightest derogatory remark about them.

There'a another interesting topic current in the UK at the moment. A newspaper published a story about two footballers (that's soccer players for those in the US) being involved in some kind of gay orgy. The paper didn't identify the players involved, but for some reason another player (who says he isn't one of them) has been named and a lot of rumours are apparently circulating on the internet. This player has now sued the paper but has also asked Google to explain why, when you type his name into their search engine, it comes up with links to (player's name) + 'gay'. Just shows how sensitive people are becoming to what appears about them on the net. Nobody cared when it was just a few geeks logging on!

how unfortunate if he were trying to play on the paranoia of an uninformed public.

Ah, yes.....the great, unwashed, ignorant hoi polloi -- all of those poor souls out there who need to be lead by the hand in order to understand where to find the restroom before they soil themselves......

Drudge does yeoman's work. He's one of the sources floating around these days who help to keep the igonorant self-appointed elites from having a clear field in which to carry out their mad scientist's social experiments on the rest of us. Much to the irritation of those same frustrated elites. Ignorant sheep are a lot more docile than informed sheep. That's why nations like China don't want google allowing the sheep to stray off just anywhere......the sheep might start gettin' ideas.

Quote - Why do they make the operators liable? Shouldn't the person who actually made the statement be liable?

When are people going to learn to hold the perpetrator responsible for his or her actions instead of blaming it on someone else?

The operator is liable because they are providing the medium in which the harassment/abuse is taking place. If the medium/site weren't there, the abuse/harassment wouldn't have happened.

It's not a matter of blaming someone else. It's a matter of resonsibility. Are you providing a service where people can get together and discuss a topic of common interest, or are you providing a medium for harassment and abuse? If someone on your forum is harassing and abusing someone and you don't do anything to stop it you ultimately make yourself liable because you are a contributor to that harassment because you provided the medium for which it took place, and without that medium the harassment wouldn't have taken place. You can put up as many statements as you like about "the forum host is not liable for member's actions", but those mean absolutely nothing.

If you have a forum and members are sharing warez products, you will be the one charged and closed down. If you have a forum and members are making terrorism plots, you are liable because you provided the medium for that to take place.

Harassment, stalking and abuse are real crimes...be it in "real life" done in person, or on the internet. Message edited on: 03/07/2006 16:31

"Are you providing a service where people can get together and discuss a topic of common interest, or are you providing a medium for harassment and abuse?" I have no doubt that there are some people out there who intentionally provide a medium for people who want to accomplish things that are 'abuse.' However, that's a minority. Renderosity, for example, provides a medium for discussing art, software, and selling stuff. That is their purpose. Regardless of how you or I behave, their purpose is to provide the above mentioned things. If you or I take advantage or the system to abuse each other, it is our choice. It's not Renderosity's. "If the medium/site weren't there, the abuse/harassment wouldn't have happened." By this reasoning, Every portion of the Internet is equally responsible. Internic provides domain names that enable routing. The telephone and cable companies provide transfer of the data. The computer manufacturers provide the hardware. Heck, even school teachers are responsible because they provide the language skills. If any of these were removed, the abuse could not have happened. I hope I don't come across as sarcastic - I don't mean to be at all. It just seems that this logic 1). arbitrarily picks only one of many things that make the abuse possible, and 2). is essentially 'shooting the messenger' For the record, I do know that forum owners are held liable. I just don't think it's always right. But then again, I don't always agree with other laws and legal things either. ;-)

If the medium/site weren't there, the abuse/harassment wouldn't have happened.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she's be a wagon.

There is absolutely NO WAY that a provider can possibly know 100% of what goes on in their system, especially a big system. They can't read every email, they can't read every Usenet post, they can't visit every web page that their users put online and recheck every time there's an update. It's not technically possible, and the manpower it would take is beyond reasonable.

I can get the "you were asked to remove it and you didn't" argument, but holding an ISP liable because some random jackass posts something mean in a forum or on Usenet through their service is ridiculous.

And "removing" something from Usenet... That's just nonsense. Yes, the local ISP can pull the article from their local news server, but it's still on THOUSANDS of servers around the world, so what's the point? It'd be like forcing some random city newspaper not to print something while every other newspaper in the world is publishing it. What good does it actually do?

bonni Message edited on: 03/07/2006 17:42

Holding the ISP responsible woule be like a bank that has been robbed suing the city because the robber used city-owned streets to get to and from the bank.

