Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:26:04 -0800
________________________________________ From: Ed Gerck [egerck () nma com] Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 3:43 PM To: Lauren Weinstein Cc: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? Lauren and Dave, This discussion in IP, and contrary to the Internet, has been very US-centric. For example, in the UK anyone can use any name at any time without any formalities, and no such name is less legally valid. The Internet is /not/ a special legal jurisdiction. It must follow the local jurisdiction and each end point -- and, sometimes, at the originating point. It's that simple. Internet or not, there is a local law regime that is applied by jurisdiction claims. Some examples from the non-Internet world: - Many people use "John Smith" as a name in phone number official listings in Calif. It's an easy way to achieve anonymity without paying a fee for an unlisted number. - Calif. DMV allows motorists to display a postal address in their licenses, if they so want, which is not their home address. - Many of us routinely use different letters for our middle name, for example in magazine subscriptions, as a way to trace who discloses our names. - Pseudonym use is also common in arts, politics, and writing, as Mark Twain for example, and this *is* legal in many jurisdictions even for commerce and billing purposes. You can even get "pseudo numbers" for credit cards, linked to you real card, and which work fine in commerce. Savvy Internet users prefer to type "xyz whatever" as a mother's maiden name, or a pet's name, for those sites that insist we provide a weak password (our mother's true maiden name) to "protect" our carefully chosen hard-to-guess password. Most of us (specially as a protection to spam and spammer-generated names) have more than one email address and not necessarily use something name-like such as ed () gerck com for all purposes. The point that still needs to be made here is not about "censoring the Net" but conforming to local US laws, including the long reach of federal jurisdiction. In Texas, for example, what is legal in the UK (see above) is illegal depending on time of use. Cheers, Ed Gerck ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 08)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 08)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 08)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 09)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 10)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 11)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 11)
- Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 11)
- Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site? David Farber (Jan 11)