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Ky. legislator seeks penalization of anonymous posting |
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Written by Justin Hemlepp
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 |
In hopes of combating “online bullying,” WTVQ reports, “Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal. The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.”
“If the bill becomes law,” the report continues, “the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.”
The bill (MSWord.doc) is HB 775, and, since we base some operations in Kentucky, we will be paying close attention to what the state’s House Labor and Industry Committee does with it.
The bill would require interactive service providers to:
- “establish, maintain, and enforce a policy to require information content providers to register a legal name, address, and valid electronic mail address as a precondition of using the interactive service;”
- “establish, maintain, and enforce a policy to require information content providers to be conspicuously identified with all information provided by, at a minimum, their registered legal name;” and
- “establish reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name, address, and valid electronic mail address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person.”
[WTVQ, Ky. Legislature, Bill text (MSWord.doc)]
Justin Hemlepp, executive editor of TheSequitur.com, is a third-year law student. |
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