In the state of Kentucky a loathsome ignorant law would make it illegal for anyone to post an anonymous message to bulletin boards, like The Forum, newsgroups, blogs, or any other type of online chat. This law requires all such boards to require your username to be your real first and last name. The law also requires you to provide your home address and a working email address.

There is a provision in the law that would require webmasters give out the names and addresses of any user to a third party if that user is accused of posting false information. This request need not come from some fedgov agency, oh my no, Joe Stalker the rapist can demand to get the personal details from www.teenchat.com for little Lolita Hayes.

The law would fine any website $500 for the first offense of allowing anonymous postings, and $1000 for each subsequent offense.

The pretext of this piece of legislative crap is that it is meant to curb �online bullying.� You know, where fat kids reach through your monitor and punch you in the nose unless you give up your milk money? I don�t want to get into the reason why some kid would be stupid enough to stick around a website where they are being bullied, suffice it to say you would be pretty stupid to stick around a website where you are being bullied.

Enforcement of the law would be next to impossible. The bill does not specify if only websites hosted in Kentucky would be affected, who would enforce the law, and of course I would hope the Supreme Court would have something to say about this law violating the first amendment.

I noticed this bill was the last item introduced to the Kentucky legislature before their spring recess. Could this be some political trick to get a bill passed that would normally not have a snowball�s chance in Hell? Sure, let�s wait until Friday evening right before a holiday to introduce new business when most people have already gone to start their vacation. I don�t hear any nays, the ayes have it�

Blame for this latest assault on our freedom lies squarely with Kentucky Representative Tim Couch. Hopefully soon to be ex-Representative Tim Couch, or better still, defendant Tim Couch in Couch vs. People of Kentucky re: Crimes Against the People, Crimes Against the State, Treason, Terrorist Acts Committed by an Elected Official. Attached is a copy of the bill as of yesterday.

Thank god I live in the EU. It was just ruled around here that the users ip number is private information and should not be revealed to third parties, tough this was in a case of p2p.
Those Kentucky officials would probably want to make the bill affect every site thats available in Kentucky, or deploy a iron curtain to protect people form the great Anonymous of the Internet :p
Around here a similar bill was proposed once, that every bulleting board should have a moderator that would remove all "unwanted" messages. I haven't heard about the bill for years so I guess it's dead. P2p is also illegal around here tough at least 30% of the youth use it. The police concentrates only on topsites & similar and have said that the bill is impossible to enforce.

Sir,
I believe such a draconian law is hard or next-to-impossible to enforce.

A few years ago, a more harsh and demanding law was enacted but could not be enforced.

The stupid politicians enacted a law that requires an individual who shall post data online in internet, must file his post with the governor and request permission for it.

Of course it was doomed to fail and it surely did fail.

However such laws are generally used for pressurizing the undesirable. I hope wisdom prevails and this bill does not pass. Regards.

First of all, akinrog, I hope that you realized the error in your post right after submitting it. You put "wisdom" and "politicians" in the same post. Naturally, we know these two to be antonyms.

More on topic, the law that akinrog mentioned probably failed due to its complete absurdity. The bill being discussed here, however, is considerably easier to enforce. It is, in principle, the same action taken against many companies in our field of interest like United Nuclear and Skylighter. It would not be all that difficult for them to step things up a little bit. Just because the government cannot catch every hippie smoking pot in a Volkswagen van doesn't mean that they will stop trying. After all, if at first you don't succeed, keep on banging your head against the wall until the pink and purple dots come to take you away. And anyways, the government is never wrong.

Great slogan for this bill: "We will do our best to make sure that your child cannot be bullied by children with such low self-esteem that they bully people over the internet while they are being ritualistically raped and sacrificed in the back of a white panel van by a homicidal/satanic/bipolar/sick-assed pedophile that tracked them down over the internet because of our new law. Boo, cyberbullying. Hooray, Ted Bundy!" [slight paraphrase of Redstripe beer commercial]

The bill in uneforcable, they might as well pass a law saying the sun will rise in the west ... and considering the average poilitician they probably will.

It may seem hard to enforce, and it will be to an extent. But getting someones IP address can give you all the information you need. Get the IP and run a program like neotrace. That will give the ISP and approximate location. Call the ISP and get the persons address, phone number, ect. Sometimes the tracking program can give that to you up front without even having to contact the ISP!

While many people would be breaking the law, much like how many people download music on P2P, only a select few would be nabbed. People like us who discuss energetics would probably be targeted first. Being intelligent and sensible, they would obviously want to illiminate us since we would be a "threat" to society. Its obvious the real threat here is to our freedoms and its by our own government. As I said, when the people start fearing the government and not the government fearing the people, you have a problem.

It may seem hard to enforce, and it will be to an extent. But getting someones IP address can give you all the information you need. Get the IP and run a program like neotrace.

That's because everybody must use TOR and privoxy duo for privacy reasons. These two while not being totally secure, prevents the sleuth to get your personal information. However the plugins you use on your browser may (said to) be tricked to leak your IP. :(

I never see any ads nor is obliged to accept any cookie, I don't want to accept.

However the system is slow if you use dialup. :(