Annoy me Anonymously, Go to Jail → A cool-headed, logical view of the situation...

Okay... my personal opinion is that the CNET article has blown this out of proportion, so I am going to try and do a level-headed explanation.

The bill that was signed by the President included a section which amended an existing law. The existing law is the Telecommunications Act of 1934. In the Telecommuncations Act of 1934 it states:

"Whoever... (C) makes a telephone call or utilizes a telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication ensues, without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications;.. shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

The text of the amendment that was passed into law states:

"by adding at the end the following new subparagraph:

'(C) in the case of subparagraph (C) of subsection (a)(1), includes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet (as such term is defined in section 1104 of the Internet Tax Freedom Act (47 U.S.C. 151 note)).'."

So, what does this mean? The original law simply stated "telephone call" and as we all know, the meaning of "telephone call" has been stretched with new technologies such as VoIP. Imagine for a moment that someone used Skype (the premium service) to make a "telephone call" to your house using a POTS number to harass/annoy you. Does that fall under the original framework of the law??? Who knows.

That the amendment does, in part, is close a (potential?) loophole that technology has created.

The BBR headline that says President Bush "signed into law a prohibition of posting annoying Web messages" is MIS-LEADING and in my humble opinion... FALSE.

The reason? The original law states "at the called number or who receives the communications." Posting on a website, IMHO, does not constitute a "called number" nor does it constitute "receiv[ing a] communcation."

So, all this fuss is for NOTHING.

Oh? When were you nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Right before Bush nominated Harriet Miers... but it didn't make the news for one reason or another.

My point is that I fail to see the leap from telephone calls to web postings based on the amendment that was signed into law. The CNET article is misleading because, IMHO, it's the author's interpretation of the amendment and I think it's an absurd interpretation.

The key text of the original law is "at the called number or receives the communication." The amendment DID NOT CHANGE this but rather added devices/software which originate a communication that transmitts via the Internet; an example might be Skype.

Granted... I am not in a position to define "receives the communication" but posting a message to a website doesn't qualify IMHO.

phantom6294,

Thanks for digging down into the text and offering an assessment. As presented, your conclusion appears sound to me. Spector, relative to his party brethren, is cautious on privacy issues, so if intent means anything ...