[ga] Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv]

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Declan and all,

  As many other americans, including many texans, I believe Lamar
and the boys in the house along with the RIAA are all wet on this one.

Declan McCullagh wrote:

> My column from last year:
>
> http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5155054.html
> The U.S. Congress is hard at work trying to punish Internet users who
> value their privacy.
> That's not how Capitol Hill politicians describe a new bill introduced
> last week, of course, but that's what it would accomplish if it becomes law.
> Called the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, the measure would
> increase prison sentences by up to seven years in criminal cases if
> someone provided "material and misleading false contact information to a
> domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name
> registration authority." That's a reference to the Whois database that
> lists information about who owns each domain name. [...]
>
> -Declan
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: FOISA is law.
> Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:17:19 -0500
> From: Tom Cross <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: declan@xxxxxxxx
>
> Declan,
>
>         I found out today that the "Federal Online Identity Sanctions Act,"
> which you wrote about in February of last year is now the law of the
> land. It was melded into the "Intellectual Property Protection and
> Courts Amendments Act" and passed in December. There was hardly a peep
> about this in the press and other usual outlets. Just a short blurb in
> one of EPIC's newsletters.
>         This law creates significant risks for people who run websites that
> they might commit some sort of Intellectual Property thoughtcrime and
> find themselves facing willful infringement charges simply because they
> gave a fake phone number on their DNS registration. Its hard to see
> what purpose this serves in terms of Internet crime. Criminals usually
> don't need domain names, and its doubtful that this law is going to
> influence them to be forthcoming with contact information when they do
> use them.
>         What is most frustrating to me about it is this "savings clause" it
> includes which says that nothing about this law impacts the freedom of
> speech. Nothing about that clause mitigates the actual risks that this
> law creates for people engaged in protected speech online, or the
> impact that it may have on what is said by whom. It simply provides for
> a silly semantic argument that the government can make if faced with a
> constitutional challenge. "The emperor is fully clothed, your honor!
> See, it says so right here!" I find it disheartening to see fundamental
> constitutional rights shrugged away with such trite wordsmithery.
>
> http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.3632:
>
> Regards,
> Tom Cross
>
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard

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