Many feel the internet is "no holds barred" and "without barriers". Unlike life, on the internet there are no local "police" that you can call to get in the face of someone harassing you. The only recourse you have are the site owners, site moderators, site host (if they aren't hosting it themselves) or the perpetrator's ISP, which isn't available to you as a poster. Like it or not, given the nature of the internet and the lack of "police", the responsibility for "upholding the law" falls on the shoulders of the person who owns the domain.

Except that it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for a large system to be monitored 100%. The phone company can't listen in on all the calls made to make sure none of them are illegal or harassment, and an ISP can't possibly know 100% of what users are doing. If you have more than two users, you've already lost control. I used to work at a medium sized ISP and we had to deal with this nonsense all the time. When we got a complaint, we'd look into it, and we were known to remove accounts or remove images or other such matters, but honestly, there was and is no way to know what 100% of users are doing 100% of the time. I'm not sure what part of "it can't be done" eludes the people who want to make laws holding ISPs responsible for what users post. Why not also hold all the hops in the route (i.e., other systems through with a message passes) responsible, as well? It's only slightly less ridiculous. bonni

I'm not talking about ISPs. I'm talking about site owners. However, the ISP is the next in line for responsibility if complaints are received and they do not do anything about it. But first responsibility falls on the site owner.

From my reading of the proposed act, the host/owner would only be held responsible if they didn't follow due process in acquiring and releasing (when requested) names and addresses. So if they make a reasonable attempt to get people's names and addresses, then they should be covered. However, if they don't setup and maintain procedures and systems to do so then they're screwed.

Quote - if they make a reasonable attempt

That's all that is expected.

Discussing in court what is or is not a "reasonable attempt" will keep lawyers in clover. No offence, but Acadia's argument sounds like saying that if you can't get at the actual culprit, find a scapegoat instead: somebody has to pay, even if they obviously aren't responsible. Q:"The only recourse you have are the site owners, site moderators, site host (if they aren't hosting it themselves) or the perpetrator's ISP, which isn't available to you as a poster."

Quote - Acadia's argument sounds like saying that if you can't get at the actual culprit, find a scapegoat instead: somebody has to pay, even if they obviously aren't responsible.

It's not "my" argument, it's a fact. Some years ago I used to post on a board that was ultimately closed down because of trouble makers. I was one of a few that the "bully crowd" targeted and stalked from thread to thread harassing on the forums and in PM. The moderators on that site were pretty good. They deleted posts and banned people, but eventually it got to be too much for them because the griefer crowd was out of control, so they decided that it just wasn't worth it and they closed the forums.

I stayed within the community but went to a different forum. The "bully crowd" migrated to anpther one. I thought that was the end of it. One day a few weeks later I got a message from a friend who read dozens of forums within the community and they pointed me to a link telling me that I might want to "read that thread"....those people picked up where they left off and I wasn't even a member of that forum. I also noticed several other threads that were essentially dedicated to maligning me and my name and people that I didn't even know or had never heard of (possibly with different user names than what I had known them by) were posting things about me claiming them to be true etc when in fact they weren't. Horribly vicious and malicious stuff.

Long story short....moderators didn't do anything because those that moved there from the closed one voted to have "no rules", and the moderators were part of the crowd that ended up getting the other forum closed. I was speaking to a friend of mine who is a lawyer and we got on the topic of internet griefing. He told me that a site owner who allows such acts on his site/server is culpable as they are providing the medium for the harassment/abuse to take place. Like it or not, it's a fact.
Message edited on: 03/08/2006 04:54

So if I put a forum on one of my dozen or so domains (which also happen to be on my own server, i.e., I am my own host), I should have to try to find out the real names and contact details for everyone who posts? Riiiight. That's my responsibility, is it? To make sure that random people can't come to my domain and sign up for my forum and act like a jackass? I know this is NOT what the proposed law is suggesting, but this is apparently the suggestion being posed here. What about people who post comments in my blog, do I need their names and addresses, too? I've been on the net since 1993, and I've had my share of nasty run-ins with people online. I've also been a sysadmin at an ISP and I manage a number of domains myself, along with a server. I do NOT consider it my personal responsibility to make sure that everyone who comes near my domains "plays nicely". I probably would delete things I considered inappropriate, but that's because I choose to do it, not because I'm somehow morally or ethically obligated to babysit all the random jerks out there. bonni

Quote - not because I'm somehow morally or ethically obligated to babysit all the random jerks out there.

