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Posted on 11/16/2011 2:57:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Using a pseudonym on Facebook or fibbing about your age on a dating site could be illegal if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way.
The DOJ is going to Congress today to argue that Web sites' terms of service policies should be enforceable by law, according to CNet. For that purpose, the department seeks an expansion of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 25-year-old law that mainly deals with hacking, password trafficking, and threatening to damage a computer.
By outlawing terms of service violations, the department would have an easier time prosecuting cyberbullies such as Lori Drew, a 49-year-old woman who involved in a case where a 13-year-old girl committed suicide after interacting with a fake MySpace profile that Drew was involved with. Prosecutors got a conviction against Drew in 2008 for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the case was thrown out by a U.S. District Court judge.
"It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime," U.S. District Judge George Wu said of his verdict in 2009. "And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract."
That's exactly what the Department of Justice is trying to do now, through Congress
Is the Solution Too Broad?
The department's heart is in the right place, of course, but as groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out in an August 2011 letter to the Judiciary Committee, outlawing terms of service violations is an overly broad way to solve the problem. In addition to snaring cyberbullies, it would also criminalize harmless fibs such as using a fake name on Facebook to protect privacy. It would also force people to digest needlessly long terms of service policies for online services,
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
No, *I* am Spartacus!
I am Jim Thompson!
Lots of us do...
I am John Galt.
agreed but right beh9ind him should be the lunatics and race baiters which were put in there in the last few years.
When a DOJ has an agenda of ignoring black crime but going after whites then it is racist and he should have gone right after those black supremacists at the voting booth had their charges dropped.
The media would like us to forget that the GOP have forgot that but some of us have not.
Nice catch!
They want drug addicted, hedonists who don’t pay attention to all the graft and corruption...
Hey Susie
wanna be the wife of Spartacus?
And I'm Ross Perot.............. :)
Limo-Libs want this badly so they can persecute politically incorrect people on line. Too much talkin’ goin’ on out there.
They are trying to sell this as forbidding lying on dating sites - something everyone hates.
They have a real problem when people have free speech they can’t punish and harass.
I’m Dr Vinny Boombatz.
I am Jim Thompson. (Seriously. Check the tagline.)
“Is there something wrong with the internet? Are people clamoring for new laws?”
Yes free speech is what is wrong with the Internet and the people clamoring for new laws are the political class.
Seriously, the only place where free speech really lives anymore is on the Internet and that is starting to upset them.
PC has killed free speech everywhere else.
I have 20 Social Security numbers. Which one of my real names do they want me to use?
They need to go after all the elected officials that lie to us TO OUR FACE!
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