Trolling now illegal in the US?

[Sundae]

Offered for comment from www.thefridaything.co.uk

This week someone has winkled out a hidden clauselet in the US Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act, which bans everyone from being annoying on the Internet. Well, presenting as a pain is still allowed, but it must be under your own name.

Looksee: 'Whoever...utilizes 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... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.'

Aside from the hilarious prospect of everyone who has ever called anyone else a motherfucker under the nom de plume of 'hairybiker777' being tracked down and clapped in irons, it rather begs the question of who decides what constitutes 'intent to annoy'. Would 'intent to mildly irk, belittle, get on the tits of or cause to flounce' be exempt? And shouldn't it be 'whomsoever', anyway? Regardless, it can only be bad news for anonymous bloggers, anonymous commenters with something other than 'I fully support George W. Bush and the Iraq war-or-generic-conflict in entirety and perpetuity' to say, and anyone who is ever an annoyance for noble purposes or childish ones.

Unenforceable as this silly little section might be, it's yet
more reason to feel like you're helplessly watching as the US chews its own legs off from the toenails up. It almost makes you want to adopt a troll.

In order to distract ourselves from this flagrant adventure in constitution-buggery, we attempted to embrace the idea of penalties for online annoyingness. Because in all honesty, all that wishy-washy freedom of speech stuff aside, we want these semi-human scum to be punished till they squeak.

1) Posting of 'LOL', 'lol', 'ROFL' or 'LMAO' incurs 50 hours'
community service. Posting of 'ROLF' will usually result in
lenient sentencing as displays clear evidence of gently
subversive wit. Use of 'LOL' or 'lol' as a matter of course, or
in lieu of punctuation, when there is no logical reason to be
laughing out loud, incurs an indeterminate duration in Gitmo Bay.

2) Blogging bitchily about colleagues incurs 24 hours in village stocks. Additional penalties according to severity of bitchiness to include fruit-pelting (fresh to putrid accordingly) and birch-spanking.

3) Doing that thing where you type a massive long string of
letters to bugger up the formatting of a messageboard to incur 60 lashes of the cat by the first mate.

4) Directing acquaintances of lesser intelligence to 'the best
blonde joke ever' -
(http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/item/best-blonde-joke-ever/)
- in order to amuse oneself with their subsequent mewling
bewilderment, incurs anthrax enema. (People of lesser
intelligence are *not* to be ridiculed. They have feelings too, and seats in Congress.)

5) Persistent use of animated smilies incurs mandatory execution by lethal injection, hanging, stoning and kicking really hard in the shins.

It made me laugh anyway

[lumberjim]

5) Persistent use of animated smilies incurs mandatory execution by lethal injection, hanging, stoning and kicking really hard in the shins.

UH OH, BRUCE! better get your shin guards out of storage

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bring it on :p

People of lesser intelligence are *not* to be ridiculed. They have feelings too, and seats in Congress.

See, LJ. You're not allowed to ridicule me.

[Elspode]

Or *be* ridiculed in turn.

[mrnoodle]

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