That's exactly what it is, babysitting.

Think about it as if your kids had a party in the basement of your house and there were a bunch of underage kids there drinking and doing drugs.

You are ultimately responsible for the behaviour taking place inside your house.

Message edited on: 03/08/2006 06:57

Except that MY kids are MY responsibility. Random dickheads on the net are NOT my responsibility. And I note you didn't answer the comment asking if I'm supposed to be legally obliged to get everyone's personal name and address (which is what the law seems to propose). That my responsibility, too? bonni

According to the proposed reform, yes, or at the very least make a reasonable effort to do so. However, as I said way up above, it's easy to just type in a fictitious name. The only possible way to ensure that you have the person's name and address is to do a credit card verification, but even at that it's not fool proof and people can still use a ficticious name. How they plan on ensuring that people are giving their real names is beyond me, which is why the proposed reform probably will not become a reality.

Well, if they really need all that information, they could just ask the (US) National Big Ear - that NSA that Our Leader is so fond of.

I remember a Harvard Lampoon parody on "Desiderata" - you know, that one that starts off with "Go quietly amid the noise and haste..." The Lampoon's "Deteriorata" said, "Know thyself. If you need help, contact your local FBI." Now we can use the NSA instead!

If there wasn't a USPS, nut-cases couldn't send hate mail...

"This website is based in Tenn" Huh?

I'd certainly have no objection to posting with my real name, but unfortunately it doesn't fit in the space provided.

Slinger a.k.a.
Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbimwhinbimlin Bus Stop F'tang F'tang OlBiscuit Barrel.

** "This website is based in Tenn" Huh?** Tennessee

Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbimwhinbimlin Bus Stop F'tang F'tang OlBiscuit Barrel I'll vote for you! bonni

Right in the "Bible Belt" TN ??? Just thought it was a tax address. Could explain a bit, hee hee.

When a constituant complains, or enough get to gether to complain, or something drastic happens, lawmakers have a knee-jerk reaction to give a big visual SHOW that they're doing something, and try to pass laws that may not be well thought out. Acadia - by reading your post that is 3 up from this one, I'm reading that this is VERY personal to you so you would love to see any measure of it to pass to get back at (or have recourse for) your attackers. And that's what they were - attackers! Your responses have since been to use word choices to enforce your argument, and dismiss anyone that might damage said argument. The others have the same general consensus of legal internet culpability, and they're right. There is no internet police that can monitor everything all the time, and catch the assholes who make life miserable. The woman who posted the sexual photographs of her husband/boyfriend's lover - there's a traceable offender who can be prosecuted. The site that blindly "hosts" the forums where she posted them - they didn't kow until someone who didn't approve informed them. Someone above remarked that it's like trying to sue the phone company for harassing calls - that's a very good likeness. The only thing the phone company should be responsible for (and think metaphorically for the internet forums) is cancelling someone's contract and refusing service, ONCE THEY'VE BEEN INFORMED. Until then they have no idea, and cannot be held legally responsible. Websites organized for illegal or immoral activities - that's a simple argument and has no bearing on this discussion. Websites like RR - purely as an art community with all good intentions - if someone is prowling the forums looking to slander others, that's where it gets murky. All RR can do is ban them - ad then they can create a completely different account with bogus personal info and a new username - and here we go again... The person directly committing slander is responsible - not the Host. If the Host won't work with you after informing them, THEN reach for other methods. And I am NOT gonna give my credit card info to have on the Host's storage for contact info proof, only to have a hacker invade the Host and get all my personal info. BAD idea. -Lew

Quote - Acadia - by reading your post that is 3 up from this one, I'm reading that this is VERY personal to you so you would love to see any measure of it to pass to get back at (or have recourse for) your attackers. And that's what they were - attackers! Your responses have since been to use word choices to enforce your argument, and dismiss anyone that might damage said argument.

Forgive me, but I'm not entirely clear what you are saying here. I haven't been feeling well and between that and my pain meds my head is a bit fuzzy. Anyway, yes, it is a personal issue with me. I can't stand bullies, be it those in the school yard, on the street, or on the internet. However, I have respect for those who bully in person instead of sitting safely behind a computer screen getting off on hurting people. Those are the worse kind because they wouldn't have the guts to do it in person for fear of getting a fist in their face.

Twoo, vewy twoo. Anonymity brings out a whole new kind of a-hole.